Rating: 
Summary: Good intro - solid basics - weak links to real world
Review: I've just recently completed this book and wanted to share a few key points about what I liked and didn't like about these 950+ pages.First the bad news (Didn't likes):
- diagrams, figures, charts were really small and hard to read
- some tables were too detailed and simply re-iterated the kind of things you could find in the documentation of help files or on the internet (the book is filled with this stuff!)
- examples were adequate but... the text made it clear "How" to use the code concepts but in a lot of cases I was asking "Why" would one do it this way? The Likes:
- Language - good style, clear and easy to read and understand
- Good basic explanations of all concepts
- Excellent introduction to Object Oriented Programming concepts
- In my opinion this was probably the best book to start learning this language with - it covers a great deal of language specific concepts (for VB.NET) Other notes:
- I was looking for a book to help me understand VB better
- I am studying for the first MCAD exam and needed a re-introduction to VB concepts (and .NET primer!) before tackling more advanced material - this book was just right (thus the 4 stars)
- To get an advanced understanding of VB.NET you will need more material to complement this great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Errors
Review: On page 175 he says you can use the form name instead of Me to refer to the form without any other code! This is crazy. I giving sams the shadow of a doubt, wrote microsoft and told them about this and said is there something wrong with my VB .NET soft? They said no. They said that you cannot do this. The reason for the 1star is because of the continual use of this error! Please Correct me if i am wrong. In Visual Basic 6, a special default instance of each form is automatically created for you, and allows you to use the form's name to access this instance. What this means is that the Visual Basic 6.0 code Form1.Text="hello" has the effect of showing the "default" instance of Form1, but it doesn't work at all in Visual Basic .NET. In .NET there is no default instance. Form1 refers only to the class that represents your form, and this class cannot be used without creating an instance. This is why ME.Text = "Hello" works fine while Form1.Text="hello" doesn't work. In Visual Studio .NET, form1 is just a class name. The Text property can only be referenced by instance. 'ME' represents current instance and ME.Text = "Hello" works fine. He did not say how to do this...He just said you could use the forms name insead of ME. This is incorrect
Rating:
Summary: Errors
Review: On page 175 he says you can use the form name instead of Me to refer to the form without any other code! This is crazy. I giving sams the shadow of a doubt, wrote microsoft and told them about this and said is there something wrong with my VB .NET soft? They said no. They said that you cannot do this. The reason for the 1star is because of the continual use of this error! Please Correct me if i am wrong. In Visual Basic 6, a special default instance of each form is automatically created for you, and allows you to use the form's name to access this instance. What this means is that the Visual Basic 6.0 code Form1.Text="hello" has the effect of showing the "default" instance of Form1, but it doesn't work at all in Visual Basic .NET. In .NET there is no default instance. Form1 refers only to the class that represents your form, and this class cannot be used without creating an instance. This is why ME.Text = "Hello" works fine while Form1.Text="hello" doesn't work. In Visual Studio .NET, form1 is just a class name. The Text property can only be referenced by instance. 'ME' represents current instance and ME.Text = "Hello" works fine. He did not say how to do this...He just said you could use the forms name insead of ME. This is incorrect
Rating: 
Summary: Thumbs down
Review: Overall I do not recommend this book. It doesn't really cover anything past novice in-depth, so maybe if you are new then it would be OK. I often find myself programming and needing to look up a specific topic but it's not in the book.
Rating:
Summary: Just not good.
Review: Why such a low raiting? When i got this book i was excited when i got to page 176 i was sad. It said that you could simply use "Form1.Visible = False. in place of Me.Visible = False and that is totaly incorrect. Anyone who programs in Visual basic .Net knows that this feature was eleminated after Visual basic 6.0. I mean there was no telling you how to go about so you can actually use Form1 instead of ME to refer to the form he just says you can start doing it without doing anything! This is totally wrong and will confuse any Beginner programmer due to his continual use of this error! I even went as far as to contact microfsoft and they said you could not do this!!
Rating:
Summary: Just not good.
Review: Why such a low raiting? When i got this book i was excited when i got to page 176 i was sad. It said that you could simply use "Form1.Visible = False. in place of Me.Visible = False and that is totaly incorrect. Anyone who programs in Visual basic .Net knows that this feature was eleminated after Visual basic 6.0. I mean there was no telling you how to go about so you can actually use Form1 instead of ME to refer to the form he just says you can start doing it without doing anything! This is totally wrong and will confuse any Beginner programmer due to his continual use of this error! I even went as far as to contact microfsoft and they said you could not do this!!
Rating:
Summary: Just not good.
Review: Yes! This book does exactly what it says. Teach you the fundamentals of VB .Net in 21 Chapters (... or Days if u want!)
I am a junior/intermediate programmer with only a couple of languages under my belt and this my first "SAMS" book... It is worth every single penny you pay for it...I went thru all of the Chapters but you don't have to as the book is very well organized and can be used as a reference. I'd recommend it to anybody...
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