Microsoft Books
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Used price: $26.99

Complete but a little borring Review Date: 2008-07-14
Every Programmer Should Own This BookReview Date: 2008-05-29
Great start for building a cohesive dev teamReview Date: 2008-04-11
One warning, the book gets a bit tedious after the first half. If you're looking to improve your C programming skills, it gets really detailed into pointers and other fun, or not, stuff. Also, the examples are in VB.NET...but you still get the point.
Code Complete2 is a must-read for a programmerReview Date: 2008-03-08
A classic bookReview Date: 2008-05-21
The average students are all studying business marketing. The good students are studying finance.
At Harvard University, they do not teach Accounting. The best ones, study Economics. There are only 21 students studying Computer Science at Harvard. Yet, parents are paying $220,000 to Harvard and other Ivy League. Truly amazing!
Is there anyway we can change this trend?

Used price: $5.99

Hmmm, lot's of pages, less contentReview Date: 2008-05-20
This is a big book in terms of pages but the content is less than stellar. Don't expect to find too much on designing AD in real world situations such as integration with networking topologies and devices. Nor expect to find details on integrating AD with other Microsoft technology such as SharePoint. No this cookbook is really an administrator companion, and I think it does a pretty decent job in that but not more.
In regular use on my office bookshelfReview Date: 2008-04-25
Must Have Reference book for Admins and Developers!Review Date: 2008-03-24
Great reference, could use a little work on helping people implement in more useful ways though.Review Date: 2007-11-07
There are a number of areas where I think the book falls short - all of the scripts are very hard coded scripts that don't tell you how to do some functions that would make their scripts actually useful (like "pull the list of users with attributes from a tab-delimited file and create them" or something similar, this would make mass creation of users actually useful, instead of "create user1, user2, user3, etc..."). I think that the writers expect you to be a VB expert (or at least close to it) if you're going to actually make the vb scripts useful.
Most of the scripts are "How to use a script to do the same functions that you can already do in AD with ADUC or another MMC", but I think that the most important thing for me about the book is what it inspires me to think of doing. Things that MS doesn't necessarily expect you to do. I'm still not seeing a way to add sidHistory to an object (MS does it with another applet - there is a way...), but there are so many things in the book that just have me thinking about how you can implement changes to an environment that MS says you can't do. What they really mean is "You can't do that with the GUI tools that we provide you".
Great Book!!Review Date: 2007-07-26


Excellent bookReview Date: 2008-06-21
Great book from beginners to experts.
WPF made easyReview Date: 2008-05-14
Great For LearningReview Date: 2008-05-09
Full color with good examples and covers a good range of details.
WPF knowledge = Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed (WPF) (Unleashed) Review Date: 2008-04-29
Great content to match the great presentation!Review Date: 2008-06-24
I did a quick flip through and thought... "Beautiful presentation, but the content looks a bit over-simplified. Maybe all the reviewers were seduced by the full colour pages."
Then I started working my way through the book. I was blown away. The writing style is simple and to the point. But it doesn't lack depth. There are indications of the little things that are likely to catch you out, as well as discussions of some pretty advanced topics too.
So, Yay! The content of the book was just as good as the way it was presented, if not better. My only criticism is that in some cases there could have been more code examples.
On the other hand this would probably have made the book very bloated and not as useful as a reference book. There's enough information to point you in the right direction, and from there google will get you to all the code samples you need.
So let O'Reilly do the cookbook style books with lots of code snippets. They do that so well. This book takes a novel approach, and it works brilliantly!


Wood saving the worldReview Date: 2008-08-09
A serious topic delivered sensibly and with levity.Review Date: 2008-08-07
This is a gripping book about a Social Entrepreneur and his work. Share in Wood's experiences, triumphs and setbacks as you read through chapters worth its weight in gold. At the end, I took to heart his message. And that is testament to the content and writing.
Thank you John for your work, and your work at RoomToRead.org.
Venturing into CharityReview Date: 2008-08-01
What a way to go if you bring business skills like Woods, or if you are an amateur like me. Read, enjoy, learn and apply your new knowledge/
John McLevie
inspirationalReview Date: 2008-07-03
thanks for the encouragment, John....Review Date: 2008-06-27
not a day goes by that I am not thankful for having jumped at the chance to change my life, for the better.

