One of the goals of About Visual Basic is to find ways for you to learn and use Visual Basic without contributing more to Bill Gate's Money Bin any more than is absolutely necessary. For example, we found a way for you to enjoy 99 percent of the benefits of Visual Basic .NET (and get a great book as a bonus) while spending less than a hundred dollars by buying the Learning Edition of VB.NET. Now we've found the lowest cost and most complete book you can buy to really get up to speed on VB.NET.

Buy this one. It's a keeper.

Don't be fooled! This may be the best bargain of any book in the store! If what you're looking for is the most, best information at the lowest cost, this book moves to the front of the pack.

Organized in six functional sections, Visual Basic .NET Complete lives up to it's title in great style. The cover doesn't list an "author" because the book is really extracted from some of the most popular titles in the rest of the Sybex lineup, (slightly) rewritten to make them fit together. The result is like a great dish cooked up by a dozen chefs where each of them contributed their very best to the combined effort.

A lot of credit should also go to the editors at Sybex who made the book 'flow' as well or even better than many books by a single author. Styles and formats are uniform throughout the book with the handy 'tips', 'notes', and other extras set off from the main text using the same icons and fonts. It's a small detail but it shows the extra care that went into the book in spite of the low cost.

Very rarely, but occasionally, you can find chapters where it seems clear that the author intends to discuss a topic in a later chapter ... but never does because the chapter isn't included in this book. For example, in discussing the components visible in Solution Explorer that are included when you select an ASP.NET Web Application as a New Project, a complete explanation is promised, but never delivered. Those who demand the complete and in depth explanation of a more focused topic (like ASP.NET) might want to get the complete book that the chapter is taken from.