Rating: 
Summary: High Price, Lots of Content, Poor Presentation
Review: This book is a disappointment. While it contains a significant amount of information on VB.Net and may be used (for the most part) as a reference, the material is presented in a manner that is often confusing and hard to understand - particularly for those who have had limited programming experiences. For example, the authors frequently present items in their "LiveCode" examples but completely ignore any explanation of them other than to state something to the effect that an explanation will be presented in a "future chapter." While there may be reasons to do so, on a limited basis, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. As a beginner, I am trying to understand everything that is presented - which is impossible because of the book's poor presentation. What makes this even more frustrating is that the same programs could have been written, in a simpler manner, that would fully cover the same concepts the authors are trying to present but avoid the use of concepts that haven't yet been covered in the book. I find that I'm using the outstanding notes my instructor provides us each week as the primary basis for acquiring programming skills, and using the book as a supplement. I have found it effective to completely ignore much of the unexplained concepts, presented well in advance to their being formally being introduced by the authors, rather than trying to understand them.One of the most obnoxious aspects of this book, however, is the atrocious practice of the book's editors/publisher to break up tables and programming examples across several pages - and then provide written explanations for the material contained on them on yet other different pages. This completely defeats the purpose of presenting material in a table in the first place - which should be to allow the reader to understand important concepts at a glance. While the editors have done the same thing with so many of the programs in the book, having to flip-flop back and forth between pages in order to compare written explanations with the programming examples is a reader's nightmare. It can only be hoped that, in future editions, the authors will remove all non-essential concepts from their examples and present them only when they are needed. Placing tables and examples on the SAME PAGE as explanatory text would, alone, make the book significantly better. So, until that happens, I'll continue to use the excellent notes provided by my instructor and other books to serve as my primary source of information on Visual Basic.NET. One would think that such matters would have been ironed out in a second edition - apparently, this was not the case.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding!....
Review: This book is an exhaustive reference for anyone wanting to learn Microsoft's latest incarnation of VB. Whether you're just beginning to learn programming or you're experienced, this book will get you wherever you want to go. Deitel, et al have done a marvelous job creating a book that gives you what you need. If you've never programmed, don't know a thing about Visual Studio.NET this book does a great job bringing you up to speed. If you're experienced in VB this book is a great reference and a genuine "How to.." book that will show you what you need to know about VB.NET. Everything from the new GUI features, ASP.NET, Web Services, XML, ADO.NET, MulitThreading, COM integration, and even has 3 great chapters on Object-Oriented Programming with VB.NET. All this with line-by-line analysis of code too! Well I can go on and on, but I won't, try it for yourself, it may be pricey compared to others but it is well worth it. -MC
Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY IT
Review: This book is horrible. I bought this book for a class and ended up having to buy another one. It is horribly written. It confuses you more than helps you understand the concepts. It is too long and too detailed. I am not against detailed books, in fact, I like them, but they need to be organized and well-written and this book is neither. If you are considering buying this book, DON'T buy it. Look for a better one.
Rating:
Summary: High Quality Book for VB.NET Developers of All Levels
Review: This book provides exhaustive coverage of everything you need to know in order to master the latest .NET version of Visual Basic. The book is designed for readers of all levels from experienced programmers to those with little or no programming experience. It does so by providing beginners with basic underlying good programming skills, while at the same time offering experinced developers detailed and exhaustive coverage of the Visual Basic .NET language. By simply flipping through the pages of this book, it becomes evident that an enormous amount of time and effort went into it. It offers the same high quality and detailed coverage that you would find in most college level academic books. The book's 1500 plus pages include over 2100 lines of carefully commented code, hundreds of programs with screens shots, and over 400 programming tips. All of the code is presented in full color as it would appear on a color monitor. Each chapter provides extensive self-review exercises which are designed to build confidence with the new material. More experienced Visual Basic developers can use the book to quickly master the new powerful features of .NET, such as, Web Services and ASP.NET, Web Forms, Object-Oriented Programming, XML, Multithreading, and ADO.NET. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to master this latest version of Visual Basic.
