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Rating: 
Summary: Good for total programming beginners. Poor otherwise.
Review: As a professional VB & Web developer, I found this book disappointing. It is aimed squarely at someone new to any kind of programming, and so covers elementary concepts at the expense of advanced issues.If you are a complete novice to programming, but somehow own a copy of Visual Studio .NET (perhaps unlikely!!), then this may be the book for you. The book covers all the basic programming concepts such as 'if' clauses, loops, and variables in an easy, friendly way. It is easily readable, with simple, well-explained examples and good use of screenshots. There are no exercises for the reader, to reinforce learning, unfortunately. It does gives a good, simple, easy-to-follow introduction to Visual Studio .NET, and gives a good explanation of the basic VB.NET tools for creating Windows applications. It does not, though, cover Visual Studio .NET in real depth. The book leaves much of the IDE uncharted. In many places, the author suggests we use the online help for more information. Worst of all, the book is very weak on web development. For example, it does not even explain how to create a .NET Web Service - which is one of the main benefits of .NET. In fact, the section on Internet Programming hardly gets started at all - covering how to use Internet Explorer as a programming object, how to use hyperlinks and simple form controls, how to get started with IIS, but little else. Overall, you may well decide half-way through that you need to order something meatier, for when you have finished this 'aperitif'.
Rating: 
Summary: Aimed at beginners to Visual Basic
Review: I found this to be an excellent book for beginners to Visual Basic. As the title states, this book takes you "step by step" through all aspects of Visual Basic .NET. It assumes no prior programming experience with Visual Basic. The book was designed with a variety of skill levels in mind so that new programmers can learn software development fundamentals using real world applications and experienced Visual Basic programmers can quickly master the essential tools and programming techniques offered in the new Visual Basic .NET version. The book starts off slowly by showing the reader how to create their first simple Visual Basic .NET program. This helps to build confidence and quickly familiarize the reader with the Visual Basic environment. The book is well organized and divided into various parts, such as, creating the user interface, database programming, internet programming, object oriented programming, and more. Each of these parts is clearly presented with plenty of sample code and screen shots. I highly recommend this book to all beginners to Visual Basic.
Rating:
Summary: Some basics with lots of Visual Studio.net!
Review: If your looking for book that will start to make sense of the new .net technology, this book is the one to start with. It's a beginners level book that teaches both vb.net basics and the Visual Studio environment you'll be using to make your applications. Existing VB6 programmers will find this an easy read (100+ pages in a couple hours). Lessons are short, clear and goal orientated. There are numerous sceenshots to help guide the way and great charts in the places where you'll need them. Notes and tips are placed throughout the book and add real value to it. Differences between VB6 and VB.net are pointed out. I'd purchase other books in this series based on my experience with this book. It gives you the solid understanding of the basics you'll need when you go into more advanced programmming levels.
Rating: 
Summary: The Basics - you have to crawl before you run
Review: Some have criticized Halvorson's book as being too basic, or not basic enough. The truth is that this book is really for either a) the new person who knows some programming and wants to get his or her feet wet in VB.Net, or b) someone who knows VB6 and wants to skim and see changes. It hits the highlights to get you off the ground. The value in it comes more from the programs provided that you can dissect than the instructions that come with the steps. The author takes the time to point out how .Net differs from version 6, including the changes, and removals between the versions. If you are a VB programmer already, this book is below you, except as I mentioned for skimming for changes quickly. But if you are looking to get a simple handle on the changes, or the new .net development platform at all, this gets your foot in the door. It gave me enough to start with and now I can springboard off of that into more detailed books. I'm not going to be writing huge applications right now, but I'm a step along the way. The book delivers on what it sets out to do.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Fantastic!
Review: This book is fabulous - I wish I had purchased it earlier. I have recently returned to school in order to study computer programming as part of an effort to make a career change. The first classes on programming and VB.NET required that we use the HORRIBLE Deitel books (save your money on those). I was not able to take a VB course last quarter and have just started the next class. Our instructor recommended this book as a 'refresher' for what we have already covered and I'm really glad he did! (BTW, he's also dumped the Deitel books because there were so many complaints). Not only have I already brushed up on the skills I've already learned, but the writing is clear, editing is wonderful, and (most important of all) everything makes sense! I'm also learning a lot of new things! I will certainly look for more books by this author - he has a talent for explaining things in an easy to understand manner and yet doesn't talk down to the reader. In response to some of the other reviews - no, this book probably wouldn't be too useful to an experienced programmer but it wasn't meant to be. For someone new to programming, however, I haven't found another book that even comes close to this one - buy it today!
Rating:
Summary: A Beginners Book Through and Through
Review: This is a good book for the novice developer. It's more a beginners VB guide than a .NET tutorial. I am taking a.NET class and this is the required book. I was hoping for more. Not enough discussion about .NET. A better book would have been VB .NET The Tutorials by Karl Moore which I have also. The ultimate .NET book in my opinion is Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (Core Reference) by Franseco Balena.
Rating: 
Summary: I hate it.
Review: To summarize, I hate this book because you can't use it without reading it through from page one. I use this book for a class I am enrolled in. One of our projects is to build a simple windows game. So, I look up how to display a bitmap. Displayed are two lines of code along with the instructions "find the Form_1Paint function that handles Paint events". Where should I look? The instructions do not hint at where it is and certainly the function can't be found by searching the code. The only way to understand what they are talking about is to actually go through every tutorial in baby-step fashion because every page on the book tells you something such as "Continue with the CPPDraw application from the previous excersise" (p.365). Well I don't want to read the whole )@$#%ing book to find out how to draw a bitmap. When I finally do figure it out I am guessing I could show someone how to do it in 10 lines of code so they wouldn't have to read 100 pages of baby-step drivel. If you want to find out how to do any one thing in .Net with this book expect to have to spend several hours reading the previous 100 pages from where it is supposedly explained. Microsoft Press should consider making encryption a core of their business. They are really good at it.
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