Rating: 
Summary: OK, but not enough
Review: A third of the items on the actual test are not covered in this book. You will need MSDN and Transcender to pass this exam. Good examples. Fast paced book, especially due to the fact that you skip a lot of pages that are specific to C#. The other book (Upgrading VB6 to VB.Net) is not necessary to pass the exam. Good Luck.
Rating: 
Summary: Passed the Test Using Only this Book...
Review: And lots of hands on practice! I actually thought this book was well written and quite concise. Because exam prep books must cover a wide range of topics I feel the author did an excellent job explaining the many subjects needed to prepare for the test.I actually learned quite a bit from the samples in this book, but I did spend some time really analyzing the code. My suggestion is to type it in yourself. Don't just load it from the CD and run it.
Rating: 
Summary: An introduction Book
Review: Could someone publish a list of supplementary books necessary to pass the exam? Thanks Mingming
Rating:
Summary: Poor Exam Preparation Resource.
Review: Don't waste your money or your time with this book.
While it does point out the required topics for the tests, the book falls way short on covering those key topics. Most if not all of the content is vague at best and it is seriously lacking in its coverage of ADO.NET and security which are heavily tested topics. I passed my exam but NOT thanks to this book. Mostly based on experience which is why after taking the test I can tell you this book is not worth the pulp it is printed on. I would recommend a nice book on ADO.NET such as Dave Sceppa's ADO.NET Core Reference and any of the Wrox books on Windows Forms for the rest. From MS Press there is "Visual C# Core Reference" (I myself just noticed my predilection towards "Core Reference" tomes!) By Mickey Williams. For the test, there is no substitute for experience, but MSDN onlike is an EXCELLENT resource that everyone should leverage, test or real life. If you are taking the test, good luck, otherwise happy .NETing!
Rating:
Summary: Do you judge a book by how many errors it contains?
Review: Errors galore! And no, they're not all simple grammatical mistakes. There are dozens of examples of code that if entered into .Net and run would bomb or not do what they are supposed to do (here's just one example, on page 56 the VB code lists myForm.Activate() but the C# code lists myForm.Active()). Worse yet, I was planning to study just this one book and then take the test. But now that I've read the others' reviews I see that such would be folly: this book alone does not give enough to pass the exam. However, let me point out that for someone who is just interested in learning how to create Windows-based applications using VB.Net or C#.Net (i.e., passing the exam is not the goal) I think the book easily provides enough to satisfy. That's why I gave it three stars despite the negative things I had to say about it: it really isn't all that bad (but it's really not all that great either). PS: I bought the book at my local, but national, bookstore (didn't have a computer then) and paid the full [price]. Should have had a friend by it for me from here!
Rating:
Summary: Do you judge a book by how many errors it contains?
Review: Errors galore! And no, they're not all simple grammatical mistakes. There are dozens of examples of code that if entered into .Net and run would bomb or not do what they are supposed to do (here's just one example, on page 56 the VB code lists myForm.Activate() but the C# code lists myForm.Active()). Worse yet, I was planning to study just this one book and then take the test. But now that I've read the others' reviews I see that such would be folly: this book alone does not give enough to pass the exam. However, let me point out that for someone who is just interested in learning how to create Windows-based applications using VB.Net or C#.Net (i.e., passing the exam is not the goal) I think the book easily provides enough to satisfy. That's why I gave it three stars despite the negative things I had to say about it: it really isn't all that bad (but it's really not all that great either). PS: I bought the book at my local, but national, bookstore (didn't have a computer then) and paid the full [price]. Should have had a friend by it for me from here!
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview
Review: Having a decent background in VB 6 and Java, I bought this book as an introduction to .NET and C#. Overall, I was not disappointed. I found a few errors, but nothing that kepy me from learning the material. The coverage of some areas was thin, particularly ADO.NET which is a fairly radical departure from ADO. Having taken a number of older MCSD exams, I would guess that the material in this book plus hands-on programming and reading from the Internet will get me past the exam. My biggest disappointment with the book was the labs. Microsoft used to publish great interactive CD training that required many hours of hands-on work to complete the labs. In this book, the labs covered the material but not much more. In summary, if you have programming experience and want a structured approach to learning .NET, try this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Mixed Bag
Review: I bought this book to study for the VB.NET exam - it's a mixed bag. If you're not already experienced in VB.NET (almost no one is at this point) you can't learn enough to pass the test by reading this book. It treats exam topics lightly. However, having said all that, there is some value in having all the exam topics outlined and presented in one place, even if much further study from other sources will be required. If I had it all to do again, I'd spend my money on other titles, using the study outline from Microsoft's certification web site for guidance. (I'm reading Francesco Balena's Programming Microsoft Visual Basic.NET right now, also from Microsoft Press. Balena's book is a winner!)
Rating:
Summary: Probably sufficient for the exam
Review: I had no experience of C# 14 days ago, and used the O'Reilly "Programming C#" book and this one to prepare for the exam I took recently. I have read through all the previous reviews of the book, and here are the points I would pick up on: Someone said 30% of the exam is ADO-based. Yes, that was exactly my experience. I was very surprised just how many of the questions relate to ADO, so you really should learn this part of the book VERY WELL. I skipped the XML section which was a mistake (there were quite a few XML-based questions in the exam). Someone else pointed out that the Windows Drawing code section wasn't relevant for the exam. I too was bored by it, and skipped it, having done extensive GUI work under VC++ in the past. Again, this was a topic that didn't come up at all in the exam. I think that this book is sufficient to pass the exam on its own, but you do need to know it very well. I didn't buy the transcender exams, so when I went into the exam blind. But as a specific example of things the book touches on in passing (usually with a table) which you should really learn well -- -- Properties of different event handlers
-- General properties of Windows controls
-- EVERYTHING about ADO, including Constraints/Relations, and some basic SQL in addition.
-- Role/usage of the various debugging windows
-- Using .NET with legacy components/controls
-- Code and Role-based Security (namespaces, methods, and meaning)
-- Read very carefully the chapters on "Designing a User Interface" toward the start of the book. This material is often referred to Also, don't skip the "language overview" section which makes up the first few hundred pages of the book. The O'Reilly book covered this much better. You can expect some general questions on exception handling, use of interfaces, etc., which are "intuitive" but not necessarily covered specifically in this book. My own approach was to take each chapter and invent a test application of my own to go through the concepts. MS are particularly cunning in the exam, and simply learning "by rote" won't get you through -- you HAVE TO have written applications yourself in order to be ready for some of the questions. I have to say, this is the first MS exam I've taken, and I respect it for its thoroughness. There are only a few "obvious" answers, so be prepared. The questions in the exam are often lengthy, with large sections of code, and while 2 1/2 hours for 150 questions may seem a lot, there is often a lot of material to digest. In retrospect, I would have preferred to prep up a lot more before I took the exam. I passed, but it was a hard slog. Next time, I'll spend longer and not skimp on the preparation. The key of this review, though -- learn ADO THOROUGHLY. 30% is nearly 50 questions! If you don't feel happy with ADO, you'll probably fail the exam on that alone. Best of luck to you all, Alex
Rating: 
Summary: Adequate outline, terrible coverage, terrible sample test
Review: I have nearly a dozen books on .Net now. This is by far the worst .Net book I have bought. I haven't yet taken the exam yet so take my comments with a grain of salt. It is true what others say about this book. The coverage is very rushed. The software sample test totally blows! It hung up on me as the time expired. Can you believe that? Totally typical of Microsoft software! I spent 1.5 hrs going through the test exam and it freezes just as the time runs out. If the real exam freezes up on me when I take it, watch out!
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