Rating: 
Summary: A must have to pass both the 70-176 and 70-176 exams
Review: This book is the best book I have seen for taking the MCSD Visual basic Desktop and Distributed tests. I have also read the Microsoft Certified press books, and this is far more in depth and easy to read.The best feature of this book is the way it covers both exams in the same book. Since much of the information is overlapped in the exams, this is a good way to not repeat your studying. I found that for the Distributed exam, I could gloss over the interface chapters, and for the Desktop exam I could gloss over the MTS chapters. I would strongly urge anyone preparing for the MCSD exams to purchase this book. It is, however, not a replacement for the Transcenders.
Rating: 
Summary: Good presentation, but needs more concise
Review: I'll give 4.5 stars to this book if I could. Why? Having 3 years VB programming experience, I brought this book 3 months ago when I decided taking MCSD #70-176 exam, by myself -- not my boss. I've read through it, did the exercises at each end of chapter, and did the test on the CDROM. Also I've read "MCSD VB 70-176 Exam Prep" book and "MCSD VB 70-196 Exam Cram" book. Here's what I feel about this book: Pros -- 1. Best of MCSD VB Exam Guide, for both beginning and advanced VB programmer; 2. It teaches you every issue of the test, good presentation. Cons -- 1. Less information about Exam 70-175; 2. Last 4 chapters can be cut 1/4, too wordy! 3. "Study strategies" on beginning of each chapter can be cut off, it's useless, just annoying! Here's my sugestion: 1. Read this book first, carefully, take note, do the Exercises at end of each chapters; 2. Don't waste your time in reading "MCSD VB #70=-176 Exam Prep" book -- New Rider book is better! 3. Read "MCSD in a Nutshell" book for further deep study; 4. Read "MCSD VB 70-176 Exam Cram" book for a quick review before the exam. -- That's what I am doing. Now I'm ready! -- I'll take the exam next week...
Rating:
Summary: Jan Norberger
Review: If it weren't for the fact that I don't believe in giving any book a five star rating this one would have come close. Coupled with the Transcender exams I passed the 70-176 exam today with a score of 928. No tricks, no cheats... simply STUDY (not read) the book, do the exercises and use the Transcender exams. The book contains excellent review and multiple choice exam questions. On top of this, many chapters also inclued case studys to get you thinking about how to apply what you have learnt. I would recommend this book to anyone studying for these exams.
Rating: 
Summary: The books errors can hurt
Review: I am a person that like to jump to the tests before reading the book. Well Lets say I encountered 3 Wrong Answers on the Test and this is not acceptable for any person for exam preperation. I can understand typos but when the back of the book says "Accurate" what a joke. By the way: whats greater that 74. 75 and above but the book doesnt seem to think so. It says the answer to finding a record in a ADO recordset where the Number is less than 75. heres ther correct answer. .Find "ID > 74", adSearchForward. Hmmm Whats wrong with this picture. This is one of many misleading errors. Due to the Accuracy of the Tests I have to say the book fails in its purpose (Exam Preparation). Errors in the Book OK, but on the actual exams and questions NOT OK for exam preperation.
Rating: 
Summary: READ THIS REVIEW IT WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE!!!!!!!!!
