The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Reference Guide is an ambitious work that is going to have a lot of admins slapping their foreheads and saying "Aha! So that's how it's done."
Having used Samba for quite a while, but never having felt confident enough to try anything overly exotic in the office, this book helped (and inspired) me to dust off my minimal configurations and go for more complete integration with the existing Windows infrastructure. The authors are knowledgable and speak from production experience, punctuating the technical content with helpful comments and best practices for folks who depend on Samba to get their job done. The tone of the book is also realistic about explaining what's in Samba, what might be in Samba, and what's not very likely to ever be in Samba. (I think it's great that members of the Samba team can be frank, and aren't taking advantage of an opportunity to toot their own horns, promise the moon and a bunch of vaporware.)
Even if you consider yourself fairly advanced with Samba configuration, this book - the distilled knowledge and experience of great number of HOWTOs and configuration examples - is likely to be useful for you. It's probably not for rank beginners, but that's part of being a good reference work for production admins.
My only complaint with the book has to do with a few typos and editing problems. (LaTex can be unforgiving, eh?) Also, I found Part II, the quick start/cookbook section, to be a little repetitive, and felt that it could have used a little more editorial oversight. (Hint: Don't read it straight through - you don't need to anyway.) But Part III, which is the meat of the book, is much better done, and I'd say damn near indispensible if you're serious about bridging the gulf between Un*x and Windows technologies in your workplace.
