Rating: 
Summary: Excellent coverage of key features
Review: Excellent coverage of key features, well-written with a great, easy-to-read style. Highly recommended to anyone interested in .NET and/or CE... looking forward to more books by this obviously well-informed author.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent coverage of key features
Review: Excellent coverage of key features, well-written with a great, easy-to-read style. Highly recommended to anyone interested in .NET and/or CE... looking forward to more books by this obviously well-informed author.
Rating: 
Summary: Get ready for missing sample files & incorrect instruction
Review: I am currently trying one of the examples in this book. However, files that should have been included in the download are missing and some of the instructions are just FLAT WRONG. To add to this, there is no direct contact information for the authors. I have submitted the problems to the publisher but I am not hopeful. A poster on the Compact Framework newsgroup said that he had come across other errors which he submitted to the publisher some time back. As of today, there was no errata available for this book and no updates of missing files.I find it hard to believe that they don't have at least ONE person to proofread the book and run the samples so that this doesn't happen. The whole selling point of this book is to get you going with .NET CF programming. How can you do that with incomplete samples and incorrect instructions.
Rating:
Summary: Great for getting rolling on the .NET CF
Review: I bought this book along with the Definitive Guide when I was assigned to do some C# work on both the regular framework and the .NET CF. I was doing mostly JavaScript for the past two years and this book really helped me get moving with C# in general. This book helped me get comfortable with getting connected to the device, understanding some of the general capabilities of the framework, and stuff like that. It paid for itself by getting me past the "hello world" stage very quickly. I recommend the Definitive Guide for when you really want to drill down but this book is great for a quick rampup, with good quick step-by-steps to do a lot of the common things programmers care about. It saved me much more time than the cost of the book, so I'm very happy with it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good reference - the one to buy currently
Review: I was converting a warehouse management app from eVB to VB.Net and was struggling to find examples online and only having the Core Reference book (which kinda blows in some regards) as another source. The GotDotNet examples are good, but this book takes things one step further giving clear and concise instructions, explaining the difference between the .Net Framework and the Compact Framework and gives work-arounds for features missing (very important). It has several good threading examples, goes over a simple way of using p/invoke, explains controls like the DataGrid (in an easier format than what's online) as well as going over a lot of the tasks you're going to need to know about. It won't magically solve all your problems, but having it around will easily shave a few hours off your project and your learning curve. Given that there isn't much info online yet regarding the Compact Framework, and the only other book to really choose from currently is the Core Reference, I'd say this was the one to buy. To the 'Yawn' review, well what else should the book be about? And it's hard to be a cut-n-paste version of 'all other framework text' when there aren't really any to cut from...
Rating: 
Summary: Cautious Note
Review: I've been developing several WinCE prototypes for the NetPad for a few weeks.. and this helped me immensely. Also bought Tiffany's book on sqlCE dev w/ the CF... the two together are helpful. Simply implementing a working proto following Rubin's advice about XML Web Service performance and DataSets on pg. 283 might make you a hero (I'm not one yet, but close...)
Rating:
Summary: Get it. Resourceful views on real issues.. well done.
Review: I've been developing several WinCE prototypes for the NetPad for a few weeks.. and this helped me immensely. Also bought Tiffany's book on sqlCE dev w/ the CF... the two together are helpful. Simply implementing a working proto following Rubin's advice about XML Web Service performance and DataSets on pg. 283 might make you a hero (I'm not one yet, but close...)
Rating:
Summary: Complete and detailed explanations
Review: Information that is hard to find in other books can be find here. I buy a lot of computer books and I know when one stands out. This book paid for itself the first day.
Rating:
Summary: Cautious Note
Review: The book introduction states that the sample applications require installation of Visual Studio Enterprise edition and will not work with Visual Studio Professional.
Rating: 
Summary: 2 and a half stars for C# readers
Review: There are some good things in this book but overall it is unimpressive - in my opinion of course. It starts off well by describing how to setup the IDE and the device, including a unique description of how to target unsupported devices. It then goes on to the mandatory introduction to the .NETcf, including detailed information on the JIT compilers and the CLR. Chapter 3 is all about the GUI, with consideration of Pocket PC and Windows CE devices. Most info is available online and in the help, but it is well presented. Chapter 4 on threading is disappointing. It incorrectly states that there are only a few threads maintained by the ThreadPool; it does not even mention the Threading.Timer, ManualResetEvent and AutoResetEvent classes. The examples provided are unrealistic and serve only for demonstrating the syntax; the same comment applies to all examples throughout the book. Chapter 5 briefly overviews connectivity with TCP, UDP, HTTP and IR. As with other areas of the book, there is a lot of breadth but no depth. How can a discussion on programming sockets ignore asynchronous communication? The following 2 chapters are about ADO.NET and Sqlce; nothing spectacular here, but no real omissions either. These are followed by 4 chapters on XML. XML in relation to the dataset and the whole XML namespace are pretty well covered here. Interoping with native code is essential to any .NETcf developer, given the compactness of the framework. Chapter 12 attempts to cover that and it generally provides a good introduction to it. However, there is no mention of the dumpbin utility or the extern keyword or a short description on writing an eVC dll. A serious chapter on the topic would have covered these, as well as the technique of subclassing .NET controls with the MessageWindow (which itself is not described at all). Finally, the authors describe how to use unsafe C# for marshalling deep/nested structures, whereas there is an alternative safe way of achieving the same result (which also means it can be used from VB.NET). Chapter 13 on Reflection is good. I have to say, though, that when describing a technology it is useful to tell the reader where the benefit is, as well as mention scenarios of particular interest. So, for example, when talking about reflection, the authors could have explained how to use it to compensate for the lack of the Enum.Parse method. The same principle applies to other areas of the book. I cannot criticise the contents of chapter 14 on cryptography, because the topic is mostly left untouched by other .NETcf sources. Chapter 15 on performance is great. I would be urging you to get access to this chapter one way or another, were it not for a recent excellent article on MSDN covering the same topic very well. Chapter 16 on deployment is good, and the final chapter on the smartphone will not tell you much (5-6 pages long) but it will tell you more than any other printed source will (at the moment).
Examples are in both VB and C#. I applaud publishers who do this rather than release two books with language being the only difference, or even worst focus on one language only. However, when this approach is followed, every effort should be made for the examples to be identical except for the syntax. This cannot be said for this book, where a poor translation of the C# examples into VB was attempted. Suffice to say that some of that code will not even compile, and the code that does clearly has Option Strict turned off. Every effort has been made to keep the layout of the VB code different to the C# one; the authors think arrays in VB.NET start at 1, that the only way to get the type of a class is to instantiate one first, that escape characters are needed in VB strings, that arrays or objects cannot be created on the same line, that integers cannot be declared inline to a for loop, that UInt32s can be used in VB and so on and so forth. Hence 2.5 stars for C# readers and only 2 for VB.NET readers.
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