Rating: 
Summary: Useless
Review: Bought this book over a year ago and found it totally useless. The author presents some sort of framework on programming style, but doesn't say much about how to actually do programming tasks for the Pocket PC. This is one of the worst books I've bought.
Rating:
Summary: Useless
Review: Bought this book over a year ago and found it totally useless. The author presents some sort of framework on programming style, but doesn't say much about how to actually do programming tasks for the Pocket PC. This is one of the worst books I've bought.
Rating: 
Summary: A must have for serious Pocket PC Developers
Review: Dr. Krell's great insight in the Pocket PC world and his ability to bring this knowledge to us developers in a clear, easy to understand, yet powerful way, makes this book a 'must have' for any serious Pocket PC developer.
Dr. Krell leads us from simple to complex examples in a logical way that allows us to understand and adapt them to our own development requirements.
Rating:
Summary: The worst programming book I have ever read
Review: I am a professional software engineer who was looking for specifics on CE development. In the course of my career I have read Stroustrup, Design Patterns, Algorithm books, you name it. I have never, ever, seen a book this awful. Dr. (!) Krell preaches about the "subtleties" of pocket pc interface design. Patronizes about the importance of being a user in order to understand UI's. He constantly refers back to his little, custom developed GUI framework whenever he discusses building UI's for CE, but doesn't make it clear when the function is in the Windows API or his little framework. He generalizes in a chapter about just what good software architecture means. His steps are laborious and often humourous ("Step 1. Launch embedded Visual C++").If you wish to waste money buy this book. I would give it a 0, but that's sadly not an option.
Rating:
Summary: The worst programming book I have ever read
Review: I am a professional software engineer who was looking for specifics on CE development. In the course of my career I have read Stroustrup, Design Patterns, Algorithm books, you name it. I have never, ever, seen a book this awful. Dr. (!) Krell preaches about the "subtleties" of pocket pc interface design. Patronizes about the importance of being a user in order to understand UI's. He constantly refers back to his little, custom developed GUI framework whenever he discusses building UI's for CE, but doesn't make it clear when the function is in the Windows API or his little framework. He generalizes in a chapter about just what good software architecture means. His steps are laborious and often humourous ("Step 1. Launch embedded Visual C++"). If you wish to waste money buy this book. I would give it a 0, but that's sadly not an option.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps my copy had the wrong cover on it...
Review: I bought this book last July, because it was one of the only books that billed itself as a "Pocket PC" specific development guide, and not just Windows CE. It even had "PocketPC 2002" on the cover, so I figured it MUST be current. Plus, at the time, the reviews here were overwhelmingly positive (a mystery to me now). What I found inside turned out to be a pretty dangerous book, to someone like myself who had no previous Win32 API experience. Every single API function and programming practice is as old as the first version of WinCE. Specific (and crucial) PocketPC functionality such as the SIP, new human interface guidelines, hardware buttons, you name it - it's just not there. The screenshots of his example programs look like old WinCE programs resized to fit the PocketPC screen - and they still have the Windows95 3D effects and menubar at the top. It's embarassing. This is clearly a repackaged and outdated book hiding in a new cover.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps my copy had the wrong cover on it...
Review: I bought this book last July, because it was one of the only books that billed itself as a "Pocket PC" specific development guide, and not just Windows CE. It even had "PocketPC 2002" on the cover, so I figured it MUST be current. Plus, at the time, the reviews here were overwhelmingly positive (a mystery to me now). What I found inside turned out to be a pretty dangerous book, to someone like myself who had no previous Win32 API experience. Every single API function and programming practice is as old as the first version of WinCE. Specific (and crucial) PocketPC functionality such as the SIP, new human interface guidelines, hardware buttons, you name it - it's just not there. The screenshots of his example programs look like old WinCE programs resized to fit the PocketPC screen - and they still have the Windows95 3D effects and menubar at the top. It's embarassing. This is clearly a repackaged and outdated book hiding in a new cover.
Rating:
Summary: Makes you want to correct it and send it back
Review: I have only read half of Chapter 1 and all of the thread synchronization and COM chapters, but that's already more time than I should have invested in this book. I have to say that I've never read a computer book that was so poorly written. It's just plain sloppy - like a rough draft or something.
I could tell from its description that it was a book for beginners, but I bought it anyways because the table of contents seemed to cover what I'm interested in and because I thought a beginner's book would be a smooth read. I've already discounted the "smooth read" prediction. I can also say that the coverage thus far has been too superficial to help me do anything significantly beyond the examples in the book.
My advice: stick with Boling's book on CE programming.
Rating:
Summary: Makes you want to correct it and send it back
Review: I have only read half of Chapter 1 and all of the thread synchronization and COM chapters, but that's already more time than I should have invested in this book. I have to say that I've never read a computer book that was so poorly written. It's just plain sloppy - like a rough draft or something.
I could tell from its description that it was a book for beginners, but I bought it anyways because the table of contents seemed to cover what I'm interested in and because I thought a beginner's book would be a smooth read. I've already discounted the "smooth read" prediction. I can also say that the coverage thus far has been too superficial to help me do anything significantly beyond the examples in the book.
My advice: stick with Boling's book on CE programming.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Disappointment
Review: I purchased Programming Microsoft Windows CE, and was blown away. I could not follow the examples, and did not know what was going on. Pocket PC Developer's Guide on the other hand is perfect for someone just starting like me. I have not programmed in the Windows environment, and this book was just what i needed to understand how to do so. I am VERY happy with this book. If you want to learn to program your pocket pc, this book is the perfect place to start.
| 
