Once again, Brian Livingston and Davis Straub have put together their complete knowledge of Windows 95, a great book. Accessible as well to those who "knows" as to those who don't know that much.

What I thought would be a story about the Beach Boys turned out to be a book of piano music. I have no piano, can't read music, so therefore, it was very disappointing.

A good book for fans of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the ill-fated Smile album. Tends to gloss over the darker sides found in the other books but still insightful. Recommended reading.

This is not a typical biography. This book will deal with mostly music made after Pet Sounds and will either pique your interest on them, or go right over your head. If you have most or all the records post Pet Sounds, and love them and Brian Wilson!, then this is a must have book. Paul Williams goes into the asthetics of listening to their music. Where as most average fans listen with a superficial ear to the early hits and instantly relate to the all-American sounds, and sometimes are quick to pass on music made after Pet Sounds. He helps you make the transition from surf, cars, girls, to Siley Smile/Wild Honey, Friends/20+20. From Good Vibrations to Wind Chimes. There is more to this great home turf band than just the early hits and he helps you into that new territory. For those who already are in the know and are happily in the new territory, Paul Williams echoes your feelings. I found myself agreeing, with pleasure, on his accounts of listenings to certain records. The effects and nuances of the music. To my knowledge there is no other book that covers this aspect of the Beach Boys, and to me that is the main fabric of this band. How you feel when you listen is important to Brian Wilson when he songwrites, (as he states in many interviews). Paul W. deftly tells us what comes to his mind and encourages us on HOW to listen. His thoughts were always right on about the music, and in some ways brought my already deep appriciation for the music to a deeper understanding. Paul Williams writes from one fan to another. Like a friend relaying to you his accounts of all that he was fortunate enough to experience when all this music was brand new! A reviewer of many groups of the sixties, yet addicted to the positive music that just keeps coming from the beautiful well of Brian Wilson, the legendary SMiLE accetates, live shows, and to me, his precious thoughts on the records themselves. His was one of the ears who heard what was to be the original release of SMiLE. Includes a great interview with Brian at a later date, and a conversation with David Anderle, record producer. A fresh take from a fresh voice. Nothing redundant. A breathe of fresh air from all the rehashed bios. A must have for any rabid Beach Boys fan. Essential. I have read all the books about Brian Wilson and the band, including out of print biographies. I would say this book is in my top 3 favorite books.

Although this book is certainly comprehensive, the fact that it was written by several people is readily apparent. It is plagued with technical inaccuracies every few pages, and has many redundant sections. With that said it is also the most thorough book on the subject, and provides a ton of useful information. The CD-ROM a glorified coaster, as all of its utilities are antiquated versions. Its discussion on security is weak, and I recommend Guide to Windows NT Security (Charles Rutstein ISBN 0-07-057833-8) for workstation based security.

I have read and reused this book for over 10 months. I found the chapters on using the Performance Monitor for clearing performance bottlenecks very informative and useful.

I actually changed how I detect problems based on information outlined in this book.

Jim Boyce and his team in this book have been able to to something that few technical writers can - combine excellent full-strength data with almost conversation-like and compelling readibility. It's hard to describe a technical book as unputdownable, but this one is. I had already gone through two manuals - in utter frustration - on Windows NT when I bought this manual.

The strengths of the book are clear: all the information you'll need to handle NT is there, from installation to networking (all the many and various protocols, etc), to disc management, discussion on the merits and demerits of the many options that NT offers, messing with the Registry, tweaking the system, security ....its all there, in a lucid enjoyable style. The one teeny criticism of the manual that I have in fact has nothing to do with the manual itself. The edition I have was printed in 1996, and is just barely beginning to show its age. However with NT 5 due out soon there is probably l! ittle more to add to NT 4.

All in all, a super book that is worth its weight in gold.

The book starts with a strange 'Introduction to Programming' chapter, which is for people who don't know what a variable is (good thing _that's_ in a language reference book!) Meanwhile, there is no 'Introduction to VBScript' chapter. I found it very difficult to find simple information on syntax and keywords (just try to find anything on function return types or declaring arrays...) The main Appendix, which contains lots of valuable information, is organized randomly by arcane subjects (and there's no listing of the subjects) so it's difficult to find anything. It also seems to be lifted out of a VB book and contains things that aren't even supported in VBScript.

