Later: It looks like this is down to me. The portable with the master copies of the images had the wss1 images not the later spf1 images. I'll probably find those on a safety copy somewhere. The PDF files (last check before printing) which use the separate images - unlike the DOC files used for major editing, which use the images included in the DOC files - also had the wss1 images but these were difficult to read in detail (except one) so I could almost be forgiven for not seeing the wss1 in those screens. (and as I was mainly looking for typos I can't say I really did any more with the screens than check that they fitted the text)

As you probably know for years I've been following which SharePoint book chapters have been made available to the public (usually in the form of downloadable PDF files) since the early days of the 2007 SP products.

Those chapters (or rather links to those chapters because I am vary wary of copyright issues) were made available as part of the WSS v3 FAQ.

Now that the 2010 SP books are starting to trickle out, so are downloadable chapters from them with Wiley starting us off.

Again I have part of the v4 FAQ site (I must change the name or actually write some FAQ there because at the moment it has got lots of other useful stuff (good list of books; links to KB articles and other articles; good set of links to web casts) but very few FAQ items) started to create a View which has those sample chapters.

The view is better than before in that it is grouped according to the type of book - using the same grouping criteria as the book list - but otherwise simply lists to the publisher's page for the book and to the downloadable chapter. All the three so far are for Chapter One. All of them have virtually the same title too - "Introduction to SharePoint 2010" (the difference being that one says Introduction to Microsoft SharePoint 2010!)

Anyway what about the sneaky way I mentioned in the Title, because using my links in order to download free chapters rather than going to the Manufacturers' web sites is hardly sneaky.

The sneaky thing is that you can go to the Amazon US site; see if there is a Kindle version of the book; and then look to the right of the screen to see if there is a free sample of the Kindle version available.

Note: It doesn't matter if you don't have a Kindle!

The amount of free sample you get varies with the book. (For one non-SP book I got the cover page only!!) But in some cases what you get as your sample is worth getting because although these free samples too always seem to start at the beginning of the book they sometimes give you more than just Chapter One.

My own 2007 book for instance gave chapters 1-3 which is quite a hefty chunk even if - true to the "in 24 hours" title - there were 24 chapters in the book.

By the way, I don't have a Kindle so how do I know?

Because I downloaded Kindle for the PC (and also Kindle for the Mac on the MacBook) and so I can specify that a samaple *of a book* can go to it and I can then read the sample on my PC.

Note: "of a book" because you can't download even paid for copies of magazines and newspapers if you don't have a Kindle device so Kindle for the PC (or Mac) is only of any use for free samples of Kindle Books (or indeed for paid for ones - I have one, because I clicked the wrong link and woosh the money vanished).