Rating: 
Summary: Forget the big names; this book is the BEST!
Review: I've bought books from all the big names, Kruglinski, Wingo, et al. But none of them even comes close to providing the scope of coverage that this book does. Sure, you have your all-too typical book errors, but what book doesn't. The thing I care about is that many of the chapters give better coverage on topics than whole books on that topic do! Examples? The ODBC chapter includes a complete class to dynamically read data from any data source even when you don't know the schema of the database! The DLL chapter shows how to write a keyboard hook function. There's even a custom appwizard chapter that shows how powerful this quite-often overlooked feature of VC++ can be. I definitely recommend this book to beginners and advanced VC++ developers alike!
Rating: 
Summary: Good reference - hopeless as a tutorial
Review: If you want to learn C++, don't start with this book. It has so much information on advanced topics, that you will only get confused. I bought this book as my first C++ book to learn the language, but I soon realised that it is too complex, so I will go out and buy me another book. When I finish that tutorial book, I will come back to this book and use it as a refrence. But for newbies it is too complex !
Rating:
Summary: NOT for beginners
Review: In the Preface of the book it states: "Whom This Book Is For This book is for anyone who needs to learn abut Windows programming. If you're new to Visual C++, or even new to Windows programming, you can learn the basics and master Windows programming fundamentals in no time." The above statement is part of the reason I bought the book. I had never even looked at C++ code prior to buying the book and it is not what I need as a beginner. Please don't state this book is for beginners when it is not. I'm not saying that this book won't be useful for me in the future, but for now I need to go out and buy another book on learning Visual C++.
Rating:
Summary: Reasonable reference, at times wordy, vacuous, indistinct
Review: It's a reasonable reference, but most of this information is available elsewhere. The MFC sections in particular (about 1/2 of the book) seem to be wordy regurgitations of MS documentation with very little additional insight. There IS a lot of information in here, though. And it's not one of those huge font, huge margin books.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Intermediate Book!
Review: Most Visual C++ are at one of two levels. The first is the low-end introduction to Visual C++, which is normally a tutorial of C++ and not very useful other than to present some basic concepts. The second is the advanced MFC books that are pretty hard to use if you've only got the basics. This book is a good introduction for programmers new to Visual C++, but not totally in the dark. I found having Visual Basic experience and a basic understanding of Windows APIs to be a definite plus. Where I found this book to be the most useful is that it fills in the "holes" between understanding how to create a Visual C++ project and how to implement a complex application. I agree with the comments that this is not a beginner's book (or even a "Bible"), but if you are on a learning curve for Visual C++ and have gotten through the introductory texts (and the "Learning Edition CD-ROM), this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed!!!
Review: My first books were Teach Yourself VC++ in 21 Days and Inside Visual C++. After finishing those books and getting to the point where I could easily write some simple to intermediate level apps, this book was perfect to get me to the next level (advanced multithreading, system-level hooks, etc.) I even wrote a very sophisticated NT service and Control Panel applet last week using some of the techniques learned from this book. This turned out to be the perfect learning path for me! Now I'm ready for the next level! Are you listening, Rick and Tom???
Rating: 
Summary: Not a good book
Review: Not a good book. Not a book for beginner. The authors cover many topics, but most of them are talked in poor details. For example, they give you a small portion of code, but they don't tell you which header file you should include in. The result is that you can't even try it in your own program to.
Rating: 
Summary: Great intermediate level book!
Review: Obviously, Mr. Archer is best known for his database work and involvement in CodeGuru, but I also got a lot out of the chapters on multi-threading, multimedia and tree and list view controls. There's tons of stuff in those chapters that you simply can't find in any other book. Unfortunately, there are too many errors in both the text and the programs for me to give this book a 5-star rating. However, there's enough meaty subjects to outweigh those negatives and to motivate me to a 4-star rating. I would definitely recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book with Meaty Coverage
Review: Some Visual C++ books gloss over topics and you're still left not knowing how to accomplish the tasks you wanted to learn in the first place. This book on the other hand gives you what you need to jump right in and make things happen. It also covers a wide range of topics that can't be found elsewhere such as Internet programming, effective use of the MFC database classes, and multithreading. All in all I got more than my money's worth. I saved large amounts of time that I would had to spend wading through online help and online articles.
Rating:
Summary: The book suits for no one
Review: The "bible' is designed for everyone but ends up suits for no one. Either the publisher does not know what the authors are writing or the authors do not care about readers. I wish the publisher can give me full refund
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