Rating: 
Summary: I expect better from Microsoft
Review: I bought this book as it was the first to come out covering preperations for the MCAD and MCSD. I read through the entire book and came out very disappointed. There are numerous typos for a start and the code style is often very inconsistent making the examples all the harder to read. The information is very light. Compared with some of the other options available such as Amit Kalani's MCAD/MCSD books there is only a grain on information. If you take the test soley on Microsoft's book I think you will find yourself woefully under prepared. Last, there are precious few questions, no tips, and little in the way of examples to work through. The book is a brief skim of topics that are covered in much better detail elsewhere. Don't waste your time with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Completely Worthless
Review: I bought this book as it was the first to come out covering preperations for the MCAD and MCSD. I read through the entire book and came out very disappointed. There are numerous typos for a start and the code style is often very inconsistent making the examples all the harder to read. The information is very light. Compared with some of the other options available such as Amit Kalani's MCAD/MCSD books there is only a grain on information. If you take the test soley on Microsoft's book I think you will find yourself woefully under prepared. Last, there are precious few questions, no tips, and little in the way of examples to work through. The book is a brief skim of topics that are covered in much better detail elsewhere. Don't waste your time with this one.
Rating:
Summary: I expect better from Microsoft
Review: I took a MCSD cert training course that used this series of books. I felt that as the books were published by MS and the exams were written by MS that the book content could have covered the subject much better. I was taking the exams for C# and many of the examples do not compile, obviously the examples were originally written in VB and someone 'hacked' the C# routines without bothering to check that they compiled before publishing. I guess I don't care for books that cover material in both VB/C# for this very reason, we (C# people) would be better off purchasing a VB book and porting it ourself.I would suggest that you first take a look at the other exam cram books and study guides before using this series of books.
Rating:
Summary: Voucher not valid
Review: I tried to use the 15% discount in this book and was told by VUE that it IS NOT a valid voucher. The book itself was good, but does not cover some areas of VB.NET and C# in relation to SQL. The labs in the book are good, very few had to be debugged.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent source for certification
Review: I'm a MCAD professional now, and this book helped a lot to pass the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Good for Microsoft
Review: I've just passed the 70-306 exam and must say the this book helped me do it a lot more than either of the Microsoft Study guides that I used to pass other MS Cert Tests (70-300, 70-229) I've taken so far. Unlike the others, it seems to generally represent the exam content, at least to the extent that things that are emphasized in the book (at least to the best of my recollection) seemed to be emphasized in the exam. As others have said, you can't expect that absolutely everything you will need to know to pass the exam will be spelled out in the book. Also like others, I found MSDN to be a very comprehensive and thorough source on how to build applications in the .NET environment and what .NET is all about. So, use the book to point out the areas to work on, use MSDN to get the details, and practice writing apps. I can honestly say that that pretty much did it for me. The weakness of the book is that, seemingly like all the Microsoft Guides, there's really no information on the makeup of the exam itself and any specifics on how to prepare. The practice test that came with the book was barely worth the investment of time that it takes to go through it. It had lots of typos and a significant percentage of the questions made little or no sense or could not really be answered from the information given.
Rating:
Summary: Typical Microsoft Manuals
Review: If you are EXCELLENT at reading Japanese stereo instructions and can put together children's toys by following the instructions LETTER FOR LETTER, this set is a great resource.
It is geared specifically at test passing. I bought the entire set, and have been writing VB code since 1993 and v3.0, and read through the first book. At that point, I paid $7175.00 to a training school (not a bootcamp, that's cheating) to learn how to use .NET right. Now that I have had a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer explain the "Microsoft Lingo" in real english, it all makes sense and I can read along with the book.
However, if Chinese Long Division and Conversion from Long Division to Binary is not your cup of tea, I would suggest you start with something written in English!
Rating: 
Summary: Better than 70-305 and 70-310
Review: It's a good reference but not enough for passing! Although it's much better in term of content that the books for 305 and 310 exams.
Again I think MSDN palys a great role (90%) if you really want to pass the exam.
You need at lease 1 year experience with VS.NET,.NET and last but not least XML/XSL/Schema.
Learn as much as you can regarding ADO.Net and Security in .NET. I passed the test and officially became MCAD.
Good luck!
