Customer Reviews
Just what I was looking for 
2007-09-22
I am an experienced developer but fairly new to VB.NET. This book is not for beginners but it is great for someone like myself who knows what they want to do and just wants some good examples and tips. It's a great reference book and a good alterative to Google. The English is clear and to the point. The book is a sturdy hardback and the pages are well laid out. It's easy to read afters hous of staring at a screen. To sum up, I'm glad that I brought it. It has saved me time and money and you can't ask for much more than that :-)
Great Book 
2007-08-01
There is a lot of information in this book, covering a broad range of subjects. It is well laid out and easy to reference. The CD comes with the current version of the book as well as the author's previous book on VB6. Not really a beginner's book as there are more intermediate and advanced topics. I had not used .NET and hadn't touched VB6 in a couple of years. I needed a resource to help jump from rusty VB6 skills to .NET - this book did it perfectly. It is also filled with advanced topics that I am not currently using but now know where to go when the need arrives.
Great quality 2007-05-24
Fast service, great quality... What more can you ask for. I recommend this seller.
Great for all levels 2006-05-23
I bought this book few years. It is an excelent source of information and writers style is very clear. I just came back to see if Balena has book for C# 2005. Looks like I found something. I am going get that one. However, present book is quite good, check if there is a newer release you may want to get that one.
Wonderful learning tool and reference 2006-02-09
This was the first .NET book I purchased, and in many ways if I hadn't bought any others it would have been sufficient. It has thorough coverage of the .NET environment, with lucid code examples in VB.NET. I found the chapters on ADO.NET and the framework internals to be most useful to my job as an ASP.NET developer, but the coverage is deep enough that a person with very little programming experience could read this book and come away as a well-rounded .NET programmer. Even if you're writing in C#, as I am, the book is worth the money. I would also recommend Dino Esposito's Programming Microsoft ASP.NET for more depth if you're a web developer.
Best Reference book I've ever read 2005-11-19
Accelerate your productivity with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET 2003 with guidance from a leading author and expert in the developer community. This definitive reference offers coverage that's both broad and deep, fully up to date with Microsoft Visual Stud
deserves 5 stars 2005-10-23
Everyone else here has covered the technical aspects about this great book, but I just want to emphasize the writing style. This author, Francesco Balena, is absolutely a brilliant writer. His conversion of thoughts into words is truly incredible. And so is the organization. If you have the earlier edition of his first book by the same name, you would benefit from the upgrade. Definitely worth the money.
A Jewel 2005-09-04
The intro says there's an electronic book on the CD. Huh? No electronic book. Apart from this, the book is outstanding. But beware: it's not for the faint-hearted neither for the beginner. If you don't belong to either of these categories, get the book - you won't regret it.
Just what I was looking for 2005-08-24
First off, let me say that this is not a beginner's book. It does touch a bit on the basics of each topic, but it is not a tutorial. There are plenty of those out there anyway. This book is for the programmer that has had enough of the basics and is ready to advance. I have read some reviews claiming this book talks too much about VB6. I do not agree. I started out learning VB.NET and never had much exposure at all to VB6. As a real world programmer trying to do more advanced things, such as interface with the WIN32 API, the VB6 content is required. When trying to make some of these API calls work, I have had to search out solutions on the internet. Most of these VB solutions are written in VB6 or earlier. While I don't think it is required to know everything about VB6, it is very useful (required in my opinion) to know how to read it. In addition, the explaination of how data is marshalled between the managed and unmanaged environment is very easy to understand.
To sum up, I have been long searching for a book to bring me to the next level in VB.NET. I believe I have found it.
A note for prospective buyers 2005-04-15
I suspect most people who have reviewed this book are experienced developers, and I imagine this book is great for them. However, I found that the book was not very useful for a less-than-experienced reader (specifically, me).
The main thing that bugged me was that the cover makes it sound like a complete reference for everyone, but if you dig deep enough into the introduction, you're told that the book is written specifically for VB6 developers - and the rest of the book very much bears that out. If you are not a VB6 developer you may feel like this book was not written for you, and that's correct - it was not.
This VB6 slant is so pronounced that I believe the front or back cover should have stated - very clearly - that this book is wirtten with the VB6 developer in mind. Better yet, the title should have "for VB6 developers" in it somewhere. In either case I would have (correctly) avoided wasting money on a book that is not written for my needs.
