Why I buy this one ?
- ISBN13: 9780735626195
- Condition: New
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What our customer's say!

"Breadth Not Depth", There are no other books available that provide the breadth of coverage of the .Net Framework than this book. However the coverage is skin deep and not sufficient to give someone enough of a mastery of the .Net Framework to pass the 70-536 certification exam. For the depth of knowledge necessary to pass an exam I have had to turn to more specialized books on the .Net Framework.

"Took exam twice, did not pass", Some of the material for the exams is not even listed inside this book. I have taken the 70-536 twice now, with 2 months worth of studying--and have still not passed. The second edition is still full of errors.

"Decent summary, practice tests lacking", I haven't taken the test yet, but I felt the book does a decent job of overall summarizing the main topics. My main gripe (and the reason this book gets only 3 stars) is the practice exam questions that come with the book. They are overly specific, often cover topics that the book never addressed, and from talking with other people (and looking into other books/tests) it sounds like these questions aren't particularly indicative of the actual certification exams. The questions that come with the book seem to want me to memorize syntax, parameter ordering, and a lot of other nit picky details, while neglecting to address the underlying concepts -- which I expect are more important to passing the real exam.

"Unsatisfactory", I have several issues with this book.

First off, I resent the fact that it is "bi-lingual". As it is, a third of the book is useless to me (i.e. the VB.NET code samples) - a complete waste of dead trees and ink. It's not only superfluous, it is distracting, since I must continually scan for the C# code. Please bother to print two different editions of the book. It should be trivial.

Second, there is too much generic boilerplate text. Each chapter starts with the same kind of generic paragraphs stating that you should have some prior experience with .NET and Visual Studio blah blah blah. Again, I have to scan the text to see where the actual content starts.

Third, I would have liked to see some illustrations! Several topics (such as code access security) would benefit greatly from visual presentations to accompany or replace part of the text. As it is, I have to mentally deserialize the text to build up these images in my head instead.

Finally, a complaint about the exam itself (not the book) is that there are too many questions about random .NET arcana (such as the sequence of parameters to a method call, or whether you pass something to a constructor or set a property after constructing the object, or if there's is a factory method you should use rather than a constructor). A good test would focus on understanding, not on the stuff that Intellisense and MSDN gives you.

"good book on extremely broad range of knowledge", This was definitely the .Net overview book I was looking for. I learned a ton and was generally pretty satisfied. However, having read each chapter 2-3 times, taken extensive notes, worked through all the questions and some of the labs, I did not pass the exam the first time. I was close. When reading many of the questions I felt as if the topic had only been briefly covered in the text. However I would also have to say, your knowledge of .Net would need to be pretty incredible to pass without having reviewed this book.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Good, but not adequate", This book is thick, 700+ pages attempting to cover such huge span of the 70-536 test. For the most part, the author does a fine job of explaining concepts and also with sample codes. Small suggestion: split in TWO books, one for VB and one for C#, the book size will at least reduce 100 pages.

Sadly this book does not cover all topics. In the sample tests on the CD, there are some questions refer to topics not covered at all in the book. It is very hard to pass test just with the book alone.

And there are some errors on the answers, as noted by most reviewers.

Unfortunately there is no other book to study, except hunting through info spread all over MSDN.

"Excellent Foundation Book", A little over a year ago, I travelled this journey with Java, becoming certified as an SCJP. I purchased an $800 course from them, went through it and their little practice exam twice. I passed the test on the FOURTH attempt. It was all because the test hit hard on many areas that were not covered at all in the training. Serialization was one, for example. The course covered about 1/3 of what it needed to on threading.

I learned more about these concepts from THIS book than I did in the $800 video and online class I purchased from SUN. I am about half way through, and I find the writing very understandable, the examples clear. The labs may be TOO clear in that they walk you every step of the way through the assignment rather than let you figure out some of it on your own.

The book assumes that you have some grounding - officially more grounding than I actually have - in .NET. In fact, as I recall, it asks that you program with it for a year or more before attempting this book. I agree that some experience is necessary, but a year is serious overkill. If you know java, dive right in the water's fine. If you don't, try some "for dummies" books for a couple of months before jumping into this one.

"Definitely a useful book, but definitely isn't going to pass the test for you, either.", I just passed the test with an 861/1000. I needed a 700. I found the questions accompanying this CD woefully inadequate compared to the questions on the test. They were both shallow, and much trickier than anything I found on the test. Likewise, this didn't cover some things like BufferedStream, while it went into painful detail on regular expressions which were nowhere to be found in the literally 250 questions I found in braindumps and of the 40 during the actual test (So: don't waste a second of your time on regular expressions).

HOWEVER, that said, it did have some excellent labs and explanations of topics that were on the test that I used to really KNOW what I was being asked. Did it cover each and every class that was on the test? No. Did it give me an understanding of permissions, generic classes and the like? Yeah, it did.

"Very good training", I have bought this book for my training , and i should say that it was enough for me to clear the knowledge that i had and the one that gave me from reading it.

"*The* .NET framework book", Already knowing quite a bit the .NET framework, I originally picked this book up with the intention of filling up as much gaps as I could in about 3-4 weeks tops, and then get certified. After about 2 weeks going through it, I rescheduled my tests because there's just so many pearls in it that can not be overlooked.

It's not that the content is specially complicated, but how they managed to stuff the book with a collection of useful insights one after the other. I can't wait to get to the 70-562 ASP.NET book!