Sams Teach Yourself Visual Studio .NET 2003 in 21 Days

Rating:
Summary: I got what I paid for
Review: This is the best book for Visual Studio.NET beginner. Just as the book's title, you really can learn VS.net in 21 days.
The first seven days are awesome. Even if you never use any version of VS before or totally have no idea about the .NET concept. After reading the first week's contents, you would feel like you really get into the zone of .NET framework and vs.NET.
The second week, it mainly talk about ADO.net, XML, and the programming languages. I was a bit disappointed about this part. ADO.net is much more complicated than the first week's basic stuffs, and the author was trying to make the completeness, squashed most of major features of ADO.net in just 2-3 days. So from this point, we have to forgive him. (there is a lot of good ADO.net books in the market, go get one if you want to go further. I bought the MS ADO.net core reference) The last seven days talks about some advanced features (some of them only available in vs.net enterprise edition)or third party addons of VS.net, such as, crystal report, application center test, and sourcesafe. This information is good references for expericenced vs.NET users. (but it's a little bit too much for beginners).
Like all tech books, there are some errors in this book, especially in the second week.
Overall, I got what I paid for. The book brought me in the vs.NET door. I give 3 stars for it. (I take two stars off because of the second week and the errors)

Rating:
Summary: FLAWED but decent
Review: Very good overall but but has some mistakes in it. Also has some gotchas. For instance the first web application project you create also silently creates a "soloution". VS documentation recommends you explicitly create a solution first then any projects. Advice = DON'T try examples on production server.