5 comments about MCAD/MCSD Visual Basic .NET Certification All-in-One Exam Guide.

1. Anyone will tell you that one book alone can not prepare you for Microsoft Certification. And I have to agree 100%. With that said I found this book detailed(technically) in a way that other books that aim at being the only certification book you need. I started reading the books on the subject and while the language was warm and fuzzy and easily kept your attention, I really didn't get much in the way of technical detail. The examples in the All in One book helped me nail down the more complex topics like delegates and remoting that other books only lightly touched. The one negative to this book is you need some experience in order to understand it. If you lack experience then my advice would be to buy both the MSPress Study Guides and this All in One. Use the MS book to get a feel for the concepts and use the All in One to start coding examples.



2. While it may be not the only study guide and resource you should read to prepare for the MCAD/MCSD exams, it is certainly a must have for your study and as a reference. Excellent book.



3. 
   
   First of all when I bought this book I was drowning in .Net books and E-Books, I was confused in where to start from, so when I found this book I told my self this is the end of the suffering..... but it seems to be is the beginning.
   
   The book tries to cover the whole subjects required by Microsoft to pass and excel MCAD/MCSD so the book passes throw each of them but just like super sonic ...., it just like a cram no more no less, it try to cut that fat off but it cute much of the meet as well, so there is many subject that poorly covered and many other subject is covered in a way that left you in a state that you don't know what is this thing for, for example when covering ADO.Net it just pass throw it to tell you how to make connection and adapter, but it will not tell you how to add data, or even delete it, and it have not even show how to publish it in a datagrid, same thing happen in COM and assembly chapters.
   
   Another thing it's not a wise choose for absolutely beginners, it have no concentrate on fundamentals of programming, so if you are fresh keep your hands off this book.
   
   More over there is many typing errors, and even errors in tables and examples, so for fresh programmers that will turn the learning process into hell it self.
   
   This book is only good to be quick reference for MCAD/MCSD, you can pass the test only with this book but take it word from me you will not excel it with it.
   
   So what to do? If you are beginner get some easy to learn book like Deitel series, then get the huge MS-VB.Net, but you will need this book just to know what is exactly in the exam.
   
   Finally, THERE IS BIG CHANCE THAT YOU CAN PASS THE EXAM WITH THIS BOOK, SO TAKE IT IF YOU ARE THAT KIND OF GUYS WHO JUST WANT TO GET THE CERTIFICATION.



4. I thought this book really helped me pass 70-305. However, it will probably not be sufficient if you are just beginning with the material or if you are using it as your sole resource. I used it with Self Test Software and I did not have any trouble with the exam. Also, as some of the other reviewers mentioned there are a few mistakes in the book especially with the chapter review questions. However, I still plan to use it to pass 306 and 310. Overall I would give this book a 7 out of 10.



5. It is a very great book that helps in learning the .Net language through an easy way to practice as well

3 comments about Visual Basic 5: The Comprehensive Guide: The Definitive Reference for Windows Programming.

1. This book seems to have every command line's syntax with many usuable examples. Coming to Visual Basic programming from Clipper, I use this book all the time.



2. This book is really good (atleast for me) for programming reference. If maybe you forget something, just look it up in this book. Not a book for newbies to Visual Basic though.



3. This book was the suggested reference in a college-level VB class I took. It is easy to find each command by the index tabs, and the examples are easy to understand. I especially appreciated the "cautions" section included with each command. And best of all, Amazon.com is $10.00 cheaper than the college bookstore!

5 comments about Visually Learn Visual Basic . NET in 12 Hours.

1. I have been working my way through the lessons and have been pleased by the content. As a beginner this has been a good way for me to get a good foundation. I think this is a good place for a beginner in vb.net to start that has some background in programming and visual basic. I like this product better than sitting through a lecture because you can rewind it when you find yourself not paying attention. I do hope the presenter produces more advanced vb.net dvd sets in the future.