Used price: $5.99

Even better than the 1st editionReview Date: 2008-05-13
When I heard the second edition was released I didn't think much would have changed, but this is even better than the first edition. It's twice as big and covers all major (and not so major) topics in WPF (inc. an introduction to 3D and Silverlight).
I think this book will proof to be for WPF what Programming Windows, Fifth Edition is for WIN32 programming.
This Book is a Valuable ResourceReview Date: 2008-05-02
The other benefit of this book is that it doesn't just tell you how to do things, but why. This is incredibly helpful in finding the best solution to your specific problem.
Thanks guys! great book!
Ralph
Ignore the 2 and 3 star reviewsReview Date: 2008-04-25
Using Amazon's 'Search inside this book' takes you to the 2005 edition also. That shows only 10 chapters while this edition has 17. Most of the negative comments from the 2 and 3 star reviewers seem to have been resolved.
Not Just XAML, Great on 3DReview Date: 2008-02-26
If you just want to focus on XAML, however, I will have to recommend "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan.
Not worth of buyingReview Date: 2008-02-15
And I found this book to be too shallow for a technical person like me.
[One can save money by simply downloading WPF SDK samples and learning them]
Can one design and implement a better than WPF framework after reading this book? Obviously not!
No wonder, the authors never developed significant portions of any known product/framework!
Also, my e-mail exchange with C. Sells indicates that he himself doesn't really understand WPF in depth.
(BTW, as a MS employee he has luxury of having access to WPF source code and symbols - he obviously didn't bother to do so)
Just a few examples:
-- Managed/Unmanaged transition, e.g. the MIL stuff
-- Lack of understanding the WPF control model
-- Lack of understanding the WPF text model
-- Just like in any other *shallow WPF book* [are there deep WPF books out there?] authors make no effort to scrutinize the existing framework (WPF). [Which is definitely far from being clean and nice]
-- WPF "GDI-free" claims are nonsense since WPF uses User32 and User32 and Gdi32 libs are tightly coupled.

Used price: $4.93

Very InformativeReview Date: 2007-05-27
ExcellentReview Date: 2003-04-12
Great for reference and to learn.
Best overview of the Windows Command Shell availableReview Date: 2006-04-30
Windows NT Shell Scripting is less about Windows NT than it is about how to write shell scripts. It covers the details of using the Command Shell in interactive mode, its configuration and how the 32-bit Command Shell differs from the 16-bit DOS box. Then it delves into the structure and syntax of the Command Shell language, providing a clear understanding of how the program control features such as IF and FOR work. Finally, it shows you how to create sophisticated shell scripts using the internal commands and external command-line utilities included with Windows and their Resource Kits.
Not everything in this book has survived the test of time. The old task scheduler using the AT command, though still supported in current version of Windows, has been mostly replaced by more powerful Scheduled Tasks of Windows 2000 and later. And you will want to supplement this book with a modern reference of the utility programs available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (such as OReilly's "Windows Server 2003 In A Nutshell"). Yet this represents only a small part of the book and majority of material stands up very well. Certainly there is no better and more in-depth tutorial for building command scripts than Timothy Hill's book.
InvaluableReview Date: 2002-02-15
The DOS shell has become a requirement and skill relegated to the background by the direction of Microsoft curriculum, this book explains it and teaches it.
The authors instructions are easy to follow, without doting like the Teach Yourself "whatever" in 24 hour books, Tim Hill doesn't waste your time, or your money.
It doesn't get better than this. Now we need a 2nd edition.Review Date: 2002-04-08
The book can be used both as a tutorial and a reference for Windows NT scripting and gives good examples of the commands, tools and concepts covered. For Windows NT, this book does the job as your Shell Scripting Bible in less than 400 pages.
Since Windows NT 4.0, a lot has happened in the Windows scripting field though. With the release of Windows 2000 and the subsequent Windows XP and .NET Server, shell scripting has become much more powerful. A second edition of this book covering the new commands and tools would be most welcome. Until one exists, you might also want to look at newer books covering shell scripting for operating systems based on the Windows NT kernel.
You might also want to look at other, often more powerful ways to script your Windows NT-based environment. For that matter I recommend looking at other books covering WSH (Windows Script Host), ADSI and WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation).

