Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Reference
Review: I've been a vi/vim user on and off for the past 3 years at school and whenever I was accessing a server on the production floor. I've gotten by with basic editting commands but I wanted to learn some of the more advanced features that vim offers.This book has been invaluable as a rough learning tool and a quick reference. Provided I actually know that a feature exists, I've been able to find the right syntax for it within a few minutes of flipping through the index/table of contents. As a result, I'm now more or less a consistent vim user on both Linux and Windows platforms. If you've ever wanted to know vim in more detail, then this book will be a good help.
Rating: 
Summary: Little detail, bad organization, Poor as a reference
Review: If you've never used Vi before, this book will help you to get started. But after the first week, it won't be very useful.
I use Vim everyday as a computer programmer, and whenever I need to figure out how to do something, I now just turn to google. The book covers many features of Vim, but in not much detail. The Appendix is sparse and often wrong. And topics are usually scattered in 3 different places in the book.
For example, I don't use macros a lot, but I know they are a simple and powerful feature that many Vim users use all the time. Looking up how to use them took me through 2 sections and 15 minues. And the command involes only 2 keys!
The first two chapters tell you how to get started in VIM with the basic commands - and its easy enough to follow along with. But the other 28 chapters don't help you get much done at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't like the long command name
Review: One main reason people use vi/vim is that by using few key strokes you can do your editing job. In this book, author choose to teach you how to do things using the longest command available. For example, :split instead of :sp; :buffer instead of :b ...
It will be nice if author at least mentioned the alternative.
Rating:
Summary: Top notch guide to an excellent editor
Review: Oualline's book is an indispensable companion to the mighty Vim editor. It serves as a solid introduction to vi in general. The examples are all pragmatically useful, and it's unbeatable as a reference. It's a little more expensive than I'd like, but I guess we can't fault Steve for that, can we?
Rating: 
Summary: Too confusing and too many errors
Review: So far I have only read up to page 118. The large number of errors I have found so far is mind-numbing. I pity the poor beginner who has to plow through these mistakes in order to try to understand the vim program. For those who already have a copy, I ask you to compare figures 2.4 and 2.5 and tell me what is the difference between the two sets of arrows. Look at figure 2.13 and find the two outright errors, the inconsistency, and the point that might be confusing to a beginner. Read the section entitled 'How to Change Last, First to First, Last' on pages 103 and 104 and find the following:
1. The \(, \), \1, and \2 used here will not be introduced until page 213.
2. The regular expression in figure 9.2 is labeled a 'command', while the command itself is found nowhere.
3. The dollar sign in the regular expression is redundant.
4. The [^,]* could be replaced with the simpler .* unless you anticipate that there would be more than one comma on a line, in which case, any command would fail.
5. The space after the comma in the names file is not properly accounted for.
6. Who changes last, first to first, last anyway? It should be changed to first last, with no comma.
This nonsense appears just after the author has introduced the :substitute command. Take a breath Mr. Oualline, and teach the basics first.
These are not isolated problems, the whole book is like this.
My opinion is that:
1. Mr. Oualline has too much experience with vim to remember the needs of a beginner.
2. The artist who created the figures seems to have no experience with vim whatever.
3. The review process at New Riders is too careless.
Rating:
Summary: Nice to have all this information in one place
Review: The book is comprehensive and well organized. There are 500 pages of text and a decent 40-page index. There is also a nice quick reference at the end. The writing is clear and concise. All and all it sure beats trying to assemble all this information yourself from web sites and :help. If you are using Vim, it is clearly a better buy than the O'Reilley book that covers multiple flavors of Vi. I think that folks new to Vim might have been helped by an early chapter discussing the _vimrc or .vimrc files. Personally, I would have liked to see more on the make files, but I am quibbling. Another plus for folks on the West Coast: the fulfillment center is in Reno. I got the book in three days without buying it airfare.
Rating:
Summary: A very useful book, but not perfect
Review: The Vim book by Steve Oualline is the first book to be completely dedicated to Vim. The only other choice is a book about Vi, in which too much information is missing. I can recommend this book especially for beginners and those who use Vim for a short while and would like to learn more. The most often used commands are explained with many figures and examples. Steve has a writing style that is very easy to read. Advanced Vim users will find many hints for useful features. The more advanced items are not explained in detail though. The foreword is great! Well, I wrote it... I also reviewed the text, but not all reported mistakes have been corrected. [...]
Rating:
Summary: Disorgainzed, Haphazard explanations -- refund time
Review: This book is poorly structured, for example, as a newbie I tried to figure out how I could insert a file into my current buffer... simple operation, yet with this book it took me 20 minutes before I literally stumbled accross the appropriate place in the book. This book is not organized well and it hurts. Further, the author doesn't explain VI concepts well at all. The reference part is just as dis-oraganized as the rest... just try to find what you are looking for. What made me write this review is that I just wasted another 10 minutes looking for how I can have two buffers open (but not two windows) Anyway, I've given up on this book ... perhaps I can get a refund? Any other suggestions?
Rating: 
Summary: Everything you ever wanted to know about Vim
Review: This book truly contains everything you ever wanted to know about the Vim editor. I have been using Vim for 5 or 6 years (I've written two books using it!). I was captivated from the first section of Steve Oualline's book. Steve has everything in his book. It is 500+ pages long! I didn't know you could write that much about this wonderful little editor. Steve does, and it is not rehashing the same thing over and over. I appreciate how Steve covers the material in different levels of detail. There are quick references, tutorials, and detailed discussions. There is something for everyone in here. I highly recommend this text if you use Vim. If you don't use Vim, go to Vim.org, download a copy, and buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Opens the Door To Free Editor For Life On Any Platform
Review: This book was the ticket to admission to the Linux world. To use Linux, one must immediately be competent with a text editor that runs on Linux. For me, a Windows developer who had used vi a decade or so ago on an HP-UX system but had successfully forgotten everything, this book allowed me to regain my vi-ish skills on Windows during my day job so I could productively goof around on Linux at night. Other reviewers noted errors. To me, there were no big, hairy errors. This book yielded a positive learning experience. I shudder to think where I would be now without it. I had considered the purchase of a $... Linux version of a commercial editor that I use on Windows, but decided to give this book a try before I made the big investment. This proved to be a good decision, because now I eschew the expensive commercial editor and use vim as my text editor on Windows and Linux. My only complaint with this situation is not with the book, but with me. Now, my fingers 'think' in vim, and those fingers 'think' much faster that my brain thinks. This works quite well when in vim, but not so well elsewhere...
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