This book is full of practical step-by-step instructions. To get the most out of this book, you should run SharePoint so that you can test these instructions. If you don't have a SharePoint environment, the book tells you how to find either the full WSS version or the evaluation version of MOSS and install it. You will also need a Windows 2003 server up and running, preferably in an Active Directory domain, to install SharePoint. A tip is to use an MS Virtual PC 2007 or VMware environment for building your test environment.
Some of these instructions and examples require you to run other programs, such as MS Office 2007, MS Outlook 2007, MS InfoPath 2007, and SharePoint Designer 2007. You can follow many, but not all, of the instructions if you have earlier versions of MS Office, such as Office 2003.