Rating: 
Summary: To the Point, Reasonable Samples, Good Style
Review: Good Insight, done by somebody obviously with enough depth of experience. The book was written with the perspective of the developer or software designer who needs to get a grip on what's coming up soon and gives some fundamental information to help one decide whether to develop their next project on the Visual Studio 6 platform or gear up for .Net.Thanks David...Good Book!
Rating: 
Summary: Worst introduction one could hope for
Review: Guys, if this is Microsoft's official way of "introducing" .NET there's something deeply wrong in Redmond. This book is short and costs way too much for what it's worth. Doesn't explain anything you cannot grasp from a short technet search, and in fact there's more on the [web] site than in the whole book. The attempts of the author at humour are pityful. In my opinion, this book totally [has] no help.
Rating:
Summary: for the 'bigger' picture
Review: I hate reading 'dry' books, and I can assure you, this book is not at all a dry one. It gives you the bigger picture of .NET, and the philosophy and concepts behind it. It will not give you details about how to implement something, for that you will need to refer to Programming .NET components, which I have also strongly recommended.
Mr. Platt is humourous, keeping you stuck to the book. I respect his ability to abstract out the concepts from intricacies. Again, a very good read, for the bigger picture
Rating:
Summary: for the 'bigger' picture
Review: I hate reading 'dry' books, and I can assure you, this book is not at all a dry one. It gives you the bigger picture of .NET, and the philosophy and concepts behind it. It will not give you details about how to implement something, for that you will need to refer to Programming .NET components, which I have also strongly recommended.
Mr. Platt is humourous, keeping you stuck to the book. I respect his ability to abstract out the concepts from intricacies. Again, a very good read, for the bigger picture
Rating: 
Summary: Good, if starting from scratch
Review: I think the book is good whether you just got a copy of VS.NET beta 2 and you need some hints to get started. If you really want to do something professional with Vs.NET this isn't the book for you. There aren't many technical details. In a few words, if you are looking for documentation to help you make money with VS.NET try another book or you'll lose both time and money, instead if you are looking for a rather general overview of VS.NET features, it could be of some help; it is well written and some parts even amusing.
Rating:
Summary: Good overview of .NET
Review: I wish you could give other reviewers stars. I really wonder about the people that bash a book because it wasn't what they thought it would be. Where they perhaps thinking that in 200 pages in a book self proclaimed as an INTRODUCTION would provide them with the indepth coverage they were looking for on .NET? I don't see why a book should loose stars because the person buying the book can't read the title of the book. I bought this book and gave it to our sales manager and training manager and now they can at least talk .NET with clients. I also recommend this book to my students who are looking to just get into .NET, and they all really enjoy this book and start to see why .NET is pretty cool. The Java bashing (while fun) is a little off though, so minus 1 star.
Rating:
Summary: YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING
Review: I won this book for free at a Microsoft .NET seminar--and it's not worth what I paid for it! This books contains absolutely nothing worthwhile. I suppose the target audience is management, so maybe that explains it. It's extremely general, has little technical content and has too many cutesy little phrases and asides. The chapter on ADO.NET--an essential component of .NET, isn't even included in the printed book--you have to download it from the web. In general:
* Where's the beef? * Only useful for someone with little technical or development background.
* Focuses too much on web services.
* Core technologies omitted.
* Since I can't give it no stars, I gave it one.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing new here
Review: If this book was released when .NET was annouced in July 2000, or if I had just wandered into town after being lost in the woods for a year, I might have given it 5 stars. As a developer who has been digging into .NET and writting C# code for several months, this book was a waste of time. If you don't know what .NET is about and not interested in digging into code, then this book is your best bet for getting up to speed quickly.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for Managers - too little detail for developer's intro
Review: If you are manager looking for a high level technical overview of .Net this is a good book. If you are a non-Microsoft developer looking for an overview this book will also probably be useful to you. However, if you are even the least bit familiar with .Net concepts and have done a little ASP programming then this book is just to simplistic to be worth your time. I also think that the author's humor is overrated (although the book is out of date Woody Leonard's "Windows 3.1 Programming for Mere Mortals" is the definitive example of how to write a technical book with humor)!
Rating:
Summary: Introducing Microsoft .NET
Review: If you're just looking for a technical overview or conversation level discussion of Microsoft .NET, don't buy this book. This book is strictly written to help bring Microsoft programmers or other serious Web application architects / programmers getting assigned to a .NET programming project up to speed.
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