I just go an email saying that the MSPress.com.au site is moving to a new address http://computer.bookcentre.com.au/ and to celebrate this new site they are offering 30% all books from their over 3000 titles until the end of the month.
“This new site offers over 3000 titles from UK, US, European & Indian IT publishers. Featuring leading brands such as O’Reilly, APress, No Starch, Murach and many others including, of course, Microsoft Press.”
To take advantage of this discount just use the code “MSPRESS” when you check-out to receive your discount.
The Microsoft Australia Press Shop is currently having a MASIVE sale with 50% OFF ALL BOOKS before the end of financial year (June 30th). To claim you discount for this incredible deal simply use the checkout code EOFYS10 and the discount will automatically be applied to your cart.
If you do live in Australia remember that even after this great deal is over the Microsoft Press Shop will always price match any book you can buy from Amazon (with conversion and shipping) with their Amazon Price Match Promise. I have always found their service to be excellent and the delivery has always been within two days as their warehouse is based locally in Sydney.
If you are having trouble what title you are after then I highly recommend the Configuring Windows 7 Self-Paced Training Kit for MCTS Exam 70-680 by fellow Australia MVP Orin Thomas & Ian McLean. Even if you are not planning to do the exam that this book is written for it is still a great guide for anyone who wants to brush up on what is new in Windows 7.
The other great think I love about MS Press books is they come with a PDF version which you can now copy to your iPad or iPhone and read in iBook’s which recently enabled native PDF support (see below).
Telstra have just reduce the cost and increased the data allowances on their Post-Paid Data Packs. The good thing about these data plans is that you can purchase a new data plan at any time during your billing cycle to avoid having to pay any excess usage fees. As you can see below based on the cents per MB costing, the two sweet spots are either the 500mb or 3gb plans.
If you already have a data pack on your existing Telstra plan then you will need to call them to update your phone plan to take advantage of the new rates.
Microsoft have just release another free eBook called “Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner!”. This is a good sign that SQL Server 2008 R2 is also getting very close to RTM…
The book contains 10 chapters and 216 pages, like so:
PART I Database Administration
CHAPTER 1 SQL Server 2008 R2 Editions and Enhancements CHAPTER 2 Multi-Server Administration CHAPTER 3 Data-Tier Applications CHAPTER 4 High Availability and Virtualization Enhancements CHAPTER 5 Consolidation and Monitoring
PART II Business Intelligence Development
CHAPTER 6 Scalable Data Warehousing CHAPTER 7 Master Data Services CHAPTER 8 Complex Event Processing with StreamInsight CHAPTER 9 Reporting Services Enhancements CHAPTER 10 Self-Service Analysis with PowerPivot
As myself am an IT Pro but I have not used SQL Server since SQL 2005 however but the Part 1 of this book looks like it will be brilliant for me to get up-to speed on the new features of SQL Server 2008 R2.
![IMG_0005[1]](http://www.smartergeek.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IMG_00051.png "IMG_0005[1]")