Hard Drive is no Mega-Flop!Review Date: 2008-08-11
The good aspects of this book include the following:
* The emphasis on how Microsoft was not built in a day but with many, many long days and lots of innovative thinking. This book offers an excellent portrayal of how hard Gates worked.
* The portrayal of how relentlessly competitive and ambitious Gates is, be it at efficient programming, dominating the various software markets, studying higher mathematics or playing poker with his buddies.
* The many specific details of the growth of Microsoft, as a company, up until the time of the book's publication.
* The implicit theme of how a productive genius such as Gates never stops thinking.
Unfortunately, there are several aspects of this book that I disliked. These include the following:
* The writing is repetitive and sometimes is very stream-of-conscious. Moreover, this book reads like a 250-300 page book diluted, with uninteresting information, into a 400 page book.
* There is a lot of negative commentary about Gates' personality. First, this negative illustration seems to be done without providing the proper context. Gates is often portrayed as very immature. In this book, Gates is described as frequently issuing direct attacks on the intelligence of his employees during meetings and in private communication. He is also portrayed as immature through negligence, such as when he, presumably inadvertently, left his dirty laundry thrown about on a hotel floor for a top executive of his company to collect.
Although these incidents may be true, the authors could have made the context clearer: Gates is an enormously successful executive in his early twenties. While this does not excuse the described behavior, it does provide context for it. Needless to say, these immature outbursts would be more shocking if they were committed by a seasoned executive in his early sixties.
More generally, this image of Gates conflicts with the image I gathered of him through other means. A friend of mine who worked at Microsoft described Gates as routinely hosting interns in his mansion for dinner, magnanimously forgiving a new employee who accidentally dented his car and graciously answering a personal e-mail concerning the artwork in his home. The Gates I have heard of through my friend, and the one who runs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, does not fit the mold of the Gates described in this book.
I am not challenging the veracity of the information contained within, I am just surmising that it sounds atypical of Gates, if not just descriptions of a few bad habits that he may have grew out of.
Overall, this is a pretty good, but not amazing, slightly outdated book on Bill Gates' impact on turning Microsoft into a giant.
A glimpse at Bill Gates and MicrosoftReview Date: 2008-07-04
Inspirational!Review Date: 2007-12-16
This book is a must-read for people who consider themselves ambitious and driven. It taught me the importance of single-minded drive and determination, coupled with a passion for the line of work one is in. IT is a tough line of work to be in - jobs could be outsourced anytime, skills become redundant quickly and there isn't the glamor or get-fabulously-rich possibility of finance or investment banking... but this book demonstrates that as long as you are passionate about what you do, there is always room at the top. Take heart from it!
Great tracking of a complex personality....Review Date: 2007-05-13
The details includes how Bill "turned over" IBM... Promissing them the OS/2 under the "NT Technology" flag and how he realeased Windows 95 and killed IBM forever from the Desktop business. It also shows Gates apreciation for Older woman (and many that took him to bed). As part of this "private" package, it also explains the problems that He had with Steve Ballmer. How Ballmer was showing poor management and leadership under Gates perspective and how Ballmer got over it and made his loyalty to Gates forever.
I was more interested on the part that explains how Microsoft Windows 1.0 was developed. How disastrous the first Office was compared to the competition and how they managed to "work around" and fix it, by "coping" the competition and improving it "the Microsoft way".
Buy this if you want to know how business can be done... or be "copied".
Intense, highly relevantReview Date: 2007-07-21
The Microsoft/Gates biography is impeccable in its wealth of interesting details and engaging story-telling.
Bill Gates is a fantastic decision maker. He would be as successful selling water or space suits, he just happened to be at the right time in the right booming industry and pushed with his business-business mentality to the limit. Right decision after right decision, the Microsoft journey is a story that any entrepreneur should nitpick and absorb as much as possible.
Of course, his terrible capitalistic drive is a perfect subject for a discussion on morals, social responsibility and related matters, but without a doubt when it comes to maximizing outcome while playing by our economic rules, Hard Drive tells a tale of epic proportions featuring a superhero / villain that rivals the best of science fiction.

