Rating: 
Summary: Good Book But I hope To Have a C# Source Code
Review: After Reading All The Book I think that this book deal very well with intranet applications but it is specific to understanding and upgrading the IBuySpy Portal Application but you can always use this knowldge in order to develop other intranet applications ,instead of building everything from ground up the authors learn us how to take advantage of an existing applications distributed freely and customise it .
I gave the book 4 stars because the source code distributed with the book is in VB.Net and there is no C# version like other WROX Books and I hope that WROX will distibute the C# version of the source code soon .
Rating: 
Summary: Good blueprint; confusing target audience.
Review: I bought this book because I have been thrust into the Intranet development world, and I really don't have a lot of experience building multi-functional web pages. I bought this book to really help me understand the IBuySpy portal, and I have used it to customize that package for a couple of different web sites now.The Good:
The book is very good at explaining the various components of the IBuySpy Portal. It's a lot like a tourist map; highlighting certain pieces (while complete overlooking other aspects). The Bad:
As others have noted, this book doesn't go deep into explaining ASP.NET, or how to use classes in the .NET architecture. It merely allows you to copy a lot of code, cross your fingers, and see something work. The Ugly:
As with most "best-of-breed" solutions from Microsoft, stuff breaks. While this particular manual does point out why some stuff doesn't work as well as intended, it doesn't go into a lot of detail (and don't expect it to catch everything). In Sum: Buy this book if you have a need to get an intranet up and running quickly, and want to impress your non-developer friends. Don't buy it if you're expecting to use it to learn ASP.NET.
Rating:
Summary: Good blueprint; confusing target audience.
Review: I bought this book because I have been thrust into the Intranet development world, and I really don't have a lot of experience building multi-functional web pages. I bought this book to really help me understand the IBuySpy portal, and I have used it to customize that package for a couple of different web sites now. The Good:
The book is very good at explaining the various components of the IBuySpy Portal. It's a lot like a tourist map; highlighting certain pieces (while complete overlooking other aspects). The Bad:
As others have noted, this book doesn't go deep into explaining ASP.NET, or how to use classes in the .NET architecture. It merely allows you to copy a lot of code, cross your fingers, and see something work. The Ugly:
As with most "best-of-breed" solutions from Microsoft, stuff breaks. While this particular manual does point out why some stuff doesn't work as well as intended, it doesn't go into a lot of detail (and don't expect it to catch everything). In Sum: Buy this book if you have a need to get an intranet up and running quickly, and want to impress your non-developer friends. Don't buy it if you're expecting to use it to learn ASP.NET.
Rating:
Summary: No CD, broken promise of downloadable code
Review: I bought this book for 62 Euros (75 USD) in Lisbon that is too much for 450 pages (with promos, content, indexes, images from internet) book without any CD and with broken promise of the downloadable code! IMHO, there was no need to bloat the volume of a book and reader's tiredness reprinting from internet the lengthy code examples just for the sake of a few modifications and after that again printing, again, the resulting snippets (it is proper only for e-books) Since the book is oriented for working with codes, the absence of electronic version is also the great drawback. The book seems to be the monopolist on IBuySpy Portal (the only one available) , but I wouldn't have bought it, had I known about mentioned above. While the book is useful (in abscence of any other choice, esp. in electronic version), I estimate the ratio "price/worthyness" as extremely high PS
I was also more interested in C# and/or Visual Studio .NET versions of IBuySpy Portal, and I think VB.NET is just inappropriate language for the middle-, like IBuySpy Portal,
and large-size projects)
Rating: 
Summary: Good book written poorly
Review: I bought this book in hopes of using it to design a good intranet portal for our company. The book is written poorly and doesn't really help you implement the modules discussed in the book. I have tried countless times to implement what was discussed in the book but the code never works, I am using the code which was downloaded from the publisher's website so it should work according to their instructions. Another downside is the author no longer supports the code in the book so if problems happens you are on your own, I would think a publisher would support their own code and be able to answer questions about it. Needless to say I am extremely disappointed with the book, I had high hopes for it but it just didn't work the way it should have.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly just code listings
Review: I didn't much care for this book. It never really explains the how or why, it just lists code. "Now we'll add an edit button: <code...> Now we'll add a delete button: <code...>". There's no explanation of what the code means, how the ASP pages link to the code-behind pages, etc. I'm not sure who the target audience is. It's not technical enough for geeky types, but too technical for administrative types. I guess it's aimed at script kiddy types who want to copy code without really understanding how it works.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly just code listings
Review: I didn't much care for this book. It never really explains the how or why, it just lists code. "Now we'll add an edit button: Now we'll add a delete button: ". There's no explanation of what the code means, how the ASP pages link to the code-behind pages, etc.I'm not sure who the target audience is. It's not technical enough for geeky types, but too technical for administrative types. I guess it's aimed at script kiddy types who want to copy code without really understanding how it works.
Rating:
Summary: Mostly just code listings
Review: I didn't much care for this book. It never really explains the how or why, it just lists code. "Now we'll add an edit button: <code...> Now we'll add a delete button: <code...>". There's no explanation of what the code means, how the ASP pages link to the code-behind pages, etc. I'm not sure who the target audience is. It's not technical enough for geeky types, but too technical for administrative types. I guess it's aimed at script kiddy types who want to copy code without really understanding how it works.
Rating: 
Summary: Great IBuySpy book
Review: I really like the approach that this book takes. Using the IBuySpy example means that all the mailing lists and forums about it will be useful. The explanations in the early chapters really cleared up how IBuySpy works for me. Especially on security. The later chapters led me through some great coding techniques. The download worked fine for me. I guess the authors sorted it out since those previous reviews.
Rating: 
Summary: Another "let's get it published asap" book.
Review: If you wish to understand the IBUY Portal, don't count on this book to help you. I didn't like the style and structure of this book. I got the sense that this book was just another rush publication with a group of programmers getting together, assigning chapters with desired content and then got down to pulling and writing code. WROX needs to do a better job of controlling quality and up front planning for their books. Sorry, but this book shows none of that. The design of the existing site was mostly crammed into a single chapter. A decent database diagram was not included and no UML or other diagrams were presented so we could easily understand the Object architecture. Instead, the documentation was simply a straight lift from sql server table descriptions. I found myself drawing my own diagrams as I went through the book. An architect's perspective was desparately needed in this first chapter. I won't be buying any more WROX books if things don't improve by enforcing good technical writing standards for their publications.
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