Microsoft Books

If you can buy only one book on Windows 95, let this be it. The only reason I gave this book a 9 instead of a 10 is because it's on the verge of going out of date, and I would prefer a newer version (1998). HOWEVER, it's still the book to buy. The information is concise and easy to read, yet technical enough to those with an intermediate to advanced knowledge of Windows 95. I bought it as a precursor to studying for the MCSD Windows architecture exams, and I think I made an excellent choice. Buy it!

Have actually rated this book a "9.5", (actually a "10") in the spirit of the Olympics, leave room for the book that has that added edge is a true "10". Mark Minasi, Christa Anderson, and Patrick Cambell have truly done their home work on this one. There is a silent personal touch as you read through the pages, kind of like they understood what some people might be going through and looking for in a book of this type. Don't get me wrong as this is also a very powerful publication and is very useful at my level. It will more than meet the needs of the mid-range user to the power user, wouldn't recommend it to the novice. I just happen to have enjoyed the style compared to some of the other reference books I have used. The layout of both the sections and chapters give it a sense of organization making you feel comfortable reading. It allows a person to move around without getting lost, and if you do, the table of contents isn't very far away. Which is also very well layed out. If you are on, or work within, a network or an administrator in some capacity the network chapter is most excellent and very extensive! Networks are also mentioned throughout the other sections. Even contains a chapter and references throughout for the "registry hacks" that will show you the way, but be careful. The troubleshooting section is heaven. The entrie book fills those voids Microsoft has left out in it's documentation. The CD that is included makes this even a better buy. The multimedia portion is very informative and, again, well put together. The tools section is even better. If you are looking for a book(s) and CD package, I purchased the set which included "Mastering Windows 95" (The Windows 95 Bible) by Robert Cowart, this is the one to buy!! It will help guide you throgugh life with Windows 95. Thank you for the nice work everyone!!!

This was one of the best walk-through book (text and images) that I have used in learning Access. Access is somewhat a more difficult application to learn, but this format was great.

Thnks for the author who developed the first thought of this design.

College Student (4th yr)

This was one of the best walk-through book (text and images) that I have used in learning Access. Access is somewhat a more difficult application to learn, but this format was great.

Thnks for the author who developed the first thought of this design.

College Student (4th yr)

Sam's How to Use FrontPage 2002 is an easy-to-use guidebook to the latest version of FrontPage. I upgraded from FrontPage 98 and found the 2002 version much easier to use. Many of the oddball features of the 98 version have been eliminated. 2002 is a much simpler program to use.

This book uses many illustrations in color to show you what to do. These are well laid out and the text is simply and effectively written. I found the index quite adequate although I supplemented it myself with several items that I thought I might require again in the future.

The only time I didn't follow the recommendations given by the authors was in dealing with images. I find it often easier to copy the images from scanners and other sites and to move them, also, by copying and pasting rather than by some of the methods suggested.

Highly recommended.

A concise yet sufficiently detailed guide to using FrontPage 2002, this book is a gem. It's well organized and chock full of helpful hints and how-to's. Perfect for beginners, it's also a visual tour de force. I was able to create and publish a surprisinly decent website for my office in less than a week. Overall, a very impressive work!

Beginners in anything suffer from a great deal of anxiety and that is even more pronounced when learning something in computing. Furthermore, learning to use a piece of modern software is an exception to the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. No amount of words can possibly replace an image of what will appear on the screen. In most cases, adding unnecessary explanatory text to an image will tend to confuse the reader rather than help. Finally, so much of the interface of modern software is color coded that no number of shades of gray can truly convey the appearance on the screen.
With all of this is a background, it is easy to see why books like this are so effective in teaching beginners how to use Word. The color images show you exactly what you will see down to how color differences are used as an aid in navigation. When beginners ask me about additional learning tools that are available, I recommend books of this form, so that they always know what to do. When teaching beginners how to use the components of Microsoft Office, the most common question that is asked has the form, "It says in the book to click on the ------, where is it?" With books like this, that question very rarely appears.
Most of us can get by rather well using only the basic features of a software product. Using this book, you can quickly learn all the basics of Word in a manner that will step you through using figures that will tell you precisely what to do next.

I purchased this book after using the Frontpage 2000 guide in the same series. Features are much easier to learn when presented visually. I didn't think full colour would have much of an impact, but it seems to make commands easier to learn and remember. I'd especially like to draw attention to the way the guide shows the menus just as they appear, and walks you through the menu selections with a picture for each menu option you need to select. No more "Insert - Picture - Clipart". Every step is shown in full colour. While this guide doesn't have every command listed, it does provide people with the opportunity to learn the more useful commands, like formatting tables, and including pictures with documents. If you're looking for a full reference of every command, this book won't be for you. However, if you want to learn the more useful features of Word 2000 using an easy to understand step by step tutorial, I highly recommend this book!

This wonderful book by Eric Brechner analyzes from the inside of Microsoft the dynamics of Software Development, Organization, Project & People Management, Software Design, Development & Quality. To every harsh criticism, he offers some very interesting and yet simple advice. That doesn't mean that Eric is always "WRight", but he certainly has a good point, and it will make you think and see things in a different light. I strongly recommend it to anybody in a IT profession, specially to managers!

"Hard Code" is a brilliant read for any software developer, architect, manager, etc. It is a candid interpretation of the politics inside Microsoft and the relationships across various roles in the development process.