The range of topics covered is useful if you're trying to decide whether VBScript is right for your project . But if you're just trying to write Active Server Pages, I recommend skipping this book and getting 'Beginning ASP' by Wrox -- it uses VBScript exclusively and has a better introduction to the syntax and usage of the language.

Although there are many books on scripting, there are only a handful of books about VBScript. Of those that do focus on VBScript, many pages are devoted to server-side web scripting with active server pages, which is amply covered by the many titles on ASP. This book by contrast is current, complete, and packed with chapters about all the cool things you can do with VBScript, including COM objects and how to write your own, regular expressions, HTML applications (*very* cool), ADO, how to build the Script Control into your applications, and yes, ASP. That's the first 500 pages. The remaining 280+ pages are references and appendices that add depth. I have seen no other reference in print or online from Microsoft that goes to these lengths to elucidate what can be done with VBScript.
The writing style is very approachable, and the Wrox Press model of a team of qualified people tackling different topics works very well (11 authors and 7 technical reviewers). These people really know the topics, and the book is well edited. An excellent value.

I have read VBScript Programmer's Reference. I would to congratulate the team who put this book together. Its so well written I was programming within the day. Not just a "Hello World" program but a program of substance that opened files, validated them, wrote events in the event log etc.
The book is easy to follow and the short introduction to programming most useful for non-programmers like me and my team.
Unfortunately, for me, the book will lead to more work for me and my team of technical mainframe support staff converting mainframe legacy JCL to VBScript. I will be ordering two more copies of the book for my team and I am sure that they will gain much from it.
Even after a few days, members of staff from programming teams keep borrowing the book I am now forced to lie about its location (under my desk).
If I had a criticism I would say that Cscript should be covered in a little more detail, but its only minor point and I found the information I was looking for on the Web.

I bought 3 books on VBScript, the others are not bad books but they are written with a rocket scientist in mind and assume that the reader is competent in programming and modern scripting techniques. Thankfully your book saved the day and I actually enjoyed reading it. I get the impression that the team that put it together also enjoyed that task, it seems to come across in the text anyways.

Its a great book.

I had mistakenly thought that Wrox books were held to a higher standard. First getting a taste for them going through both of Rob Vieira's two SQL Server Programming books and regarding them as the finest technical books I've ever seen. However this Professional SQL Server 2000 XML is a disappointment. Part of the problem lies with having 12 different authors because it seems a bit jumpy. I think I'll really try to limit my future purchases to single source efforts. Also, no care was taken with the code examples that you can download from the Wrox website. The book shows the source but there is really no way of really matching the example to the source other than guessing the name. Often I've needed to open up all 15 or so files in the directory to realize that the particular example is not included. I'm picking my way through but it is not pleasant.

It is a good book as far as explaning what SQL Server has to offer regarding XML capabilities but it should have covered the case studies fully with the .Net Framework. Also, it covers very good the IIS configuration, and how to manage XML Templates, XPath and Schemas. The book has a migration example from ASP to ASP.Net which does not cover ADO.Net. If you want a rich source on how to integrate SQLXML and the .Net Framework THIS IS NOT THE BOOK.

I looked at two other SQL Server 2000 XML books, but found this one to be the best - covering almost everything on SQL Server 2000 XML. Very well written, nice examples help understand the technology better. The chapter on Updategrams is very useful. I wanted to learn updategrams and this chapter covers it nicely to get started using them in production.

I remember reading "Paul Bunyan" stories in grade school. I find this video rendition a bit less charming than other Rabbit Ears stories, but I have to admit that it's very well done. One of the things that the Rabbit Ears series does very well is to match the actor/reader to the story, and Jonathon Winters--who is himself rather larger than life--is certainly the perfect choice to narrate the stories of Paul Bunyan and his giant blue ox, Babe.

What's particularly amusing is the political correctness of this video. After all, the Paul Bunyan stories are really meant to glorify the clear cutting of forests and to promote the idea that the frontier is something to be tamed and used by white settlers. (One of the stories concerns Teddy Roosevelt ordering Buyan to clear the Dakota territory for white settlers.) Rabbit Ears was clearly uneasy with the politics of these stories, and the ending has Paul Bunyan feeling sorry for his deeds and planting new forests. This is a nice environmental message for children, but it distorts what loggers actually did--rather like Disney's Pocohontas ending with the English and the Indians deciding to live together in peace and mutual understanding. Nice sentiment, but that's not quite what happened.