Used price: $29.49

Are you a .NET developer? What? You haven't read this book?Review Date: 2008-07-30
Wait, what has this gotta do with reviewing a technical computing book?
Well, you knew incorrect air pressure worsens tyre grip, accelerates wear & tear, and reduces fuel efficient, right? You knew improper engine tuning may lead to unsynchronized valve and spark plug timings, resulting in severe loss of power, right? You knew air bubbles in brake fluid can result in inconsistent application of brakes and uneven deceleration, right? Ah, so many important factors of physics revolving around the science and engineering of motoring. Yet so subtle and unknown by the vast majority of motorists. And ignored. Never realising what performance-leaking sins they commit against their cars.
This very book will expose the fact that you are effectively guilty of the same level of ignorance with the .NET CLR as you go about your daily programming work.
There are tons of titles covering the use of technologies and frameworks that build on top of Microsoft's .NET Framework. By and large they are fine, fulfilling the needs of developers as they work on the real purposes of their jobs - delivering beneficial (or entertaining) value to users and industries. But so few step into that deeper realm to discuss the very thing that makes this all possible. The very heart of the .NET framework, at its core, the mighty execution engine known as the CLR. Jeffery Richter takes a different approach by removing the shroud of magic surrounding the CLR and the C# compiler, exhibiting the internals and explaining all the little crucial activitites it does behind the scenes so that programmers can carelessly forget and not bother.
He organises the book into five parts and twenty four chapters of excrutiating detail:
Part 1 CLR Basics
Chapter 1 The CLR's Execution Model
Chatper 2 Building, Packaging, Deploying, and Administering Applications and Types
Chatper 3 Shared Assemblies and Strongly Named Assemblies
Part 2 Working with Types
Chapter 4 Type Fundamentals
Chapter 5 Primitive, Reference, and Value Types
Part 3 Designing Types
Chaper 6 Type and Member Basics
Chapter 7 Constants and Fields
Chapter 8 Methods: Constructors, Operators, Conversions, and Parameters
Chapter 9 Properties
Chapter 10 Events
Part 4 Essential Types
Chapter 11 Chars, Strings, and Text
Chapter 12 Enumerated Types and Bit Flags
Chapter 13 Arrays
Chapter 14 Interfaces
Chapter 15 Delegates
Chapter 16 Generics
Chapter 17 Custom Attributes
Chapter 18 Nullable Value Types
Part 5 CLR Facilities
Chapter 19 Exceptions
Chapter 20 Automatic Memory Management (Garbage Collection)
Chapter 21 CLR Hosting and AppDomains
Chapter 22 Assembly Loading and Reflection
Chapter 23 Performing Asynchronous Operations
Chapter 24 Thread Synchronization
Take a good look at this list topics, and honestly ask yourself if you know everything about how the CLR facilitates all these? Most approach the CLR as a black box - I knew myself to be one - and in result only knew what was sufficient to work with it, which in turn developed quite a number of misconceptions about it. Jeffery Richter goes through chapter by chapter and puts me through a constant pace of surprises, shocks, and pure enlightenment. He goes as low a level as the CLR can operate, and communicates in terms of memory locations, CPU registers, and gives the repeated impression that many of the CLR automated activities we take for granted has a performance cost. The material he writes about are astounding and sometimes downright shocking. It goes an extremely long way to remove whatever misconceptions you may have about the CLR or compiler, influencing you to rethink about many of the habits and practices you have now.
