ADO is a great example. The next generation is ADO.NET and that is radically different from ADO. Chapter 3 notes that the VB 6 level of ADO has had a longer run than any previous Microsoft data access technology and surveys all the versions you might run into and the significant differences between them. Five chapters then detail issues that you may have searched all over the web to find answers for. For example, how to code ADO to implement the XML processing built into more recent versions.

COM is another great example. You can find plenty of claims that COM is dead now that .NET is here. Don't believe it. A lot of professional VB programmers will inherit a project to code a major change to a system that depends on COM and there are good reasons to start up a brand new project using time-tested COM technology. These projects will need the good, this-is-the-final-word chapters about COM in this book.

Some of the material in the "paper" book is too brief to really be effective but it does serve as a good introduction. One example is the short chapter on both VBScript and ASP (not quite thirty pages). After that, PVB6 crunches into what may be the best and most effective major section of the paper book: XML and it's derivative technology SOAP. These introductions (they're not long enough to be more than that) are as good as can be done in the space allowed. Fortunately, there are whole books on the CD that go into these topics in huge detail.