   Nevertheless, I can't give the product a 5 start rating. There are problems with the dvd set. The dvd is broken into small bites of information, but the music they play between the sections is too loud. Second, the sound is too low when the presenter speaks. Third, I checked all three dvds and could not find all of the code presented in the dvds. Fourth, some topics didn't go far enough. I am a beginner vb.net so it wasn't always obvious why you would want to do something. Fifth, on the second dvd the video and sound get out of sync in the last lesson.

   The main problem with the dvd set is that it is like most code. The dvds have some bugs that need to be worked out. However, the bugs are nothing that can't be overcome. I would recommend this for a vb.net beginner who wants to get a good foundation and can force themselves to sit down and actually go through the material.




2. I waited for this with exitement, but was disapointed when I opened the package and played the DVD.

   The voices was low, just like the teacher was talking into a bucket (think they compressed it too much) a metallic sound. Between the teaching it was an "music" that was just like an alarm bell, that was really hight volume. May the purpose of this is to wake up the student??

   This made it really hard to follow the classes for an foreigner. But it was ok when you saw it a couple of times and understood what he was saying.

   Cheap, but not really good




3. Think of this as a City College-level class, but subtract all ability to communicate back to the instructor for any clarification. I'm not knocking City College - I've taken many courses at them so I know of what I speak - but a formal university education it is not. The same applies to this DVD set; you will learn the subject matter but other education sources yield a higher-quality outcome.

   As many others have noted, the sound quality is horrid. Compare it to making an internet phone call using nothing but a cheap mic attached to your web-cam; sounds like he is talking into a soup can. You're also hit with annoying transition slides - loud & weirdly timed slides - where after jolted by the volume shift, you sit and look at them for what seems like forever. Too bad the same length isn't applied to the informational slides; those are usually presented without enough time to read half of it. I spent a lot of time on the pause button, greatly extending the "1 hour" lesson window.

   The instructor also presents in a way that makes you wonder if he rehearsed at all before creating the Final Take. He also makes a few verbal "typos" which can make you need to rewind to figure out what he actually meant. The labs could have been better structured; you are referred to the slides (included PDF Files) for complete instructions, but the slides present minimal information and are in a quasi step-by-step rather than a goal oriented format; many times you have to look at the solution just to figure out what the problem was. And lastly, the source code, although on the DVD, is not clearly organized and the instructor never clearly tells you where to go to load whichever demo solution he is working with.

   There is little doubt the instructor knows the language and the environment. And you will take away a decent beginner's grasp of VB.NET programming. But is this presentation better than a book of the same goal? When you take away the common content elements from a DVD- and a book- presentation, the DVD set begins to lose ground in that a book is easier to reread confusing sections than the DVD is to replay, and when all is said and done, the DVD doesn't provide you with a reference guide at your finger-tips to utilize. The DVD approach is a good idea, and worth the view, but go into it knowing this might not be your last learning purchase.




4. I make a mistake buying this DVD. First the sound and video quality is very poor, second the teaching method, confusing arguments and statements make me stop before finish the course. I'm very disappointed.



5. I was looking for some videos to supplement a class that I was taking in VB.Net. I tried to like this video, but I couldn't. In this series, Rick Dobson lectures from his desk. His voice is so low that you have to turn the volume way up to hear him. But then, BAM!!! You are hit with extremely loud music every few minutes! The sound mixing for this DVD set is the worst that I ever experienced.
   I could only tolerate about an hour of this torture before I finally gave up on it.

No comments about Visual Basic 4: Performance Tuning and Optimization.

No comments about Visual Basic Power Toolkit: Cutting-Edge Tools and Techniques for Programmers/Book and Cd-Rom.

1 comments about SELECT Series: Microsoft Visual Basic.Net.

1. I teach Visual Basic .NET course at Penn State University. We require this book for students that take the class because it is designed to make it so easy to learn the software. The course is presented in a Computer Lab environment. Each student has a computer and completes all the assignments in class rather than at home. The training is very practical.
   
   After researching books that I could utilize in my classes I found most were extremely long and didn't provide a practical project. This book was written to provide students or working professionals with a way to learn the tool quickly and easily while making the learning process fun!
   
