Information Systems by John Gallaugher: A Student Reviews the Kindle Version

Every so often, students send us reviews of our textbooks.  Here are a few thoughts sent to us by Don Malzahn, a student at Northern Illinois University, on using a Flat World book on his Kindle.

BTW: We love getting mail, so send us us your ideas, reactions, wish lists, fan mail, frustration mail; the good and the bad.   It makes a difference, because we aren’t tied down with legacy systems or a hierarchical organization that makes change hard.   We’re growing fast, true, but we take great pride in being nimble and responsive to what our customers want and need.

The very first Flat World Knowledge textbook I used was Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology by John Gallaugher.   The instructor recommended the Kindle format.  I was new to the world of Kindle, and being in my mid-50′s, and working in IT, I was excited about using it.  It took some getting used to — what with no page numbers and a different way of doing highlighting. But with enhanced search capabilities, and weight and portability making up for it in the long run, I fell in love.

If you have an instructor who jumps around week to week in different chapters and you have the Kindle edition, take my word and make bookmarks for each chapter, then you can jump around easily.  If you have open book tests, you might make use of this feature as well, say, if you know a topic was in Chapter 13, but not sure where.  This is true because the Kindle search will list all search term results with no clue about what chapter they were within.

Kindle 2.0 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the opening chapter states, the book is written in an easy-going almost street language.  For a modern field like technology this is very forward thinking. Topics are current and constantly being updated from edition to edition.  For example, Google creates a new product such as Wave (a supposed email replacement); this book added it.  Google drops Wave, and so does the Gallaugher in the next edition.

I found the end-of-chapter topic bullet points and questions helpful for studying for classes quizzes and exams.

A word to the wise, if you get the Kindle edition, explore all the various clients at your disposal. The Windows client is helpful for some things, yet I prefer the Kindle client for others, with tight integration wirelessly to Wikipedia and dictionaries, and more.  And be sure to check out www.flatworldknowledge.com.  If you are like me, an MBA student with a hectic lifestyle full of work, family life, class and studying on the run, sometimes you are somewhere without your Kindle or even regular textbook, you can always go to the website and do some reading there.  Be cautioned, you might get a slightly newer edition than you purchased, but this is not always a bad thing.

Working in IT for 30 years, I was a bit skeptical about taking this course. Alright, completely ticked off and thought it a waste of my time, but in the end, I was glad I did take it, and the book was a big part of it. I am using some of the information I learned from the text in my work, which I think is the biggest compliment I can pay the author. Just today, I had to deal with LAMP tech stack in a meeting; glad I knew what it was. And just this last year we went through PCI compliance, and it’s nice to be exposed to more of the Security threats out there, which cause so much concern in the world today.

About Melissa Yu

Dubbed by some as the "quiet assassin" (killing deadlines only, of course!), project manager Melissa is happy to be on the Flat World team, working hard with talented authors and FWK team members to produce great books. In her spare time, she enjoys running, reading, thinking and tomatoes.

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