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Unlike most books that tout 'professional' in their title this is definitely one book that lives up to one definition of the word - 'produced with competence or skill'. The topics covered include the usual stuff you would expect in a .net book: assemblies, GDI+, ADO.net, ASP.net, etc. The difference here is that they are used in what are extremely useable base applications that with a little work could form the basis for some very good commercial products.

I found the book very easy to read with uncomplicated instructions, simple explanations and very clear diagrams where needed. I found I would get engrossed in a chapter and just sail through it typing in code if I felt it was needed. Having said that, the code is available to download from a web site. Now here is my niggle (yes, just one). The code is downloadable for each project. A bit annoying as I prefer to download one file rather than 13. I then realised that this was due to several of the files being over 1MB. This would have made one file over 4MB and may have put people off downloading it. Imagine my amazement when, upon opening one of the large files, I found that most of the expanded content was taken up by an intermediate file that was not required to compile the code! It was a shame to have the whole package let down by one small annoyance.

Would I buy this book? Yes. It would be hard not to with a very reasonable£36.99 price tag. I have paid much more for much less in the past. If you program with VC++.net for a living then you should really investigate purchasing this book.