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Rating: 
Summary: MCP/MCDBA Review
Review: Greetings fellow developers, Once again DV Press has produced a solid title that satisfies the .Net needs of the development community! If you are brand new to VB.Net this DVD is for you. The product also has enough information in it to be quite useful for more experienced developers as well! I personally found the event handling, conditional code compilation, and a few other key areas to entail some knowledge that I did not previously have. IF YOU WANT TO LEARN VB.NET, "CONGRATS", BECAUSE YOUR ABOUT TO! Best Wishes,
Sincerely, Derek Comingore
Senior Software Engineer
MCP/MCDBA/PSP
Advanced Information Services
US Govt. Division
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasantly surprised
Review: I have been working my way through the lessons and have been pleased by the content. As a beginner this has been a good way for me to get a good foundation. I think this is a good place for a beginner in vb.net to start that has some background in programming and visual basic. I like this product better than sitting through a lecture because you can rewind it when you find yourself not paying attention. I do hope the presenter produces more advanced vb.net dvd sets in the future. Nevertheless, I can't give the product a 5 start rating. There are problems with the dvd set. The dvd is broken into small bites of information, but the music they play between the sections is too loud. Second, the sound is too low when the presenter speaks. Third, I checked all three dvds and could not find all of the code presented in the dvds. Fourth, some topics didn't go far enough. I am a beginner vb.net so it wasn't always obvious why you would want to do something. Fifth, on the second dvd the video and sound get out of sync in the last lesson. The main problem with the dvd set is that it is like most code. The dvds have some bugs that need to be worked out. However, the bugs are nothing that can't be overcome. I would recommend this for a vb.net beginner who wants to get a good foundation and can force themselves to sit down and actually go through the material.
Rating:
Summary: Look, learn, do
Review: I never thought about it much before using this DVD, but I guess that I am a visual kind of learner. Show me something that works. Then, show me how to do it. That's what this DVD does for a broad range of Visual Basic .NET topics. I also liked it that the solution folders that I saw work were on the DVD for me to copy into my computer. The early lessons introduce some .NET fundamentals and demonstrate how to leverage your existing VB/VBA background to quickly get started creating solutions with Visual Basic .NET. Later lessons deal with content that is unique to .NET. I never programmed custom classes much -- especially with events. However, this DVD presented the topic in a way that didn't intimidate me. Instead, the DVD empowered me. Heck, I even learned class inheritance. After viewing this DVD, I feel like a pretty "classy" VB.NET programmer. Several lessons drilled down on creating solutions with Windows forms -- one of the new forms introduced with the .NET Framework. The DVD taught me how to add controls to a form, create multiple forms in the same project, format both the forms and their controls, pass data between forms, and create main, switchboard forms that let users navigate to other forms in my solutions. The DVD ended with a lesson on using VB.NET and ADO.NET with Windows forms. I liked what I saw, but I am hungry for more on this topic (ADO.NET). I guess it's time for me to get the other DVD by Rick Dobson from DV Press titled Programming Visual Basic .NET and ADO.NET with SQL Server and Access.
Rating: 
Summary: Unprofessional production
Review: I waited for this with exitement, but was disapointed when I opened the package and played the DVD. The voices was low, just like the teacher was talking into a bucket (think they compressed it too much) a metallic sound. Between the teaching it was an "music" that was just like an alarm bell, that was really hight volume. May the purpose of this is to wake up the student?? This made it really hard to follow the classes for an foreigner. But it was ok when you saw it a couple of times and understood what he was saying. Cheap, but not really good
Rating:
Summary: DVD vs. Book
Review: Think of this as a City College-level class, but subtract all ability to communicate back to the instructor for any clarification. I'm not knocking City College - I've taken many courses at them so I know of what I speak - but a formal university education it is not. The same applies to this DVD set; you will learn the subject matter but other education sources yield a higher-quality outcome. As many others have noted, the sound quality is horrid. Compare it to making an internet phone call using nothing but a cheap mic attached to your web-cam; sounds like he is talking into a soup can. You're also hit with annoying transition slides - loud & weirdly timed slides - where after jolted by the volume shift, you sit and look at them for what seems like forever. Too bad the same length isn't applied to the informational slides; those are usually presented without enough time to read half of it. I spent a lot of time on the pause button, greatly extending the "1 hour" lesson window. The instructor also presents in a way that makes you wonder if he rehearsed at all before creating the Final Take. He also makes a few verbal "typos" which can make you need to rewind to figure out what he actually meant. The labs could have been better structured; you are referred to the slides (included PDF Files) for complete instructions, but the slides present minimal information and are in a quasi step-by-step rather than a goal oriented format; many times you have to look at the solution just to figure out what the problem was. And lastly, the source code, although on the DVD, is not clearly organized and the instructor never clearly tells you where to go to load whichever demo solution he is working with. There is little doubt the instructor knows the language and the environment. And you will take away a decent beginner's grasp of VB.NET programming. But is this presentation better than a book of the same goal? When you take away the common content elements from a DVD- and a book- presentation, the DVD set begins to lose ground in that a book is easier to reread confusing sections than the DVD is to replay, and when all is said and done, the DVD doesn't provide you with a reference guide at your finger-tips to utilize. The DVD approach is a good idea, and worth the view, but go into it knowing this might not be your last learning purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Books are out - DVDs are in!
Review: This DVD is for begginers and intermediate Visual Basic users. You'll learn more then just basic things. After going through all the lessons you'll be able to program a real life applications. The most important thing is not to skip any lesson because in each one you'll find some great tips. I have programed more then a few application but some of the tips were very usefull even for me. DV Press has done a great job on content presentation. Rick Dobson's style of presenting material is superb. There is NO book that could explain this material better then this DVD. I can't wait to get my hands on upcoming ASP.NET DVD...
Rating:
Summary: Its OK but.......
Review: This dvd is pretty unprofessional in its content. The volume during the speaking parts is very low although the music is very loud. The scenes look like they were shot once then they moved on to the next topic. Rick seems to stumble and mumble throughout the dvd, and it makes the dvd very hard to follow. All in all this dvd turns something that should be fairly easy and straight forward into something very confusing. Although if you do manage to pull a few concepts or if it clears something up in which you had a question with then i guess its worth it. Just try not to follow too closely or it might get you confused.
Rating:
Summary: Rick's other DVD is great, but this is truly superb
Review: This DVD set covers the basics but it also contains a bunch of information on win form development and design which I found extremely helpful. I found the quality of this set to be far superior to that of Rick's first set. I actually enjoyed watching it and I could zone in for longer periods thus making my learning experience quicker. I will never do another CBT, book or seminar. There is simply no need. Between the DVDs, MSDN and Google that should be all I need. Thanks again DV Press for putting out a great product and thank you Rick for putting so much effort into this latest title!
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