Rating: 
Summary: Great book for getting started with .NET
Review: If you have a .NET project you are trying to get moving quickly, this is an excellent book. Troelsen uses samples that are simple enough to clearly illustrate the issues, but have enough meat to be meaningful (not just "Hello World"). I have needed to refer to the book for help with ADO.NET, events and delegates, COM interop and thread synchronization. I especially liked that for COM interop, the author includes a sample of a complete ATL COM server for your .NET app to interact with. Each time I run into a problem, I can find something in this book that helps me move forward. Another reviewer criticized the book's tutorial nature. A tutorial-style book is exactly what I need for diving into totally new technology like .NET.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on C# and the .NET framework
Review: I picked up your book "C# and the .NET Platform" at TechEd and spent several weeks reading different parts of the book. This is by far one of the best books I have ever read. I have loaned my book to several of my friends and recommended many others to buy it as the definitive guide to .NET and C#. Congratulations to Andrew Troelsen on developing such great material.
Rating:
Summary: The easiest reading guide you can find
Review: This book provides a solid basis that will start you out and keep you going with C# and .NET through Beta 2 and on to the release. It is the easiest reading reference AND learning book I have seen. I wish I had a book like this everytime I had to start with a new language.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good reference for C# and .NET
Review: This was the only good book I found that explains C# in the Visual Studio .NET paradigm. The author jumps right into the core features of the language and does not waste time comparing C++ and C#. There is also a good deal of explanation about ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Web Services. Concentrating on the advanced features of ASP.NET would have made it complete, but I guess that needs a separate book on its own!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reference to Fundamentals of C# and .NET
Review: Glad to see a .NET Beta 2 compliant book and so soon after the release of .NET Beta 2. Struggling through the series of MSDN Magazine .NET Beta 1 articles while using Visual Studio.NET Beta 2 was an excercise in frustration. Surprised to see code samples of Visual Basic.NET in a C# book. Although most of my experience has been with Visual Basic, my earlier C and C++ experience allows me to move directly to C# rather than to VB.NET. Other VB programmers may have a less easier transition but definitely should not be discouraged! Was that the purpose for including VB.NET in the book? This is a brave attempt to cram as much C# and .NET into one large book particularly since volumes could be written. It is, understandably, shy in discussing Visual Studio.NET to any great depth. Instead, the book concentrates on the fundamental aspects of C# and .NET. An excellent low level nuts and bolts coverage of the topics. A very good reference book now and even after the final version is released - assuming, of course, that changes to the technologies are minimal. According to a publisher's note in the book, final release updates will be available on the Web.
Rating:
Summary: Rushed to publication but pretty informative
Review: I got the feeling that this book was pretty rushed. Numerous errors throughout the book that anyone could easily pick up, both spelling and conceptual. The cover says "Foreword by Eric Gunnerson" but I have yet to see any foreword, much less anything written by Eric G. But aside from that, it was a pretty informative book. With only a minimal amount of knowledge on the C# language and .NET framework, I was able to learn quite a bit.
Rating: 
Summary: Best book so far, but could be better
Review: Most of the C# books up to this point have focused only on the language--not how to use C# along with .NET. The Wrox "C# Programming With the Public Beta" is the only competition to this book. The Wrox book was full of mistakes + it barely skimmed the surface of C# .NET programming. Andrew's book is well written and has only a couple of errors that I have spotted so far. My major gripe with this book is that it ignores for the most part, how to use Visual Studio.NET effectively to create .NET applications. It is good book to understand how to cobble together applications that run in the console window and create "handmade" classes and objects, but it does not go into very much detail about how to use and leverage Visual Studio.NET to build apps. If you are a VB developer, you may have a difficult time understanding some of the topics. Andrew comes from the Visual C++ ATL world, and assumes the reader has his same background. Luckily for me, I am a VC++ developer. Overall it's the best book out there as of 7/8/01 on C# and .NET, but it could be better. Maybe Professional C# from Wrox press will hit the mark better.
Rating:
Summary: Hard Core C#
Review: In-depth, solid coverage of C#. Best book out to date.
Rating:
Summary: Where are my other 270 pages?
Review: ...The book covers a great deal of material and it addresses each point fairly clearly, but I would never call it "relentlessly complete." I found myself with questions about many of the features covered. For example, structs are described, but the example used is an "Employee" struct - just the kind of data that you would WANT that is a poor example of the use of struct because it's the kind of data you would want to use with inheritance. That's essentially what I found missing. The features are not placed in context - they are simply delineated. When would I use such and such, how would I use it, what should I watch out for? I often found these questions unanswered. There are some important concepts that are just wrong. For example, Troelsen gets the definitions of "shallow copy" and "deep copy" out of whack. On page 72, in his description of Object.MemberwiseClone() he says that a shallow copy creates "another reference that points to the same object in memory." .... Another problem I had is one that I see in ALL of the C# books, and I've read most. It's a "relentlessly" positive attitude about the language. I never see one hint of a criticism or even a question raised about a design choice. If you're looking for the equivalent of Scotty Meyers - this ain't it, and I suppose I'm being somewhat unfair because that's what I was hoping for. Where is the book on C# Idioms and Style for experienced C++ programmers?
Rating:
Summary: Not a reference book
Review: First of all, the book has 970 pages and not 1200, and, by the way, it's written using a layout that wastes a lot of space. Then, the book has a "tutorialish" style, and cover really basic topics such as "The basic structure of an HTML document" (page 818, where the meaning of <BODY> and <TITLE> is explained), and the basics of OOP. What is missing, in my opinion, is an accurate description of the Common Runtime Library, whereas only some example-based description is provided.
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