Rating: 
Summary: Useful intro to Operating Systems; real-time or not.
Review: An excellent and very readable book with a very usable RTOS. The first 75 pages provide a good intro. to operating systems in general and RTOS's in particular. The only downside for PC users is the Borland compiler's used for the examples are hard to come by and not very backward compatible with eachother. I recommend using the protected mode port available on the website with newer compilers. That's the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: A must-have for anyone doing embedded computer work.
Review: As an embedded operating system designer myself, I found this book to have excellent coverage of nearly all of the important issues and concepts involved, and a good example implementation. I'd reccomend it to anyone in the business, whether you write your own or use his system. Well written!
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book! An excellent kernel!
Review: I had never used a real-time kernel. I bought MicroC/OS-II and Embedded Systems building Blocks to get started. The books are very well written. The kernel works great. And in a couple of days I was up and running my first application based on the MicroC/OS-II kernel.No need to shop for another kernel, no need to shop for other books to explain how a kernel works. This book is the answer to all your questions about "What is a real-time kernel? And how does it work?" I highly recommend this book to beginners as well as experienced embedded programmers.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book! An excellent kernel!
Review: I had never used a real-time kernel. I bought MicroC/OS-II and Embedded Systems building Blocks to get started. The books are very well written. The kernel works great. And in a couple of days I was up and running my first application based on the MicroC/OS-II kernel. No need to shop for another kernel, no need to shop for other books to explain how a kernel works. This book is the answer to all your questions about "What is a real-time kernel? And how does it work?" I highly recommend this book to beginners as well as experienced embedded programmers.
Rating: 
Summary: Writing style is often confusing
Review: I have a general background in computer science and am trying to learn about embedded systems from this book. My main objection is that the writing needs to be edited to improve clarity. For example on page 61, the author states "Generally, the first message inserted in the queue is the first message extracted from the queue (FIFO). In addition, to extract messages in a FIFO fashion, uC/OS-II allows a task to get messages Last-In-First-Out (LIFO)." The second sentence is ambiguous. Does it mean "In addition to the ability to extract messages in a FIFO fashion, ..." or "In addition, in order to extract messages in a FIFO fashion, ..."? On the next page the author states "Interrupts allow a microprocessor to process events when they occur, which prevents the microprocessor from continuously polling (looking at) an event to see if it has occurred." In this sentence, "prevents the microprocessor from" should be changed to "removes the need for the microprocessor to be". The average reader already knows enough about LIFOs, FIFOs, and interrupts to interpret these sentences correctly, but in many other cases the lack of clarity is a serious impediment to understanding. The book also contains various errors. For example, the path name of a .xls file, given on pages 370 and 403, is incorrect.
Rating:
Summary: A truly outstanding effort; an excellent product!
Review: I have been involved with the development of embedded real-time systems since 1969 and have written a good number of kernels in that time. After swapping notes with the author, he convinced me to try uC/OS-II rather than doing another "roll my own". I'm glad he did. The book is extremely well written, clearly explaining the key concepts and his implementation. The software itself is very functional. I plan to use it in several applications I have on the boards. I would highly recommend this book to anyone contemplating an embedded system project.
Rating:
Summary: To the Point
Review: I have not actually read many technical books... I usually reference them when I have to during a project. This book is different.. it is structured to be read (1st 7 chapters) and explains the RTOS extremely well. I liked the instances where info is re-iterated, because it is quite alot to take in and any redundancy helps. I am a hardware designer of 20 yrs and plan on using the RTOS in my latest Rabbit based Wireless LAN gadget mainly because of the clarity of it's operation expressed in this publication.
Rating:
Summary: Good and Solid
Review: I read this book when I needed to understand embedded real-time operating systems. The writing was clear, concise, and well-organized, a rare gem among technical literature of this type. Jean Labrosse used just enough repetition to emphasize important concepts without being anoying. My project required an RTOS with more features than the MicroC/OS kernel had to offer but, having read this book, I was in a good position to understand the RTOS I did choose. The fundamental concepts were the same and the notation that Jean Labrosse used in his book to describe RTOS components came in handy when designing my own software system architecture.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, very readable.
Review: I've read the first book and have now bought this new one. I've learned more practical stuff from this book than all of the other 'conceptual' OS books I have. I've experimented with uCOS-II and it works wonderfully.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful and simple to use
Review: If I only had access to such a book when I started using kernels long time ago! The book is right to the point. I appreciate the clear layout which hides a powerful product behind an easy to use set of library functions. Well done!
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