Challenge some examples. Just a small number of matters. Did you know C# constants are really only good for referencing within its own assembly? Any referencing and use of constants in other assemblies are hardcoded at the MSIL level. Do you know the exact garbage collection sequence the CLR takes to identify generations of orphaned objects and housekeep the memory? What does it take to resurrect an object from the Freachable queue? Why are finalizers generally not recommended? How would you compare strings with the added dimensions of encoding and globalization cultures? How do you construct strings and convert types to and from strings? What are the implications of unboxing a Value-type object from a Reference-type variable and assigning values? Did you know an assembly need not necessarily be just a single .DLL file? How does the metadata for your types turn out in the assemblies as the compiler emits the IL equivalent of your code?
Each chapter brings to light information you never knew you needed to know. As much as possible, Jeffery Richter provides code samples and programs to demonstrate his points and prove the effect. He not only provides the information, but lists many alternative ways to achieving a said effect, along with pros and cons for each method. He is here to explain, not to sell the CLR, and does not hold back on what he honestly thinks are design flaws by Microsoft. At almost every junction, you will feel vulnerable by the knowledge he passes to you. If you ever felt snotty and arrogant over your knowledge of the .NET Framework, this book is the antidode to humble yourself. If you ever positioned yourself to learn more about .NET, you will surely rejoice with gladness.
For all the great depth to be had throughout the book, a topic that I found notably absent is how the CLR actually performs interoperability with unmanaged layers in the OS. There is only a brieft touch on it in the first chapter. The WIN32 and COM platforms are still cornerstones of Windows development; it would have been ideal for developers like myself who began development after the advent of the .NET Framework.
Even then, this is one book you'd repeatedly refer for years to come to double check you don't commit another subtle mistake. By the time you are half way or perhaps even a third way through this rich material, you would have understood the term "managed code" is a literal description and not a marketing buzzword at all.
Overall rating: 10/10
Good: In-depth tour under the hood; shocking revelations; you were wrong, and will rethink;
Bad: No true chapter and detailing of P/Invoke and COM interop mechanics; seriously, why is this not in the SDK?
CLR + C# = MSIL On Steroids.Review Date: 2008-04-30
Every chapter is very in depth with good examples. Definite YES for the geek inside you. 5 Stars.
Another 5 star from RichterReview Date: 2008-03-09
Where other books present the subject matter this one gives you knowledge. Improves on the previous one.
Covers new topics like generics or nullable types. Just can't wait to see what Richter will do with linq!
Fun to learn about virtual machines in general...Review Date: 2008-01-24
Introductory to itermediate materialReview Date: 2008-04-10
If you are an experienced programmer who is new to the CLR and C#, this is a great text. If you already understand the CLR and are looking for more information about advanced techniques, this book is probably not for you.

Used price: $0.01
Collectible price: $27.74

Ok, I got an older bookReview Date: 2008-03-30
Worth Every PennyReview Date: 2006-03-17
A sanity saverReview Date: 2004-08-23
A readable computer book!Review Date: 2004-07-04
Concise, excellent, usable tipsReview Date: 2004-07-14
In my first reading, I discovered the answers to at least 7 windows annoyances I've encountered.
And instead of including a cost-raising CD, the publisher has made 100 utility programs available online, a better solution that including them on a quickly outdated disk.
A useful, and often amusing book.
You need it!

Used price: $9.04

Well worth the money ! !Review Date: 2008-08-11
Still learning.Review Date: 2008-05-14
FrontPage 2003Review Date: 2008-04-20
Best & Most Helpful Book On FrontPage 2003Review Date: 2008-04-17
excellent for beginnerReview Date: 2008-02-29
Related Subjects: WinRefunds
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A great book for beginners but a little boring read for advanced users.