Rating: 
Summary: Great one for beginners
Review: Just as Murach's beginner's guide to VB classic was truly the best way to learn VB, so is this book worthy of being called the successor to the throne.In fact, the way both books teach you are very similar. Murach has kept the best single innovation for beginners - paired page formatting. What this means is that if you open the book to any given page, on the left side you'll see text on some programming technique, on the right side will be an image with graphical illustration describing what you just read. This method helps the newbie avoid getting lost in the jargon. Another cool thing about this book that sets it apart from other "for newbiew" titles is that you actually learn how to write business apps. So it saves you at least a bit of aggravation. Anyway, you'll learn the following: how to build user interfaces for either web or winforms, including menus, toolbars, treeviews, etc..., how to create classes, work with XML and other attributes of programming, like dates, strings, arrays, collections, structures, files, folders, etc.... Then, you'll read about database programming, ADO.NET, bound controls, queries. Don't skim on this one. The book also has solid chapters on ASP.NET applications, web services. Keep in mind you'll have a ton of fully coded actual business applications to look at and compare. Just this alone should hike your programming potential. Anyway, if you are looking to get into programming or you are a newbie to medium programmer, this is the one.
Rating:
Summary: Well Organized, Comprehensive Classroom in a Book
Review: Mike Murach has been publishing tutorials for IT professionals since the mid-1980s. Many mainframe developers learned their COBOL, DB2, VSAM and CICS skills from Mike Murach publications. These books owe their great following to Murach's model of devoting a single book to specific topic and focusing on making it the best introductory book possible on that topic, rather than publishing a confusing array of books on the same topic with much overlap among books. Murach has continued this model with books that cover topics for today's developers: SQLServer 2000, Java 2, Java Servlets & JSP and Visual Basic.NET. Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.NET is an excellent choice for teaching oneself VB.NET. If you complete all 18 chapters and do the exercises, then you will have mastered enough to go out and get a job as a beginning VB.NET developer. The topics are ordered in a sequence that is very conducive to learning. The book uses Murach's successful "paired page" format with each subtopic presented in 2-page chunks; text on the left hand page with examples and summaries on the right hand page. One of the strengths of this book is the fact that there are plenty of exercises and projects to do. In order to keep the price of the book down, rather than put all the projects and sample code onto a CD, the sample code as well as 80% of the projects are made available on their website requiring a 2 minute download (20 seconds if you have DSL or cable internet access). Just reading a book or copying sample code from a book is not going to help you remember what you learned. This book gives you projects to do as well as many exercises. This makes you learn the topics covered. By the end of Chapter 6 you will have covered all of the basics of VB.NET syntax, using the VS.NET IDE and the basics of coding OO applications (advanced OO topics are covered in a later chapter). Since OO is such a cornerstone of .NET development, the fact that it is introduced so early in the book is a plus! By the end of the 18 chapters you will have developed multiple non-trivial VB.NET projects. These are not trivial coding exercises but serious business applications. Each chapter has several hands-on projects. Additional projects are available for download from the publisher's website. The focus of this book is on coding. Other than covering .NET classes, the book does not cover the details of .NET Framework development such as deployment, assemblies, interoperability with legacy COM components, conversion from VB6, threading, .NET architecture (CLR, CTS, and MSIL) and managed code. Once the reader has used this book to master the basics of designing, coding and debugging VB.NET programs, then he or she can move on to the clinical details of what goes on under the hood as well as thinking about the issues of enterprise development and application deployment. There are plenty of books that cover those topics. You have to learn to walk before you run. This book will have you walking in no time at all. Developers who put in the effort to master the topics in this book can move onto the next book from Murach, VB.NET Programming with ADO.NET (co-authored by Anne Prince along with veteran Mike Murach & Associates author, Doug Lowe). The 18 chapters are broken down into five sections:
1. The "essence" of VB.NET, including language essentials, data validation, exception handling, using the IDE, OO development (1 of 2 chapters on this topic) and debugging.
2. Windows forms, controls and multi-document interfaces.
3. NET classes, XML, advanced OO development, arrays and collections.
4. Database Access and ADO.
5. Web programming, ASP.NET and web services. If you cannot get to a class or you just want a very well organized hands-on tutorial that is comprehensive, yet completely understandable, then this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended resource for the novice VB.NET programmer
Review: Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET by computer expert Anne Prince is a thorough, accessible, comprehensive introduction to programming in Visual Basic .NET. From developing object-oriented applications, to using XML with files, to creating and using web services, the information and instruction is superbly organized and designed to immediately launch the user into their own projects. Sample code, 18 complete applications, detailed instructions, and a wealth of "user friendly", easy-to-understand tips, trick, and techniques make Murach's Beginning Visual Basic .NET an excellent and highly recommended resource for the novice VB.NET programmer.
