Great Overview

This book is an excellent introduction to many topics including the .net framework, VS.net IDE, Windows Forms, Remoting, MSMQ, ADO.net, ASP.net, Web services and more. There is also a 60 or so page chapter on C# programming.
This book was published before VS.net was released and all the references are made to the beta.
The writing style is very clear and the book is an easy read. Each chapter has a summary of key concepts as well as a short FAQ section at the end.
The code examples are all in C# of course.
This book is best suited as an introduction to .net technologies for an already at least moderately-savvy professional. This book will not make you a .net guru ready to jump and develop .net enterprise solutions. But it will help you understand all the new "buzz words" and explain key concepts. After reading this book, it will be a lot easier to understand which book you need to pick up next to get into the details.
This is also not the best book for a total beginner. A lot of knowledge is already assumed. A lot of differences are pointed out between asp and asp.net for example, or between C# and C++. A person with previous knowledge in these areas will benefit from there comparisons but they will only help confuse someone who is just trying to grasp everything from scratch.
All in all, I think this is a great book - books like this are needed, in that they give a great overview and don't spend 500 pages exhausting one particular topic when you just wanted to know the basics and put all the pieces together. Anyone who buys this book with this in mind will not be dissappointed.

Other Reviews

• Useful IF you are the right audience, otherwise skip it
• Poor efforts
• Another fine example of textbook padding to generate sales
• Details are missing
• Great Overview