Rating:
Summary: For people who are serious about learning VB.NET
Review: This is a book for people who want to master VB.NET at a professional level and are willing to spend the time and energy that it takes. It is hard to find a VB.NET topic that isn't covered well, but for my purposes, the chapters on XML, Web forms, ASP.NET and Web services are very valuable so far. The excellent code and the walkthroughs are well done, although the listings are sometimes longer than they might need to be and sometimes force you to flip back and forth several pages. Even though this seems (and weighs!) like a textbook, Visual Basic .NET How To Program is nicely illustrated with colourful screenshots and attractive graphics so it isn't *too* stuffy. It will take a while to thoroughly digest this big book but from what I've seen so far, it is going to help me a lot.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book to start learning VB.NET
Review: This is a great book to start with VB.NET world. Object programming chapters are superb! I loved the approach used by Deitel's to explain any objective (definition - application - example) as it really suits my learning style. ADO.Net chapter could have been more thorough. I would absolutely recommend this book as a starting book for VB.NET. I can't wait for their "ASP.NET for Experienced programmers" to come out in spring. I do agree that if you do not like the teaching style of this book, this is not the book for you. Regardless, the information presented was excellent and the main focus of the book on object-oriented programming will completely make you comfortable with manipulating any objects in .NET Framework (as that's what it is all about).
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous
Review: This is a thoroughly thought out, well laid out book for those wishing to learn VB.net; Prior Visual Basic experience is not essential but if you have you can get to the topics you want and read-through it at a fairly fast pace. There are lots of examples and these are well illustrative. I wish the examples were more of real-life sceanarios. The book may look cluttered, but it depends on the way you look at it; the different fonts, colors used is quite helpful in making the topic of discussion stand out. Now the best part of the book is if you are cramming for an exam; the tips and the exhaustive summary is hard to beat. For an experienced developer, the summary alone is sufficient many times to help identify possible problems. One minor complaint for completeness is the lack of coverage of packaging and deployment of VB.net applications. Though it is expensive, I highly recommend this book as this is the only book you will need to get started on Vb.Net.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely the worst!
Review: This is absolutely the worst book I bought on VB. I consider myself a beginner programmer and I work with ASP.NET. This book's layout alone makes reading frustrating. It is so visually cluttered that you cannot concentrate on the topic. I counted 15 different compinations of colours and typefaces on a single page! The content is (very) poor. Things are rather mentioned than explained and never go deep enough. The authors are mostly preoccupied with mentioning terms of programming jargon than clarifying and going deeper. For example, you 'll learn that "Private" methods are also called "utility" or "helper methods" and thats all, no other explanation of what "private" is and how to use it! I 'm not joking! Not to mention that neither what a "method" is was explained in the first place! I also found out that "Live Code" method is nothing more than code blocks with their explanation, something that every book does and worse, in this book you have to constantly go back and forth between pages because they try to show to much stuff in a single block of code instead of breaking it down to pieces. Overall, this is a very bad book that won't teach you anything in depth neither on a conceptual nor on a practical level. I 'm very surprised by the 5 star ratings here. I guess they refuse to regret their money... Go for one that stretches the OOP features of VB.NET. An exceptional one is "An introduction to OOP programming with VB.NET" by Dan Clark,Apress.
Rating:
Summary: Visual Basic.net How To Program
Review: This is an excellant book on Visual Basic.Net for either classroom use or as a self taught course
Rating:
Summary: Don't believe the negative reviews
Review: This is simply a great book (and the best I have found for learning VB.net from scratch). Unfortunately for me, I paid too much attention to the negative reviews on this book, as well as the higher (relative to other VB.net books) price. You get what you pay for, and this book is worth it, even though it is more expensive. I don't know the authors from adam, and I am not their friend. I simply want to help others who are learning VB.net from scratch, like me, and do not have the flexibility in their schedule to take a college course. (I already have an engineeing degree, I don't want more classroom time!) I ended up buying this book almost last, after buying Visual Basic.net by Petroutsos, the Microsoft press books (VB.net Step by Step is a JOKE), VB.net bible, and Karl Moore's Tutorials. Dietel's books simply blow all of the above away. Also, Dietel's books are used in serious VB.net college courses, while none of the above are. Makes you think. By the way, I ended up reselling many of the other books I mentioned on Amazon, and bought more books by Deitel. I noticed that there are some Microsoft employees giving Deitel's books bad reviews. Can you say "COnflict of Interest" ??!!
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