applications

What I liked about this book is that it presents concepts and major subject areas quite clearly and without the verbose tedium that characterizes a lot of programming books. Also, the code samples exemplify what each chapter is talking about without a lot of extranneous junk to sort through. I skipped most of the exercises at the end of each chapter 'cause I think I learn more - and have more fun - just making up little apps that do the same things. But the exercises I looked at seemed OK.

What I didn't like about the book is that the areas that it emphasizes aren't necessarily what was emphasized in the exam. I didn't even go through the practice exam on the CD because the MS practice exams on the three other MCSD exams I've taken were so unlike the real exams that I don't think they're worth spending any time on.

The book did help me pass the exam. But, it is not what I would consider to be a good study guide. From what I've seen, this is pretty typical of MS study guides. They usually have some good information but don't seem to focus on the areas that the exams emphasize. Like other reviewers, I had to use other sources of information to get prepared. I don't mean that I expect to be soon-fed all the answers, or even that all the details should necessarily be spelled out. I just think a study guide should be fairly accurate in terms of telling you what you need to know. That's why I only giver this book two stars.

The book is good if it is used as a review tool before the exam. I learned using Wrox's Professional ASP.NET and MSDN. I bought this book to give me hints on what to brush up on. Used like that, it works well.
There are a few hassles- e.g. there is a paragraph on tracing which suggests that pageOutput has to be false for tracing info to go into trace.axd (it doesn't matter, true or false). There are only 100 practice questions on the CD for the 2nd Ed, not 150.
P.s. MeasureUp practice Qs are the best ones, harder than the exam.

I like to learn by getting my "hands dirty" through doing the examples in the text without using the CD-ROM, and have been using this book to attempt to learn C#.NET (not VB.NET). This book is totally terrible: In many cases the code does not work, or you have to scrutinize screen shots to see what steps have been left out of the step-by-step instructions to attempt to figure out what to do. Subject headings do not match the step-by-step content. The screen shots have a lot of added features that are not described in the step-by-step instructions. A lot of the C# code was obviously translated line-by-line from VB code, but never tested or even executed, as over one-third of the examples simply do not work. One "solution" had the steps totally mixed up, but the step numbers were in the correct order. It is obvious that nobody proofread this book, or even attempted to execute the steps on getting examples to work-- because a good number of examples simply do not work. As I delve into modestly complex examples, there are no instructions telling me *why* I'm modifying certain object properties, or even *what* my actions are doing. I spend most of my time trying to figure out how to fix the author's errors and omissions rather than learning how to develop applications in C#. This book, in two words, Totally Sucks. Do not buy under any cirmcumstance. Save yourself.