Rating: 
Summary: One of the best ...
Review: This is one of the best books for beginner to intermedaite .NET windows developers. Windows basic concepts are well explained. I wonder if Petzold is coming with second advanced version. Topics are missing such as Multithrading, Advanced Windows development etc.
Author has divided book into three categories - The Basics, Graphics, and The User Interface. You can pretty much guess. Well explained chapters on Lines, curves, text, fonts, printing, images, curves, brushes, pens, mouse keyboards, timers, dialog boxes, menus, tree and list views.Missting many windows (forms) featuers though.
Worth. Give it a try.
Rating:
Summary: Petzold in Top Form
Review: This book is the best way to learn the basics of C# and Client .NET Framework. Petzold remains THE Master at teaching Windows Application Developement. Highly readable as well as authoritative.
Rating:
Summary: It's Right
Review: I've read the reviews: mostly good, some bad. Know what really matters? It's right. The code works, and there's no typos.
So what if Petzold doesn't use the IDE? What he wrote is right. The text is right and the code is right.
If you want to go nuts debugging code written by some hack, buy someone else's book.
If you want code that works, and text that makes sense, buy Petzold.
Rating: 
Summary: Lacking depth
Review: I have to agree with the other reviews who critisize this book.
I for one found it lacked depth and didn't cover a lot of
material that I wanted to know about. There's no mention
for example of how to use the toolbar, and there are some
trick one needs to know to get the toolbar to work effectively.
There is no mention of windows with child windows, eg the toplevel property.
There isn't much, if any, discussion on
on to organise a windows program using C#, especially when
dealing with multiple windows. Overall, good for a beginner but as I said it lacks depth for the
professional. If you any significant amount of programming
you will soon outgrow this book.
Rating:
Summary: Great GDI and Windows Forms book
Review: I don't see why some reviewers of this book continually state that this book is a C# book. I'm talking both good reviews and bad reviews here. Unfortunately, many people see remarks about what a great C# book it is, purchase the book, find out it contains exactly 40 pages of C# information and then return here to slam the book. It's unfair to the author and unfair to customers.
Let's talk about what this book IS. This book is the very best book on the market for writing Windows applications in C#. The author focuses on the IO, Drawing and Windows Forms namespaces and types and in the end produces the best book of its kind currently available. The key to remember when deciding on this book is that there's a reason that both Tom Archer and Charles Petzold write for MS Press. Mr Archer focuses on C# and Mr Petzold on what to do once you've learned the language. A hint might also be gathered via the fact that this site sells both as a combination deal! In summary, I own both books (as well as Jeffrey Richter's fine internals book) and rarely am ever at a loss for answers in my .NET development (something I do 10 hours a day).
Rating:
Summary: "Programming Rich Clients for Windows" -- better title?
Review: Another reviewer complained that this book was not about programming Windows. This is not true -- only the title is a bit misleading. This book explains how to program very Windows-specific things, such as Windows Forms and GDI+. It is mainly for writing rich-client applications, which may become more popular now. Anyone who has read Petzold's previous books will see it is exactly the same focus. It is an excellent book, as usual, and the few things which are incorrect/out of date are corrected on his website. Programmers who have been working with Windows for many years all know that Petzold's books are a kind of standard.
Rating: 
Summary: Makes a good door stop.
Review: I see that everyone just loves this book but I can not see why. I bought it because of the Petzold name but it sure did not live up to my expecations. It seems to rehash the same things that were part of the his C book. If you want to draw pretty fonts all over the place this book is for you otherwise find another book.
Rating:
Summary: Buy it if you are serious about c#
Review: It is a great reference book. I have bought a lot of them and this one is the one I take home from work. Enough said.
Rating:
Summary: This is a great book on C#
Review: This book is every bit as good as Charles' books on Programming for Windows. I highly recommend it if you are interested in learning C#.
Rating:
Summary: Petzold is stuck in a time-warp
Review: You really need to take a close look at this book before you buy it. I think a lot of innocent people are going to lose some serious money, just because of the "Petzold aura". Petzold's style hasn't changed a whit... even though he has migrated his code from C to C#, it's still the exact same stuff. Entire chapters dedicated to drawing curvey lines, and hand-painting fonts on a screen. You will not learn the C# language either... I repeat, this is not a tutorial. I've read both Programming Windows 3.1 and Programming Windows 95. They taught me the structure of Windows programming fine, but in a decade of programming, I've never done a thing that even closely resembles what Petzold does in his books. Programming is about forms, data, transformation, and storage, and there is nothing here along these lines. Please take one person's advice, and visit a bookstore before you take this plunge.
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