This might sound a little boring, but no--this guy goes for the throat. In understanding that everyone has a specific job to do--and their objectives often oppose those of everyone else--he accurately and bluntly exposes common points of conflict. More importantly, he gives hard-won, actionable advice on how to cut through all that crap and put everyone on the same page.

For managers and architects, this book [namely chapter 1: "Project Mismanagement"] would be a great supplement to two books of Julie Bick's that also offer unique insight: All I Really Need to Know In Business I Learned at Microsoft and The Microsoft Edge.

Another interesting point in this book was the article, "Google: Serious threat or poor spelling?" Here he actually points out the flaws with Google's business strategy and gives tips on how they [or any company] could overcome their weaknesses to become a true competitor to Microsoft.

It's not like he gives up Windows source code here, but don't be surprised if you get a bit anxious reading it...just waiting for FBI agents to break down your door for accessing coveted insider trade secrets.

Microsoft Dynamics AX is another of the very high end development system that Microsoft has been developing to make the implementation of sophisticated applications relatively easy. Specifically Dynamics AX (which has gone by several names during it's development cycle) is oriented to enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications developers. It might be viewed as a library of subroutines that perform the fundamental actions needed by an ERP system. It is then up to the developer to simply connect these subroutines together in order to produce application.

The end result can be viewed as a very high level language that contains many functions written to perform the actual work. As with any other computer language, it is something non-trivial that has to be learned. And this book is basically a tutorial on the language. It probably is something that could be learned as a language by itself, but experience in other languages, particularily C++ and SQL will ease the learning task. Obviously the reader should have some experience in ERP.

This book is written by members of the development team. It is complete and thorough, but it is a book on the Dynamics AX system, not on ERP.

I found this book helpful when trying to figure out how to do a variety of development tasks such as debugging, reverse engineering, compiling, etc. The section on the development tools was helpful because it provided a guide on what's available for developers. It's easy to understand and provides some good background information on a lot of the tools and techniques. Very useful for either developers or consultants.

If you really want to understand COM you would read this book. I was impressed by the elegance of the example code. The book basically illustrates it's concepts throught the iterative development of 2 examples. Most of the other books I have looked at that attempt to explain COM are fluff.

It's too bad the book is out of print. I don't know how people will understand COM without it.

Hopefully, Kraig can get it up one more time for COM+

This book is big and heavy. I tear it into parts so I can carry it to work on daily bases. If one don't want its copy, pls send to me. I would appreciate a second copy of the book.

It is the best book because you can't reach com nervona without it..not even essential com. One must read it several times during different stage of understanding. It is lengthy by detail and author's style. It is dificult to understand. But it provide insight that no other books ever touched. This is not a book to teach you COm/OLE. It is a reference or an encyclopedia. However, just like ARM and "The C programming language", the reference you have to read cover to cover... eventually...

The book teaches you from the ground up about MFC programming in VC++. You don't need to know much to start and by the end of the book you're writing great programs. I love the book and I think everyone else would too.

When I was starting out in Visual C++ programming, I was given this book. This has to be the best written book I have read on a programming language. This author really knows how to explain technical material in an enjoyable manner. If you wanna learn Visual C++ the correct way (because the book is packed with great style pointers) GET THIS BOOK

I have only read a half of this book, but when you consider that I only have it four days, thats a lot. Full of comprehensive, hard to find information, written in an enjoyable and amusing style. I did a search for his name and immediately bought his other book. A great book.

This is the perfect book for those who have a day-to-day working knowledge of NT, both server and workstation, but still find themselves baffled by some of it's "quirks". This book helped me to become more accustomed to the power of NT, it's failings and my own lack of clarity in both. Well written, with each section building on the previous, it is a comprehensive troubleshooting and educational reference guide. This and Microsoft TechNet are my constant companions in a work environment - need I say more!

Most Visual C++/MFC books tend to put quantity over quality. I've read countless books on the subject that cover dozens of subjects, with little depth. This book is on the opposite side of the spectrum, providing a much-needed resource, and covering the topics in depth, at the same time.

This book covers a niche in the MFC world, one which isn't well explained (or documented) in any of the other hundreds of books I've read. The bulk of this book covers: printing, system metrics, fonts, bitmaps, complex document/views, enhanced metafiles, and internet programming.

In some places, it gets bogged down by explaining what every function or attribute does, but that is for the benefit of the reader. It is obvious Broquard has been there, done that, often presenting several ways to do things, highlighting the best use for each case.

Highly recommended.

This MFC book states that is Intermediate MFC. The subject matter of the book revolves around font metrics and system programming which is an interesting platform to exercise your MFC muscle throughout this book. Unlike most MFC books there is no reliance on the MFC AppWizards that make the UNIX world laugh at the point and click Windows world. The code is generously saturated with useful comments to make out what the writer is logistically trying to achieve with his code. The diagrams in the book are very clear and easy to understand. This book in my opinion is probably the best overall MFC book. It has subject matter explained that Prosise does not dare to explain, or material that is usually undocumented. The book is not a War and Piece tome, but a little over 600 pages or so is not that bad. The ideal book for a novice who wants to solidify his MFC skills and level his knowledge at expert level. I recommend reading the primitive example driven, but basic knowledge required MFC From the Ground Up by Shildt and then progress to this book.