Rating: 
Summary: helpful but not a complete reference
Review: if you are seriously thinking about passing the exam, this book is must that is why i gave it 4 stars[i cleared the exam in first attempt :)]. most of the topics in this books are well covered but others that are not well covered atleast introduce you to those concepts. also, if you want to make sure you pass the exam comfortably you need to buy more reference material. i passed my first certification exam yesterday. In Addition to reading this book i also studied MS press MCSD training kit books and also read the various reference material suggested in this book including MSDN Online help topics. i was surprised to find 5 - 6 questions on client side scripting and debugging. so make sure you study good reference material on this topic. Good Luck !!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A great resource
Review: Passed with an 831 by reading the book, doing some of the labs, taking the practice test, and having 8 months of ASP.NET experience under by belt. It's a great resource for the exam.
Rating:
Summary: A great resource
Review: Passed with an 831 by reading the book, doing some of the labs, taking the practice test, and having 8 months of ASP.NET experience under by belt. It's a great resource for the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Very Detailed - Lots of Examples.
Review: This bood is very good and EXTREMELY detailed. It gives hundreds of examples and problems to walk through. It covers a lot of the material need to pass the exam. However, the examples can get very tedious. It can require a lot of code typing to get a fairly straight forward point across. About half way through the bood I installed the "pactice test" disk and discovered it had all the examples on it. You can then copy some of the tedious code and then review it to make sure you understand what is going on. (I guess my studying style.) The only other issue I had (I did pass the test 4/1/04) about one quarter of what I saw on the test I had never seen before. Perhaps the test had changed quite a bit from the book printing (Second Ed, 2003). But overall a very thorough book and good reference.
Rating:
Summary: Very Detailed - Lots of Examples.
Review: This bood is very good and EXTREMELY detailed. It gives hundreds of examples and problems to walk through. It covers a lot of the material need to pass the exam. However, the examples can get very tedious. It can require a lot of code typing to get a fairly straight forward point across. About half way through the bood I installed the "pactice test" disk and discovered it had all the examples on it. You can then copy some of the tedious code and then review it to make sure you understand what is going on. (I guess my studying style.) The only other issue I had (I did pass the test 4/1/04) about one quarter of what I saw on the test I had never seen before. Perhaps the test had changed quite a bit from the book printing (Second Ed, 2003). But overall a very thorough book and good reference.
Rating:
Summary: extremely thorough
Review: This book covers every topic in incredible detail, both the theory stuff and the practical examples. It is pretty lengthy, but if you get through the entire book you will pass. My only complaint is that I was way too prepared for this test. Just passed.
Rating:
Summary: Helped me pass the exam
Review: This book, and the Transcender practice exam, were all that I needed to pass the actual exam. After reading through this book, I was passing the Transcender CAT exams every time. I did have to go back and review a few areas when I started taking the full practice exams, but it never took me more than two tries to ace them 100% and I give a lot of the credit to this book.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent study guide
Review: This is an excellent study guide. It covered the exam topics in detail. The labs are very well designed to enforce the important details. The difficulty and format of the exam questions are very close to the actual exam questions. I think the best aspect of this book is that it provided a lot of details on the type of questions to expect on the exam, and the technique to target these questions. I have learned a great deal from this book, and it has helped me a great deal in passing the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Best book for transition and the exam!
Review: What if you have a great deal of VB experience and some knowlege of OOP and want to transition to .Net? This book is a great resource to learn VB.Net. I know, you are thinking - hey, this book is for a certification exam cram. True, but think of what the exam objectives are - Microsoft wants one to understand clearly what VB.Net is and how to use it effectively. So what better way to learn almost all of it in one book - this book covers all that you need to know to use VB.Net using the new technology - how to design object-oriented applications, events handling, packaging, deployment, component development, etc. You can effectively learn what is sufficient, to do what you have always done with VB; you would have made a great, great start to continue on. Some advanced topics like threading, etc you can explore on your own. As far as the main purpose of the book, reading all the reviews and going through the content, I have no doubt this is the only book you will need to pass the exam - just don't 'just read' it, follows the strategies described. The organization of the book is excellent - each objective of the certification is covered with hands-on examples (that are non-trivial and that work well), review breaks (a short break where you recall key points you have learnt so far), review excercises, real exam type questions and more. The answers provided explain what the correct answer is but also why the others aren't, thus giving you a chance to reinforce your learning. I am glad I got this book, you will be too.
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