   We start by learning the fundamentals. Each chapter builds on a solid foundation. At the completion of the 300 page text, you have completed the entire project. As a Microsoft Certified consultant I realized that it is vital to have skills needed in the marketplace to keep working.
   
   Since most of us have little time to waste, each learning activity is meaningful. This book is unique and helps you reach your goal fast.
   
   Most say the best part is the master project and resource files. Using the website link provided in the text book, you are able to obtain the source code and PowerPoint presentations used in class to review and better understand how the solution was designed and coded.
   
   The end of chapter questions are helpful and reinforce the key points.
   
   If you need to learn Visual Basic .NET, this book is the fastest way I know to learn the tool and construct a worthwhile software program. Students have told me it was helpful in job interviews to demonstrate they understand how to program.
   
   The colorful screenshots are really special too! There are so many huge textbooks without much code and only B&W screenshots. This book is unique since every step is clear and most have screenshots with arrows and caption boxes. The pictures help you learn the user interface. The step-by-step instructions are clear and help you develop confidence.

5 comments about Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Word 2000 Automation in 24 Hours (Sams Teach Yourself in 24 Hours Series).

1. I buy as many Office/Word/VBA books as I can get my hands on... You never know where you are going to get that little piece of knowledge that will help. Now you know why I bought this book.

   This book was good, but pretty basic. I expected much more out of it. For what it's worth, I bought this around the same time I bought "Learn Word 2000 VBA Document Automation" - which is a GREAT book on Word programming (probably the only book that shows you how to automate documents in several different ways).

   Anyway, if I were starting out, just learning how to write macros, this would be a great book and would've gotten five stars. I think the title and subject matter are a little deceiving though. It is definitely comprised of introductory material. Happy programming.




2. I am a Visual Basic developer and I bought this book to expand into VBA. The book provides a decent amount of explanation of many topics, but does not go into detail about any of them. Also, the code examples are brief at best and did not help me at all. After working on a project referencing this book for a few days, I was not able to get my Word document automated. I got more help from the MSDN and the Object Browser. If you already know VB, don't bother with this book.



3. I have read this book cover to cover (with my highlighter and pencil at the ready) and I've never been more frustrated in all my life. I work with Word everyday and am looking to automate documents and I can make no sense out of any of it. (Of course, there is a strong possibility that I'm stupid and in over my head - but if you think you're going to learn to create templates and fill-in forms and learn to use If-then-else fields, etc., well, I missed it.)



4. The publisher classifies this book as a "beginning level" on the back cover, so it's hard to complain that this is accurate. However, the web support for the book is gone, and downloads that it draws upon are therefore not available anymore.



5. To be fair, it is not a bad book to learn Word/VBA. The user level is correctly marked as "Beginning", so don't ask too much or criticize too harsh. To learn a new skill, one book is not enough. I like a "simple and easy" book like this to gain the fundamental in less than 3 days, then look for an advanced one. Besides, the source code is still on MCP's Web, but in different place (click SAMS on mcp.com, type the key words of the book title in the search box, you should find it). Lot of readers depends on other people's feedback to decide if they should buy a book, so be responsible to your "review". By the way, I am not the author's friend and not affiliated with MCP, SAMS, or Amazon. I am a reader who knows how difficult to find a "right" book, and don't like to see anybody be mislead.

No comments about The +Plus Series: Visual Basic for Applications.

5 comments about Developing Visual Basic Add-ins.

1. With great excitement I purchased this book, when thumbing through it in the store it looked really promising. It truly does give alot more information than MS does, but it still leaves you confused a bit. The object models are shrugged off to very little commentary and figuring out the complexities of manipulating objects within a large program is not even touched. I had hoped that this topic had finally gotten serious consideration, it appears that this was only meant to be an intro book. I would highly recommend it if you only want to know what an add-in is, but if you want to do some serious programming with addins, you'll need alot more than this book.