Rating:
Summary: The BEST for starting VB.Net!
Review: Murach's Beginning Visual Basic.NET by Anne Prince is by far the best book on the market for us beginners! Had I bought this book first, I would have saved myself lots of dollars and several months time. This is a job well done! Anne has selected a terrific range of material and presented it in a sequence and method that is perfectly suited for beginners. Starting with the basics of the Visual Studio development environment right on thru the coding of windows and web-based database applications, you'll learn how to produce real-world solutions. She starts each topic from the beginning, with code samples and their clear and concise explanations written on the same, or facing page. Thus this book is easier to learn from than any other programming book I have worked with. Each new topic requires only previous topics to understand. You don't have to jump chapters ahead to search for references on the current topic. Such a logical progression builds the reader's confidence, avoids frustration, and saves time. Solutions to the end-of-chapter exercises require both a review of the topic lessons and some user creativity; just the right mixture of confidence building and mental challenge. And the additional downloadable problems offer more mental workout. Whenever I emailed Anne for help, she quickly responded with articulate solutions to my inquiries. I've read plenty of programming books..............cursed at, and wondered why I bought many of them! This is the only one that I feel so good about that I'm willing to take the time to write a signed review.
Rating:
Summary: New Student to VB and vb.NET
Review: Selected this book at the bookstore after browsing all vb.net books they had. This book leaves out all the BS of programming, and stuff you have already had in every programming book at school, and gives you straight, easy to understand and follow information. Gets you going on using the Visual Studio.NET IDE for Visual Basic. Excellent code examples--gives you what you need without extra mumbo jumbo! Very Happy!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for Newcomers and Students
Review: The aim of this book is to explain VB.NET to newcomers and developers that have used other programming languages.
The first two chapters cover the absolute basics of .NET and VB.NET. The next five chapters explain VB.NET programming using lots of screenshots of the new Microsoft IDE. In a few cases the author repeated the same text on different pages but this may be intentional to reinforce the concepts.
The author explains all the steps to get your first application developed and running. We liked the way the pages are organised with lots of screenshots to explain the necessary tasks. Learning to program can be a daunting task for any newcomer; hence this book is an excellent learning resource. There are 18 example applications and even the first application is not just a simple Hello World program, so the reader will learn a great deal whilst they progress through the book.
The database section of the book is very good and covers most of the database related tasks that would be required in real life projects. The last section briefly covers web forms and web services. This moves more into the realm of ASP.NET but it provides a good insight. As an educational tool for readers new to programming, it is very good but programming veterans will find this book slow in places. If you are a VB developer and want to learn VB.NET, this book may be too basic for you, however it is excellent for starters. We can see how this book would be useful to college/university students learning programming for the first time. We would thoroughly recommend this book to people interested in learning to program.
Rating: 
Summary: Do NOT buy this book!
Review: This author is TERRIBLE at trying to teach VB.NET. I don't know about his other books, but I will NEVER buy one of them again! He makes too many assumptions that you already know a lot about VB.NET. His "example" coding is horrible. I have some programming experience (although it is somewhat dated) but he gives about a paragraph or two to the topic, then writes a little piece of code, then sums it all up and expects you to be an expert at it. I need a sample of the code and how it works, not just the line it goes in. I would highly recommend you keep looking and NOT buy this terrible book!
Rating: 
Summary: Training in VB.NET
Review: This book is a MUST HAVE for your VB.NET collection. Its coverage of database programming is unmatched. It presents code that can be modified to fit any application you may be developing and it does it in a very simple understandable way. I have read many of ADO.NET books but this one is the first to make it understandable. I have found time saving code in this book that I haven't found in any other books. GREAT DATABASE BOOK The only complaint would be the format used. A lot of run together sentences that tend to bury the subjects. But if you don't mind reading it twice it all works.
Rating:
Summary: Superior book organization
Review: This book is one of the best-organized works I have ever seen in a computer tome. Murach and Anne Prince look like they are using STOP (sequential thematic organization of publications), with text on the left side and an illustrative example/graphic/notes on the right hand side. Everything is broken down into 2-page chunks for easy consumption. I am an experienced software developer (20 yrs) and I still enjoyed this easy intro into the use of visual studio. If only somebody would do the same thing for free IDE's like SUN-ONE. IF YOU HAVE TO BUY ONE STARTER BOOK FOR VB .NET, THIS IS IT!
Rating: 
Summary: Not enough detail in areas
Review: This book was required for School. I had never touched VB until this class, and this book was not very helpful to me and every one else in the class. When I got to chapter 5 it felt like all I had done was type in code presented in the book. There was very little explanation as to why you were doing some things. It really appears that there was not enough room for explanation because of the layout. The class ended up buying the "Teach Yourself VB.Net in 24 hour" from Sam Publishing. The Sams book breaks the code down in a much more understanding way.
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