Review: I am a VB developer who has worked with VB for about 3-4 years. So I decided to pick this book in terms of what it covered since it had both VB exams in the MCSD curriculum. There was no need for me to get certified really. I just felt like doing it. So what can I tell you about this book??? I think it would be best to describe it in relating to you my test taking experience. I decided to take the 70-175 Distributed test first. I failed. I got 685 and needed 728 (failed by 4.3%). I then decied a month or so later to take the Desktop 70-176 exam I failed. I got 700 and needed 714 (failed by 1.4%). So how did the book help me?? I'll put it to you this way best in pros and cons. PRO: 1) This is a great reference book in finding out properties of controls and what is covered for the exam, and some techniques. 2) It is organized very well. 3) You will learn things in VB (as I did) that you may never had needed, or never knew existed ( and you know what?? some of that is pretty COOL!). CON: (there are MANY) 1) If you do not know VB at all, or god forbid programming you will not have a hope in hell of understanding this book. 2) The book is CHOC full of errors. Even the error list that you can get from the publishers web site doesn't cover all the mistakes 2a) Bad code in the examples that is just plain wrong or incomplete. 2b) Incorrect answers in the back of the book that either have the wrong answer highlighted (A when the explanation is answer B), or stuff that is plain wrong such as in Exercise 20.4 (Compiler Constants CONTRADICTS the fast fact for exam 70-176 page 1033, 'A value for a compiler option set in the command line overrides the value set in code' WRONG try the exercise!) Now tech manuals are known for their mistakes, but if you need to know something as the CORRECT answer, and it is not given or worse WRONG, then you start having doubts about what you are learning. The numerous amount of errors in this book are INEXSCUSABLE!!! 3) Many of the examples have POOR instructions (Chapter 13 is notorious). I could figure out pretty much all of them, but if you don't know VB you will have a VERY hard time getting it. 4) Would it hurt to have the source code on the CD!! (they probably didn't do this cause they knew the examples provided were half a**) 5) The practice questions and exams fail CONSTANTLY to mention whether you should select more than one answer! You get the idea from then on that other questions are not neccesarily a one answer question. It is clear on the exam (you will get either SELECT ALL THAT APPLY, OR Select 2, 3 etc..) 6) The book makes NO NOTE of WHAT YOU NEED TO USE THIS BOOK! This has to be The ONLY tech book I have ever bought that DOES not tell you what you need (in terms of software). You will need SQL to do some of the exercises in Chapter 9, and you should do some of the exercises related to MTS with NT. If you don't have them, you are leaving out important information that you need to know in the exam. Did I mention you'd need at least VB professional??? Luckily I have all these things. 7) For exam 70-175 this book is too weak in areas of n-tier concepts and the MTS is not covered good enough. This book is not really geared towards this exam. 8) For exam 70-176 this book is weak on PDW. This book however, is geared more towards the Desktop exam. 9) The practice CD exams, Study cards etc.. have stuff that is NOT EVEN COVERED IN THE TEXT. You tell me in the book in Chapter 3 where they discuss Drag Drop events.. 10) Many of the explanations to the answers in the practice test s on the CD examples tell you nothing in relation to the question. 11) Due to the numerous amount of controls and properties of controls in VB you can NOT memorize them all and the book CAN'T cover them all. That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Other reviews I have read here, have expressed faults that I think are reliable as well. So is my review biased cause i failed??? No... The simple reality is that I failed these exams for one simple reason. I DO NOT.. and WILL NOT... remember anal things like, what setting is on what, tab under what option, under what menu item. OR EVEN WORSE.. What are all the parameters names, and values for event X (just one eg.). Any programmer/developer who does this is NUTS! You show me something in VB and you say to me 'what is this' I either say it is blah, or I don't know but I'll check MSDN and get you your answer. I do not say, oh the setting on tab X under menu Y does this if blah blah blah. Give me a break... There were also questions on the exam that I WOULD NEVER do in my applications (like use the Data Environment designer), so of course I don't know the names of all the events for a connection object and I am smart enough to know that I WOULD NEVER PUT CODE THERE IF YOU PUT A BULLET TO MY HEAD. Also I debug my program only a certain way.. thus questions on Watches I could care less. So you think I am bitter. Well no I am not (seriously). Yes there were questions on the exams (both of them) that I had no idea what they were talking about. And I think some of the theory oriented stuff (I seem to get murdered on the Establishing the Development Environment section(s)), I look at as not applicaple to the REAL WORLD! Sure this is the optimal solution.. but your boss says, we don't have the cash or I WANT it this way period. I think this clouds my judgement on these questions. So I can not recommend this book cause the cons are just too numerous. The best advice I can leave with you (if you are thinking of VB certification) is the following: "Do not get certified in something you do not know". Ecspecially if you do not know VB. Make sure that you have worked with ALL the concepts in this book fully in a real world environment and you wont even need a book to pass the exams. And I know there's people out there who can just retain information and memorize stuff and pass tests like it is nothing. But it wont help you if you can memorize everything pass this test, and then get planted in front of a terminal and someone says make THIS. You will be screwed (or at least have to be retrained in what you supposedly already know). There was someone here who posted that they had no knowledge of VB but passed both these exams. Unless this person is a programmer in a different language, I find this a very FRIGHTENING prospect. I know that I would never work for such an organization (or said individual) who matched the above description. Hope this review has been helpful. PS. Buy good tutorial books on VB and make stuff, don't study/buy this book if you want to pass the exam.
