Rating: 
Summary: Everything you need to prepare for - and become - frustrated
Review: The book appeared to have been rushed, as I often found myself coming across grammatical errors, typos, incorrect self-test answers, inconsistent information, and most annoying of all - exercises that were erroneous and/or lacking required code for executing.I gave up on the book after the 6th chapter. Basically, I didn't feel confident that I could trust the book content, and being the type of person who learns by example, I needed exercises that worked. Wasting time trying to debug code from the book just isn't acceptable. Rushing a book of this nature to the shelves does have its advantages; however, in the long run, it's only creating bad business. I would look elsewhere for MCSD study material.
Rating:
Summary: Too many errors to be useful.
Review: I gave up after 2 chapters. What is the value of a book with so much incorrect information and so many typos?
Rating:
Summary: It's a waste of money
Review: You can't depend on there Exam Simulation. Some of the answers on their questions on the book and on the CD-ROM are not the same. How can you pass the exam if the book you're reading doesn't even know what's wrong or right.
Rating: 
Summary: It helped me.
Review: I found this helpful. There are some errors, but I found most of them listed on Syngress's website. I've never found a study guide that doesn't have some errors. I like the overall layout of the Syngress study guides. They seem to map well to exam objectives, and are well written. i agree with some comments that it could have been stronger explaining handling errors with ADO, but I think it was made up for with a strong section on COM components. I was happy with the book, and feel that the money was well spent. Thanks for reading my comments.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard work.
Review: I agree with the reviewer who wondered how anyone could give this book 5 stars unless they had a financial interest in it. The book is very hard work. Topics are presented all out of proportion: that is, important topics are glossed over while trivial topics get page space. The book definitely appears padded just to make it look like a big, useful book. Material is repeated, while meaningless sidebars appear as if the editor was thinking, "time for a sidebar". Many topics are explained in mind-boggling ways that make them seem impossibly difficult, when a little diagram would have made them seem easy. Even for someone inexperienced with VB, it is obvious to me that there are stupid errors in examples and in self tests. The whole thing has been thrown together in a hurry to make a buck. I have no option but to plough through this thing now to pass my exam, but hell, I resent it.
Rating:
Summary: The worst MCSD Exam book ever made?
Review: Who was the loser who decided to put the practice exam in browser-based format?? Absolutely nothing new from the book!
Rating:
Summary: I want my money back
Review: I stoped reading after chapter 3 because I have found too many mistakes and errors. I am looking for other books that would help me pass my exam.
Rating:
Summary: A Decent Desktop Study Guide
Review: This study guide has been extremely helpful in my studying. Yes, there are a few errors, but most study guides I've seen have some. There's also an errata site that Syngress has that lists them. The book seems to map extremely well to the exam objectives, which was a definite plus. It's challenging, so someone new to programming may have difficulty, but I think it will certainly help me in passing.
Rating:
Summary: Book needs to be debugged!
Review: If you have experience with VB then this is an okay book, but it is quite obvious that this was a 'hurry to press' book. Some of the Self Test questions were never covered in the chapter to which they were asked and the answers to many questions are wrong. This book definitely proves that you must have experience to pass the test, because this book alone will not do!
Rating:
Summary: Want a good study guide for 70-176? Better look elsewhere!
Review: This book is way too general to be very helpful on the exam. Yes, all the test material is in there (somewhere). I would suggest a more concise book such as the Fast Track series from New Riders. Also, the most frustrating part of this book is the included CD practice exam. This is just another example of making software browser based that shouldn't be. I tried several times to go through the pratice exams unsuccessfully. Instead of including a simple Win32 based practice test, they made it all browser based and used java and cookies to force it to work in a IE4. To navigate the test you must use the navigation buttons provided which stopped working at different points in the exam. And please don't accidentally use one of the browsers navigation buttons or you'll lose all your progress and you'll have to start over. Several times the browser just closed for no reason at all and other times just became unresponsive. Do you know what it's like to answer 30-40 questions, lose all your responses, not know the results, and have to start all over again. I guess the brains at Syngress felt that the exam "needed" to be browser based "because everything else is". Some advice for the people at Syngress: 1. Next time, make a study guide that focuses on the test material. If I want to learn the entire VB product I can read the books online. 2. Enough of the cheesy browser based exams. Stick with a Win 32 app based test. 3. Edit, edit, edit. Letting errors slip through can hurt test takers.
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