The great thing about text books is that they're produced with the certain knowledge that thousands of students and teachers will meet eye-to-eye in the classroom over their open pages. And that creates sort of a guarantee of pragmatic content. You don't get the fluff of author opinion and industry gossip as much. You get solid instruction and nose-to-the-grindstone content, including student exercises. You also get a higher quality paper and color illustrations in this case.

David Schneider's text is designed for genuinely entry level students. The book actually starts with the assumption that you may not have even used a computer before and includes some information to get people going at that level. If you're put off by the "advanced" content of some of the other books and you need one that really does start at the beginning … and then covers all the things that a beginner needs to know clearly and carefully … this is the book for you.

Another built-in assumption is that you're using Windows and the VB.NET Integrated Development Environment (and includes instructions on how to use Windows and even "windows" - that is, how to use a mouse to get things done with a PC). The book is usually bundled with the Microsoft trial CD-ROM that gives you a 60 day free ride with Visual Studio.NET. If you're enrolled in a publisher authorized course, you can get the educational version of VB.NET for $15. What a deal!

Here's an example of how Schneider makes sure you don't run into unexplained problems. Many books with an included CD-ROM will print instructions like, "Copy the files to a folder on your computer." And then leave it at that. But some students always run into the problem that the resulting files are marked "read only" when they're copied from a CD. Schneider is careful to include numbered steps to change that attribute so you can actually use those files. This book one of the best "entry level" introduction to VB.NET of any available.

About the Authors

David I. Schneider is a long time university professor with decades of experience both teaching and writing books. All of his recent books have been about the various versions of Visual Basic and he has written one for every release since VB 3.0 in the current series for Prentice Hall.