Rating:
Summary: Good packaging, poor product design and implementation
Review: The cover, chapter organization with objectives, study strategy, and so forth, all suggest that this is a comprehensive, well thought out product. It is NOT! The actual text is a mish-mash that reads more like a catalog than a text book. The teaching aids were layered on top of a product that seems like a brain dump, not a planned, organized exposition. And the errors are very disturbing; they are littered throughout the text. Prepare to be frustrated by the poor continuity and segues from hell. Terms are often used extensively before being defined, as example. Much of the subject matter is assumed to be known in advance, so the presentation that is offered ends up being rather weak. I am looking for a better text! You should, too.
Rating:
Summary: Good but not quite good enough
Review: This book is very good and helps you learn VB but it isn't complete enough to pass the test. I used this book solely the first time I took the Desktop VB Test and got a 685 and barely didn't pass. I then bought the Transcender prep test and got a 871 today. So if you have both the Transcender product and this book and you should not have a problem. Chap 9 of the book WILL be on the 70-176 test. Also, look at the MSDN online help for Package and Deployment Wizard. Know about the Data Report also.
Rating:
Summary: I passed both tests using this as my primary source
Review: I spent 8 weeks studying for the exams and passed both comfortably. I did not find either of them easy. To prepare, I read the book and the exercises twice. The first time through, I answered all the review and test questions at the end of each chapter, and read all their answers. The second time through, I took 43 pages of condensed notes and reviewed them several times before the test. After all that, I still failed both practice tests at the end of the book. And I failed the first test I took on the CD. After that, I took 3 more tests on the CD and made passing scores. After each test, I looked up and corrected each wrong answer. If you use this book as your only source, you will definitely need to take notes, and you will definitely need to take several practice exams, to learn how to test. I found the practice tests very much like the real thing. The most disappointing thing to me was the number of incorrect answers on the practice tests. Each time I tested, I thought between 3 and 6 of their answers were incorrect. I would recommend this book as an inexpensive way to prepare for the two VB tests. Just be prepared for a lot of work.
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Summary: This Book + Transcender + Online Help = Success!
Review: I decided to buy this book because of the high ratings in this site and is pleased to report that this is the best book I've seen that covers both exam 70-028 and 70-029. Make sure to do all the exercises at the end of each chapter to have a hands-on experience of the concepts being taught. Exam questions at the end of each chapter also makes you retain more of what you've read so make sure you go through those too. Although this book is by no means complete, gaps could be filled in by searching some of the topics it missed using the product's online help. Specially lacking is its Package and Deployment chapter. The accompanying CD gives you some feel on what it is like to take the exam but Transcender comes closer to the real thing than the software packaged with this book. Errors in the text and the exercises could sometimes fluster you but a quick trip to the publishers website for the latest errata for this book could help you catch the more obvious mistakes. Overall, this book is a valuable resource for the exam and as a handy reference even after the exam.
Rating:
Summary: A Life Saver!
Review: I went through the Microsoft training course at a local school and failed the exam the first time. The curriculum was very light on the Package and Deployment Wizard which is covered thoroughly in exam 70-176. This book covers the material in-depth and helped me pass the exam. I used the book almost exclusively to pass 70-175. The book is very thorough in its treatment of the topics without being needlessly technical or verbose. I highly recommend this book to any prospective MCP!
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