Up to this point, I have avoided reviewing this book because I don't like being negative, but this book has damaged Ken England's reputation and I would like to clear the air.
About 18 months ago the publishers offered me the opportunity to be technical editor for this new edition. I was flattered because I considered Ken's previous edition to be the best written on the subject. The publishers also requested my permission to reprint, on the back cover, a review I did of the previous edition. That tickled my ego as well.
After reading the draft, I was appalled at the gross errors of fact and, perhaps worse, the errors of omission in regard to the many important new performance tuning features of SQL Server 2005. I gave the publishers my opinion of the book and told them I could not be involved unless I could rewrite the new material entirely. They did not agree and found another technical editor.
To answer some of the points of contention in previous reviews of this book:
Despite the review from Adam Cassel questioning the truth of an assertion that Ken England did not write this edition, I can confirm that Ken England did not participate at all in the re-write of this book. He knew nothing about it until after it was published.
Gavin Powell did write the new material. His reply to the criticism in an earlier review is disingenuous. ("My most sincere and profuse apologies if you are finding things which are out of date. Please return the book to the retailer you purchased it from if it is too out of date.") He implies that the errors are leftovers from the previous edition that got overlooked in the update process. That is not true. Things are not "out of date", they are wrong and the errors are his.
I gave this book 2 stars instead of zero because Ken's core material is still in there and it is still worth reading. As soon as the previous version is out of print, this will be the only place you can find it.
Kurt