Rating: 
Summary: A excellent introduct
Review: An excellent introduction to .NET FrameworkAs an overall Microsoft developer I was looking for a book to teach me about what .NET is all about. I wanted to know what to expect from .NET. and how to continue learning .NET in the future As the title says this is an Introduction to .NET and to my opinion en excellent one.
Don't expect this book to teach you everything in detail on the matter.
What you will learn here is how different parts of .NET work in general and along the chapters you will encounter useful examples that shine light on the matter. Note that 90% of examples are in simple understandable C#.
(even for none C syntax programmers it is easy to understand) The book is easy reading and all of the examples work file with .NET Beta 2 I recommend this book for everyone who needs a kick start on .NET Here is a brief description of chapters: 1. .Net Overview:
Talks about .NET in general, the design goals and how .NET is realized 2. The Common Language Runtime:
Talks about the inner workings of .NET and what are the different tools like gacutil.exe good for. 3. .NET Programming
Talks about the .NET core model, how/why language integration is there for everyone 4. . Working with .NET Components:
Talks about the component architecture of .NET, distributed components and about Message Queuing. 5. Data and XML:
Shines light on the new ADO.NET. Here I finally got to understand how ADO.NET works. 6. Web Services:
Talks about how web services work with some very good and understandable examples. 7. Web forms:
Shows a general overview of ASP.NET including custom server controls following some good examples 8. Windows Forms:
Shows you different sides of the new GUI programming model of .NET and comes with a very good example of how you can create GUI based apps fast and easy.
Rating: 
Summary: good overview
Review: An excellent overview. You'll need more to get serious about .NET but to discover what .NET is all about and
decide if its what you want, this is great. You do
need a bit of previous MS experience(COM etc)
Rating:
Summary: A great introduction
Review: Great for a first dive into .NET, although misses some points specially in ADO.NET and ASP.NET discussion. Some concepts are not explained with enough care, but any experienced developer should be able to grab a good idea of .NET from the book.
Rating: 
Summary: good background, but unfocused
Review: I consider myself a die-hard O'Reilly fan when it comes to programming books. This book does 2 major things in my opion. First, it gives a pretty in depth description of the .NET platform itself, including a some of the thought behind design descisions made. This spans the first 4 chapters or so, and in my opion, is done in true O'Reilly fashion -- very nicely! The remainder of the book is a whirlwind run through many specific .NET technologies. Here I have to agree with other reviewers in that I spent more time cross-referencing MSDN than I actually did reading the book. Again, the discussion of the platform itself is really great. However, past that, if you're serious about learning the nuts and bolts of asp for instance, you'll need to get more focused book dealing with just asp.
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview of .Net
Review: I found this book to be a good overview of the .net framework for experienced programmers that want more information about .net. This book goes over almost every aspect in the .net framework at a break neck speed, this book contains overviews of asp.net, web services, deployment, windows forms, com+ services, ado.net, and xml in 300 pages. I would not suggest this book to someone new to programming or as a first book about .net. The real value of this book is as a quick overview of all the different aspects of the .net initiative. The topics are covered so quickly that you will not learn much more than theory or the basics of any of the topics, but I think this is the intention of the book and it does serve as a good primer for future .net development.
Rating:
Summary: Good Overview of .Net
Review: I found this book to be a good overview of the .net framework for experienced programmers that want more information about .net. This book goes over almost every aspect in the .net framework at a break neck speed, this book contains overviews of asp.net, web services, deployment, windows forms, com+ services, ado.net, and xml in 300 pages. I would not suggest this book to someone new to programming or as a first book about .net. The real value of this book is as a quick overview of all the different aspects of the .net initiative. The topics are covered so quickly that you will not learn much more than theory or the basics of any of the topics, but I think this is the intention of the book and it does serve as a good primer for future .net development.
Rating:
Summary: Great Overview
Review: I found this book to be a great overview of .NET and left itself centered in the pragmatic of how to get the work done. This is an advanced book and does require the reader to be familiar with quite a bit of how things are done today to really appreciate the improvements. The authors have done a great job focusing on the .NET framework and approach without becoming bogged down in the managed C++, C# or VB.NET language.
Rating:
Summary: Decent overview, weak in some areas
Review: I'm generally pleased with the quality of O'Reiley books and ".NET Framework Essentials" continues that tradition. The material that's covered (COM+ Component Services, Message Queueing, ADO.NET, etc) is relevent and doesn't get too bogged down in details and is timely. I would have liked to see more coverage of the ASP.NET Web Controls, which is where this book is weak. But all things considered, it's worth the buy.
Rating:
Summary: A good introduction, hard to read
Review: I'm not a big fan of this book. It's INCREDIBLY hard to read and it really doesn't cover all that much. I read it and then thought, "well, this was pretty pointless." Have you ever been in a project meeting and there's one developer in there who's read about 20 different super-obscure specs but doesn't really understand anything about any of them... then proceeds to spew volumes of impressive sounding but totally useless information that just confuses [...] everyone else? Well, if you turned that guy into a book, you'd get ".Net Framework Essentials." I'd say pass on this book because it can't figure out if it wants to be a 10000 meter overview of .net or a 1 centimeter exploration of a few useless details.
Rating: 
Summary: Needlessly hard to read. Not much there.
Review: I'm not a big fan of this book. It's INCREDIBLY hard to read and it really doesn't cover all that much. I read it and then thought, "well, this was pretty pointless." Have you ever been in a project meeting and there's one developer in there who's read about 20 different super-obscure specs but doesn't really understand anything about any of them... then proceeds to spew volumes of impressive sounding but totally useless information that just confuses [...] everyone else? Well, if you turned that guy into a book, you'd get ".Net Framework Essentials." I'd say pass on this book because it can't figure out if it wants to be a 10000 meter overview of .net or a 1 centimeter exploration of a few useless details.
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