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Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this book!!!
Review: I bought this book elsewhere for full price. What a mistake that was.
Everything started out fine until I got to lesson 6. The code in the book does not work at ALL- there was also a slight difference in the coding too. What I did not realize was that THIS book was written in 2002. After doing a quick search online and reading the reviews here on Amazon I find out that the book's examples are geared to the BETA version of NET not the RETAIL (Final) version!(and that others had the same hair pulling grievances as me on Lesson 6) Course that's going to make a difference. It would have been nice if there was some mention of this in the beginning chapters of the book or at least have the remaining copies out there pulled off the shelves. I will probably keep the book anyway for reference purposes.
I also did not like how the author kept putting his own coding style in there. It is not the best in the world- Yes people do have thier own style but his is confusing to leave the default names! Guess I'll wait til my online course in September.
Word to the wise: Check the publication date on ALL computer books before purchasing for full price!!
Rating: 
Summary: Great writing, bad errors
Review: For those of you jumping into VB.NET for the first time, and specifically PROGRAMMING for the first time, this book is a very quick way to get your feet wet.The writing style is informal and approachable. I also found myself marking the book in several places to make it usable as a quick reference to common activities (particularly where they differ from VB6). However, the comments regarding errors are spot-on. I tried running the app (the one you build in the book using DataSets) from the book's CD-ROM even, and it didn't work! I quit reading after this, leaving a few chapters left. Unfortunately Hungry Minds doesn't seem to want to fix the problem??? Starts good, ends bad. Get the Microsoft Step-by-step book instead...
Rating:
Summary: buggy book
Review: i bought this book to get a quick start with vb.net having c, c++ and mfc experience, i manged to get the examples to work, but i can see a beginner spedning hours trying to figure out why the sample code in lesson 6 does not work. this books practice bad programming technics in general.
Rating:
Summary: buggy book
Review: I have tried two weekend crash courses. Their concepts are good but unfortunately both were written against beta versions of software it was supposed to teach about. I have actually corresponded via email with the author of Visual Basic .NET Weekend Crash Course and he admited as much. I understand he wanted to have a book ready to go when Visual Basic went from beta to production however he did not check the book against the official released version of VB.NET so it has turned out ot be a lousy book and a waste of my money.
Rating:
Summary: Good Concept - Bad code
Review: I just brought this book, thinking I can use it to help me get back up to speed in the time allocted - NOT! I have been spending more time trying to get the code examples to work. An example is the simple word processor in the opening chapters. I carefully followed his code (with different object names from one chapter to the next) and the example never properly updated the textbox properties. An updated list of corrected code and text errors should be posted by hungry minds - wiley immediately. Great learning concept with very bad or nonexistant editing. This was written with the beta version and I am using the retail release (this DOES make a differance).
Rating:
Summary: Simplistic beginner's book
Review: I need to start out saying that I am a more advanced reader than this book is aimed at. I throw this in to make sure my potential bias is exposed at the start, lest it seem I am trying to mislead. Comparing to other reviewers, I do not think I am too far off the mark. This book is aimed at beginners. It is probably a good start, conceptually, for those who need to get a grounding in Visual Basic .NET. A good candidate here is a VB programmer with some experience who is being forced over to VB.NET. Most of the examples in this book fit the beginner mold, as they are simple, yet largely effective. There are some that do not seem to be coded the way I would code (including some that fail to work in the RTM), but the book was probably written off of beta 2. The beginning of the book is tied into the IDE, and there are some screenshots of how to do things. Personally, I find Micrsoft's Coding Techniques book a bit better here, but it is not a beginner's book, so that would be comparing apples to oranges. The best part of this book is the organization. The Weekend Crash Course series is nicely laid out in bite size chunks. If you follow the plan, you can easily get through the material in a weekend.
Rating: 
Summary: A good place to start
Review: Let's face it...programmers are abstractionist by nature. Part of their skill is getting from point A to point D without wasting too much time on B or C; leaps of faith are to be expected. Mansfield's writing in Weekend Crash Course is unusually well organized...for a programmer...and it will guide you through the wilds of Visual Basic quite adequately. If the subject seems vague, nebulous, arcane, disconnected, obtuse and frustrating, blame it on Bill Gates's drive to build a program that will stand the test of copyright, rather than one that builds logically on its predecessors. Mansfield has done his part of the job well. You will not understand VisualBasic.Net in a weekend...or a week... unless you bring to the table a thorough understanding of VisualBasic 6. This is, however, an excellent place for a rank newbie to start the odyssey.
Rating:
Summary: Example code does not work
Review: Many examples do not run propertly. Most will compile, but have runtime errors that prevent the program from working. Really if you are going to learn to code, you need code that works. Look elsewhere for a beginners course.
Rating:
Summary: Skips around too much
Review: While the book is at a level I can understand, the author spends too much time saying "Click on this, but we won't cover it in depth until Chapter XX". It's very confusing skipping around like this and in some cases he says try some code in one chapter that will still be in your project later on when he asks you to try something else, but doesn't mention how to deal with the code you tried 3 chapters ago...Delete it or add on..if add on how do you do it? I'm only in Session 4 but getting ready to give up and try another book.
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