Rating: 
Summary: The best book on .NET Visual Basic development
Review: This book covers new VB.NET topics like inheritance as well as .NET Web Services. It's practical and complete. Buy this one before trying anything else.
Rating:
Summary: Not only for beginners
Review: This book says that it is an "advanced Guide", but please do not interpret this as a book not suitalbe for beginners. Troelsen presents his material in the fashion of a college level course, but a 101 type course. It goes into detail about why things are as they are, which for me at least, is very helpful in understanding what .Net and Visual Basic.Net are all about. If you are the type who finds it easier to understand a subject when you understand its construction and dynamics, then this book is for you. If you are tired of the "dumbed down" approach, then this book, and the whole Apres series, it seems, is for you.
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Summary: Comprehensive and well researched
Review: This is a book for experienced programmer who are tired of all the shallow computer books. This books gives a lot of useful information that is hard to find elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Good overall coverage but needs more detailed info
Review: This is a good book for the intermediate-to-advanced programmers making the switch to Visual Basic.Net from Visual Basic 6. Please NOTE: This is not a beginner book. The book provides a good overall coverage of most of the Visual Basic.Net topics but this book needs to be augmented with books that are more specific to the programming needs of the developer. For example, if the developer is going to develop Web forms in ASP.NET using Visual Basic.Net, they should buy a books that specifically written for that purpose. Overall,this is a 4-star book and I liked it well enough that I am going to buy Troelsen's "C# and the .Net Platform, Second Edition". A couple of minor issues with this book.
1. Andrew Troelsen wrote "C# and the .Net Platform" first and it appears that he used the manuscript for that book to write this book. Several times in the book, the examples are in C#, not Visual Basic! See page 107. The editors failed to catch these errors. 2. Not including the index, this book is 1017 pages and that is divided up into 16 chapters. The average chapter is about 63 or 64 pages long. It seems that some of the chapters drag on and on and on. 3. There is very little cohesiveness between the examples in the chapters. In Chapter 4 (Object-Oriented Programming with VB.Net), each example does not build off of the previous example. Troelsen starts with an Employee example but finishes the chapter with a Car example. If you trying to follow along with his examples, you end up with several "Solutions" or "Projects" that are not related.
Rating:
Summary: Good overall coverage but needs more detailed info
Review: This is a good book for the intermediate-to-advanced programmers making the switch to Visual Basic.Net from Visual Basic 6. Please NOTE: This is not a beginner book. The book provides a good overall coverage of most of the Visual Basic.Net topics but this book needs to be augmented with books that are more specific to the programming needs of the developer. For example, if the developer is going to develop Web forms in ASP.NET using Visual Basic.Net, they should buy a books that specifically written for that purpose. Overall,this is a 4-star book and I liked it well enough that I am going to buy Troelsen's "C# and the .Net Platform, Second Edition". A couple of minor issues with this book.
1. Andrew Troelsen wrote "C# and the .Net Platform" first and it appears that he used the manuscript for that book to write this book. Several times in the book, the examples are in C#, not Visual Basic! See page 107. The editors failed to catch these errors. 2. Not including the index, this book is 1017 pages and that is divided up into 16 chapters. The average chapter is about 63 or 64 pages long. It seems that some of the chapters drag on and on and on. 3. There is very little cohesiveness between the examples in the chapters. In Chapter 4 (Object-Oriented Programming with VB.Net), each example does not build off of the previous example. Troelsen starts with an Employee example but finishes the chapter with a Car example. If you trying to follow along with his examples, you end up with several "Solutions" or "Projects" that are not related.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: This is definitely a must for any experience Visual Basic programmer wanting to master VB.NET. It's not a book for beginners, it helps if you have some object orientated programming knowledge in visual basic for example. The explanations are very clear and concise and fun, its a very interesting book. The contents of the book includes all important object orientated issues, Inheritance, Encapsulation, Polymorphism and Data Access using ADO. NET. plus more. It's a five star book.
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Summary: About TIME!!
Review: This is the first VB.NET book that I have read that really make it all clear for me. There are a ton of books hitting the shelves and they all seem to be tossed together, not this one. Mr. Troelsen has a very clear understanding of the topic and has a unique way of conveying that to the reader. I have heard a lot about Mr. Troelsen from my C++ counterparts. If your debating which VB.NET book to spend your hard earn $$ and time reading, I will make it easy for you... THIS ONE.
Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: VB.NET isn't just the next version of VB. Mr. Troelsen's approach is clear, practical, and complete. As a die-hard VB developer who's served time developing enterprise-level applications, I was totally refreshed to find an author who speaks/writes at my level. This book is outstanding.
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Summary: VB.NET to the MAX ?
Review: Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Platform is a big (and I mean BIG) book that tries to make everything clear to you that has anything or everything to do with Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Platform. This is exactly why I do not give the book 5 stars, because sometimes you get the idea that the writer is drowning in subjects. Andrew Troelsen (who has a nice comfortable and knowledge writing style by the way) wants to include it all but there is simply too much. That was the only downside I ran into I must say. 4 stars is still a very good score and surely not without a reason. As mentioned before Andrew Troelsen knows in extreem detail what he is talking about and I would dare to rate him in the Appleman class. Just as Appleman often does, Andrew Troelsen throws in personal opinions about language and Framework aspects, which sounds scary, but this is just what you need when you are trying to learn a brand new Language. (Off-Topic: Yes, I said NEW language, you can just forget about comparing VB.NET to VB 6.0, it is no equal matchup in any way whatsoever). In pretty much all aspects a very good book. I enjoyed reading it very much. A tiny warning is in order; Please do NOT buy this book if you are planning to 'get-up-to-date' with the technical capabillities of VB.NET and nothing more than that, as is often done by IT managers (no deep knowledge required for them, just an overview). This book will be completely wasted on you. Why ? Because it holds over a 1000 pages of the most detailed info you can get about VB.NET and the Framework. This books requires hours and hours of reading and practicing. The book will create a VB.NET Programmer, not somebody that 'knows something about it'. Get ready to do a load of work ... and get a load of knowledge back.
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