Rating: 
Summary: Inadequate Resource
Review: Overall, the book is fairly complete in its list of topics covered, and the labs do help some to tie together the concepts. However, they tend to fall short of driving the point home and in too many cases the reader is left to his own experimentation. It is written acceptably well, though sparsely in many cases, but requires more rereading than other books on similar topics. Having read Kalani's 70-315 book (for "Web.NET"), I'd suggest looking more closely at his 70-316 book. This book gives a lot of information in a fairly condensed form. Sometimes, this is done in a fashion where you didn't realize a topic had been covered. The book seems to focus more on passing the test than going to the next level of trying to make sure you understand what is happening. I found myself rereading a lot, but to the book's credit, the reread did generally have some of the information that had not seemed readily apparent until reading through further parts. If you are new to Windows development, read something else first. Presentation controls (textboxes, grids, etc.) are touched on briefly, but for the most part the book assumes some familiarity with visual designers, managing properties, available controls and their purpose. For example, the book states in chapter 2, "Because an in-depth discussion of the different controls and their functionality is beyond the scope of this book, you should familiarize yourself with the controls in the Toolbox and how they work." Most controls are never described, though many common ones do show up in examples eventually. The "beyond the scope of this book" disclaimer is also given in regards to using XmlDataDocuments (the class, not just the general concept of XML). Personally, if it's a core piece of Windows Development and/or an objective of the test, I don't see how it can be outside the scope of the book. The examples sometimes lack "connectivity". For example, its description of configuring trace switches might be a bit more readable to list the entire chunk of XML, e.g.,
<?xml version="1.0" encoding = "utf-8">
<configuration>
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="myBoolenSwitch" value="0" />
<!-- following sets the myTraceSwitch to a value
of TraceLevel.Info -->
<add name="myTraceSwitch" value="3" />
</switches>
</system.diagnostics>
</configuration> rather than...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding = "utf-8">
<configuration>
</configuration> followed by descriptive text then <system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="myBoolenSwitch" value="0" />
<!-- following sets the myTraceSwitch to a value
of TraceLevel.Info -->
<add name="myTraceSwitch" value="3" />
</switches>
</system.diagnostics> In many places information given is minimal. Exception handling, correctly, indicates that custom exceptions should inherit from the System.ApplicationException but makes no reference to why this should be used in lieu of System.SystemException. Some topics seem to be written specifically for those people already familiar with the subject at hand--presumably not the target market. The relationship between XmlDataDocuments and Datasets at the end of chapter six is a good example of this. Many of these things are small and possibly preferable for solely trying to pass the exam, but at the end of a chapter, it's a bit difficult to know whether or not you've really picked up what you should have. Expanding the minimal code snippets into exercises throughout the chapters rather than tying the entire thing together in one or two "labs" at the end might also help to better reinforce the information. At a rough guess, about 15% of the material on the test was not discussed in the book or was glossed over to the point that the topic did not seem familiar to me. There were a number of times that I wound up reviewing notes from the 70-315 exam book or searching the help file for information that should've been there. Another 100 or so pages and dropping out the attempt to cover VB and C# in the same text would go a long way toward making this book better.
Rating:
Summary: Touched on most but not very thorough
Review: Overall, the book is fairly complete in its list of topics covered, and the labs do help some to tie together the concepts. However, they tend to fall short of driving the point home and in too many cases the reader is left to his own experimentation. It is written acceptably well, though sparsely in many cases, but requires more rereading than other books on similar topics. Having read Kalani's 70-315 book (for "Web.NET"), I'd suggest looking more closely at his 70-316 book. This book gives a lot of information in a fairly condensed form. Sometimes, this is done in a fashion where you didn't realize a topic had been covered. The book seems to focus more on passing the test than going to the next level of trying to make sure you understand what is happening. I found myself rereading a lot, but to the book's credit, the reread did generally have some of the information that had not seemed readily apparent until reading through further parts. If you are new to Windows development, read something else first. Presentation controls (textboxes, grids, etc.) are touched on briefly, but for the most part the book assumes some familiarity with visual designers, managing properties, available controls and their purpose. For example, the book states in chapter 2, "Because an in-depth discussion of the different controls and their functionality is beyond the scope of this book, you should familiarize yourself with the controls in the Toolbox and how they work." Most controls are never described, though many common ones do show up in examples eventually. The "beyond the scope of this book" disclaimer is also given in regards to using XmlDataDocuments (the class, not just the general concept of XML). Personally, if it's a core piece of Windows Development and/or an objective of the test, I don't see how it can be outside the scope of the book. The examples sometimes lack "connectivity". For example, its description of configuring trace switches might be a bit more readable to list the entire chunk of XML, e.g.,
rather than...
followed by descriptive text then
In many places information given is minimal. Exception handling, correctly, indicates that custom exceptions should inherit from the System.ApplicationException but makes no reference to why this should be used in lieu of System.SystemException. Some topics seem to be written specifically for those people already familiar with the subject at hand--presumably not the target market. The relationship between XmlDataDocuments and Datasets at the end of chapter six is a good example of this. Many of these things are small and possibly preferable for solely trying to pass the exam, but at the end of a chapter, it's a bit difficult to know whether or not you've really picked up what you should have. Expanding the minimal code snippets into exercises throughout the chapters rather than tying the entire thing together in one or two "labs" at the end might also help to better reinforce the information. At a rough guess, about 15% of the material on the test was not discussed in the book or was glossed over to the point that the topic did not seem familiar to me. There were a number of times that I wound up reviewing notes from the 70-315 exam book or searching the help file for information that should've been there. Another 100 or so pages and dropping out the attempt to cover VB and C# in the same text would go a long way toward making this book better.
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