2. This book is very clear and well-written. I like Steven Roman's books because they cut through the fog and get down to the essential CONCEPTS. Some of the other reviewers seem to think the book should take them by the hand and do everything in the world for them. I, for one, and tired of bloated 1,000-page plus tomes where you can't see the forest for the trees. What I like about this book is the focus on the ideas.



3. Like others, I purchased this book because I was tired of screwing up my face at the pathetic Microsoft documentation.

   Dr. Roman's explanations and sample code got right to the heart of the matter. Major kudos...




4. I was originally going to give this book 3 stars, but after reading the author's retaliatory comments, the best I could offer is a 2 (and I will never buy one of his books again - crybaby).

   Mr. Roman's earlier book, Learn Word Programming, was excellent. Naturally, this lead me to believe that this book would be just as good. It wasn't.

   I try to suggest other books in my reviews, but there aren't many that cover this exact topic. You might want to check "Learn Word 2000 VBA Document Automation", it has a few projects in there, but they are mainly concerned with Word. Other than that, I guess we will just have to wait for awhile.




5. A highly lucid text indeed on a topic area that not many writers have even attempt to get to grips with. After writing this text, I began to create add-in from memory. It's a shame there aren't more books like it.

5 comments about Programming Visual Basic .NET with Student CD.

1. I'm taking a visual basic class at my local community college this semester and we're using this book. I really like it and it's laid out well and is particularly good for looking things up when you need a reference guide. There's a program at the end of each chapter (they give you the full source code along with the psuedocode and form design so that you can create it all yourself). There have been a few minor mistakes that we've found but otherwise the book is excellent for learning VB.



2. Visual Basic .Net programming (in fact, any Visual Studio programming) is a very visual process. As such, it requires a visual guide to learning the language and the development environment.

   This book is one such guide, and does its job as well as a book can. However, even that is not enough to make learning VB.Net painless. There are so many diagrams in the book that it ultimately ends up being long and tedious. But I don't fault the book, as it's the best I've ever seen for this type of subject. It's just that a book can't do justice for the language as well as a classroom.

   For self-study, I would recommend not a book but a CBT (computer-based training) course. Instead of making the student wade through pages and pages of screenshots, a CBT course animates the process of creating a program, and tests him or her at key points along the way. However, CBT courses aren't cheap. As a paper alternative, this is the only book I could recommend for the beginning Visual Basic student.




3. As a beginning student taking visual basic.net I found this book to be confusing at times. The coding examples given do not build on one another, but they pertain to the same subject at hand and so it seems they should, but if you try to type in what they give you for an example your code will not work, and you will be forced to re-read the chapter to find out what they left out in the example just so that you can see what their poorly explained sample code is supposed to do. Sometimes they do build on one another but that is not pointed out. Examples are given as several small, sporadic chunks of code instead of one complete peice that you could go though to trace the sequence of events (very important to learning it) There are very few screenshots in each chapter. Code examples given are poorly explained. At times, code examples are given that throw in new, unfamiliar characters or commands that are not explained for several pages later. So you are sitting there thinking that you missed something and you are forced to reread the chapter again.
   These chapters take 3 or 4 hours to show you how to do something that a teacher could show you in 20 minutes.



4. I am currently an online student at a local university. I attempted a class using this book. Another reviewer put it beautifully, "the book doesn't explain how it got the code listed at the end of the chapter" and understanding how to get there could prove to be a long night! While I've never programmed before except playing with some basic programs as a kid, I felt confident I could pass the class with work and dedication. I spent more than twice as much time online than I would have taking a campus class and still didnt' "get" it. Because I've been able to achieve success in other subjects that aren't my strong suits, I feel that the blame must rest with the book and the lack of continuity in the exercises. In fact, I noticed that the class will be using a different book this fall. Wonder why?!

   If you've programmed before, then this book might be okay; if not---don't attempt to learn with this one.




5. This book is only good for getting your feet wet with VB.NET... it gives you lil intros into different aspects of .NET
   
   I would recommend getting a different book, I just dont think its worth the money for the amount of information you get (not much)