Rating: 
Summary: Thorough and well worth it
Review: I thought the book was well written and very informative. Yes, I agree that it lacks a complete OO discussion, but if you want that get an OOP book. Besides that I think they cover both the language and the IDE very well, with good examples and good discussion.Additionaly the book makes a great reference to the language and IDE after your done reading it completely.
Rating: 
Summary: Totally Complete!
Review: I was first amazed at the size of this book. It is large, 1240 pages and not only covers vb.net ... but everything you want to use vb.net for (ASP.NET, Windows forms, webservices, etc). If you want to be a .net developer who uses vb.net, then get this book. As someone said earlier, it also makes a awesome desk reference.
Rating:
Summary: Good book but lacks OOP discussion
Review: It is really a well written book. The authors are really good programmers. Good treatment is given as for as the GUI and .NET framework is concerened. Surprisingly not much about OOP itself. For example the most important form of inheritance, namely the interface inheritance is not at all discussed! If you read this book along with cornell's apress book (which is excellent for OOP but lacks GUI treatment)then you will get the complete picture.
Rating: 
Summary: It¿s just weak
Review: One star might be a bit harsh okay, but I paid fifty bucks for a book that as another reviewer put it, was 'little better than the SDK documentation'. I'll give the authors credit, this book is a *little* better than the SDK docs, but not much. (as an aside: when did Microsoft decide to support the publishing industry by writing substandard documentation?) Specifically my problems with this book stem from its structure. The book is a fairly comprehensive, (albeit in places erroneous) reference of the various object, methods and classes within VB.NET. What it fails to do is provide you with any kind of framework to put all of these pieces together. Furthermore, it even makes the same mistake that the SDK documentation makes when defining its object reference, *it uses local terms to define other local terms.* Example (figurative, not literal): The Fravitz class allows the user to access a collection of Chavitz which can be accessed from the Fravitz.Chavitz([iCollectionID]) method.... The above is all well and good as long as somewhere they bother to tell you what a fravitz is and what a chavitz is and why you'd want either of them (which this book does not). Additionally, the book fails to deliver on its promise of a guide on migrating from previous versions of VB to VB.NET. I've been programming with Visual Basic since the BETA of Version 1. I've seen quite a lot of changes in the language since then (most notably versions 3 and 5) and VB.NET promises to be the best and most comprehensive (and needed) overhaul the language has received. This book in its conception of offering readers a solid migration path, and a "100% Comprehensive, Authoritative, What you Need" is great, it's just that it fails to deliver on any of that.
Rating:
Summary: It?s just weak
Review: One star might be a bit harsh okay, but I paid fifty bucks for a book that as another reviewer put it, was `little better than the SDK documentation'. I'll give the authors credit, this book is a *little* better than the SDK docs, but not much. (as an aside: when did Microsoft decide to support the publishing industry by writing substandard documentation?) Specifically my problems with this book stem from its structure. The book is a fairly comprehensive, (albeit in places erroneous) reference of the various object, methods and classes within VB.NET. What it fails to do is provide you with any kind of framework to put all of these pieces together. Furthermore, it even makes the same mistake that the SDK documentation makes when defining its object reference, *it uses local terms to define other local terms.* Example (figurative, not literal): The Fravitz class allows the user to access a collection of Chavitz which can be accessed from the Fravitz.Chavitz([iCollectionID]) method.... The above is all well and good as long as somewhere they bother to tell you what a fravitz is and what a chavitz is and why you'd want either of them (which this book does not). Additionally, the book fails to deliver on its promise of a guide on migrating from previous versions of VB to VB.NET. I've been programming with Visual Basic since the BETA of Version 1. I've seen quite a lot of changes in the language since then (most notably versions 3 and 5) and VB.NET promises to be the best and most comprehensive (and needed) overhaul the language has received. This book in its conception of offering readers a solid migration path, and a "100% Comprehensive, Authoritative, What you Need" is great, it's just that it fails to deliver on any of that.
Rating:
Summary: A good Intoduction to VB.NET
Review: Starts from the Basic Diff between VB and VB.Net , and goes up to the advanced concepts. I have read a few chapters so far , and the author takes it in a easy pace , a good reference for a serious developer and a good introduction for a novice.
Good work
Rating:
Summary: Rough draft?
Review: This book would be acceptable if I were an editor viewing a rough draft. As a finished product, this book is a disgrace. I've never seen so many spelling errors in my life. Not to mention coding errors. I didn't have to get past chapter 2 to realize that this book was being sent back immediately. I read up through chapter 5, but that was all I could take. What a horrible book. Nearly every coding sample had errors in it and the references to the code being discussed within the text used the wrong names half the time! I didn't know what they were talking about within the code! This book is really a disgrace. I will never buy a book from these authors, a so-called "bible" reference, or a "Michael Lane Thomas" Approved .NET series editor ever, EVER again. Just awful.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth it. Too many mistakes.
Review: This is by far the worst book I have ever read on any programming language. I would have to say that 90% of the code examples are wrong. I have been programing in VB.NET since the beta's and thought this book might be good for some reference. I was totally wrong.
Seems to me that it was written too fast by to many blind people who have no idea what they where doing. Its almost as if they where making things up as they went along! If you want a good book dont get this one.
| 
