J2ME: The Complete Reference

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Summary: What version of MIDP/CDLC does the book cover
Review: I have not read this book so far. Does this book cover the new MIDP 2.0 and CDLC 1.1 API features ?

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Summary: Simple. Clear. Straightforward.
Review: I have several books on J2ME. Yet, as good as those books are, I've found myself using only this book. This book does not simply gloss over or "introduce" you to concepts. Every chapter provides enough coverage to really get you programming. Keogh is informative in his concise writing style. You won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Simple. Clear. Straightforward.
Review: I have several books on J2ME. Yet, as good as those books are, I've found myself using only this book. This book does not simply gloss over or "introduce" you to concepts. Every chapter provides enough coverage to really get you programming. Keogh is informative in his concise writing style. You won't be disappointed.

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Summary: Practically all you'll need
Review: I have spent a great deal of time browsing through a number of J2ME books in a couple of my local bookstores. This book caught my eye and I decided to browse through it. I was "wowed" by quality of the content. After implementing the examples in the chapters, I can definitively say that this book is excellent.

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Summary: The best and most definitive book on J2ME
Review: If you want a thorough understanding of J2ME than this is the book for you. I have learned a lot in just three short chapters. I can't wait to finish tearing through this book. Although big, Keogh delivers. A must have for serious developers.

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Summary: This is the book you are looking for
Review: Indispensable! Covers the fundamentals of J2ME with impressive detail and expertise. It neither overwhelms you with technical detail nor baffles you with unexplained "how-to" instructions. An admirably balanced of what you need to do and why you need to do it. He is also a very good teacher. I found this book invaluable and recommend it wholeheartedly.

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Summary: J2ME from the Inside
Review: Keogh deals with the obvious and subtle features of J2ME programming in an intelligent and helpful manner. He has an excellent sense of knowing when to slow down and go into depth on a topic. Reading this book greatly added to my appreciation and understanding of J2ME programming features. This book go far beyond what is available in online and is a must buy for professional J2ME programmers. It is the best reference I've seen in my 15 years of programming.

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Summary: Learn every thing that you can do in j2me
Review: Learn every thing that you can do in j2me

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Summary: Multiple Errors, wasted space and no help from the publisher
Review: Skip the first 50 pages, they have just about nothing to do with the rest of the book. I want to know about J2ME, not about satallites orbiting the earth.
There were several small errors throughout, source code missing things here and there. But as I got deeper into the book I didn't know enough about the language to correct the errors. That's what I purchased the book for.
Instead I went to Osborne's website where they have the source code for the book (with errors intact) but otherwise don't acknowledge that the book exists. It would have been nice to have an "updates" section where a couple of the errors were corrected. At least run the source code before you put it in the book. I'm pretty disappointed.

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Summary: Wordy, overly contrived, boring
Review: The main problem with this book is that it is excessively wordy. Every single example is introduced with several pages of text. Every single time Keogh writes that any exceptions generated in the try block are caught by the catch block. Yeah... thanks a lot for that great piece of advice. After these several pages of text there is a box with about 10 to 20 steps that he suggests to accomplish the discussed task. Invariably these begin with:
1. Declare references to classes
2. Create instances of classes and assign those instances to references
3. a whole bunch more oversimplied pieces of garbage
My point is that Keogh puts in so much extra junk into this book that it is difficult to read. You generally have to read 5 pages to learn what one method does. Any intermediate to experienced programmer (not necessarily in java or j2me) will quickly become frusturated and beginners will too after a hundred or so pages. This book is nearly 800 pages long and could easily fit in 300 pages.
Another problem with this book is that the examples are overly contrived. Also it would be useful if Keogh constructed a small box that would stand out from the text for each method that he describes. This would discuss the parameters, return types, effects, and such. However, he does not do this. He discusses these types of things in several paragraphs of writing. On a minor note Keogh's variables do not follow official sun naming conventions (which doesn't really matter but someone writing a textbook should try to use good habits). That and his treatment of exceptions is generally very poor (always writes catch(Exception e) { // do something } which is poor because you in general want more specific information about the exception so it can be better handled).