Still--a triumph of storytelling if not of history.

This version of some of the tales about Paul Bunyan is the finest I've heard. Jonathan Winters is a master at this type of story telling and he is in peak form here. Our 8-year old boy and 5-year old girl were enthralled with this story and frequently asked us to rewind the tape so they could hear the parts missed while laughing. I've lost track of the number of times we've listened to this tape. My only regret is that there weren't even more stories included. The accompanying music is also excellent.

What a SUCK-FEST! This is the worst book I've read in a long time. The (unlucky) 13 authors seem only slightly concerned with plot continuity, and the result is like a novel with every third page torn out. Characters come and go, and come back again for no apparent reason, other than to satisfy the authors' self-indulgent egos. In particular, the chapters by Elmore Leonard and Vicki Hendricks were appallingly bad. Hendricks ignores all the preceeding chapters and suddenly changes the eponymous manatee from an aquatic pinhead into some amalgam of Lassie and the Hardy Boys. In a later chapter Carl Hiaasen openly mocks this sudden swerve in character. (Tip: avoid books where one co-author ridicules another co-author's writing) Elmore Leonard contributes a time capsule that might have been hip 25 years ago, with a black character refering to someone as a "cat", and in the very next sentence actually using the phase "shuck and jive". I am very happy I checked this book out of the library, instead of squandering 22.95 on this train wreck of a book

OK, thirteen of Miami's favorite writers are sitting around a campfire (this isn't a joke). Dave Barry kicks off a story involving a couple hit men, a manatee, a 102-year-old woman and a box containing the head of Fidel Castro, and passes it to the writer to the left. The next eleven writers circle the story around the campfire in an attempt to blend this motley cast of characters (and heads) into the literary equivalent of a refreshing Miami Beach smoothee.

Throwing in monkey wrenches, stranger characters and even more heads-in-boxes in the process, they mostly succeed in creating a wholly unbelievable, extremely offbeat and wildly entertaining mystery. Poor Carl Hiassen (of Striptease fame) is challenged with tying up all the loose ends without playing the Demi Moore card, and succeeds in delivering an ending as strange as a manatee is large.

Above all an interesting experiment, Naked Came the Manatee is also an entertaining quick read.

Booger is the answer to the walls talking. Suspend belief and enter the world of a manatee that thinks, feels and reasons like us. He becomes involved in a mystery not as a victim, but as a participant in important events. The concept of a manatee detective aiding the likes of Brit Montero in solving the case of the Castro heads is only exceeded by the writing of this by the many different writers, from Dave Barry to Carl Hiaasen. No mystery should be this much fun

This book covers a lot of topics - but lacks in-depth explanation on many important stuffs. I tried to reference the book to help me with some Excel automation. However, the 40 Excel pages in the book helps only a little. Not a single word on 'charts', poor presentation on 'Range', no mention of Excel built-in functions... MS user's guide or online help is much better. The coverage on other parts look just like the Excel.

This book shows at a very high-level, what you can do with VBA in all of those MS Office applications.

The only problem with this book is that every piece of information can be gathered from MSDN.

If you are not sure what VBA is, or how you can use other Microsoft Products in you Visual Basic projects, then get this book. It will be a real eye-opener.

This book is a good starting point before you go out and buy that 2 inch thick book on your individual office component. This book does not go into advanced concepts, it is moreover a guide to Office's object model. I felt that it left many important concepts out. The selection of what was important in Excel was sporadically helpful. I started out with this book, but needed additional references to drill into the specifics. I've *never* accessed data the way they say to in Access, nor would I. There is a discussion section in the back with suggestions on how to use the Office suite to solve problems, but no specifics.

This book has so many errors and inaccurate statements that it would definitely place a newcomer to VBScript (which it was obviously written for and by) on the WRONG track. I purchased this book as an aide to prepare for a class I was teaching, and I wasted my money. Do not buy this book!

I wanted a good primer and reference guide to VBScript - this book was both. There are a few typos here and there, but I think it's a great book and have gotten a lot of use out of it. This was the second book I have bought from the "Unleashed" series and I just bought a third!

With all the other reviews I was apprehensive in buying the book. I bought the book anyway, just like any other computer programming references you would get ideas and techniques here that other books do not offer. A definite must have if you want to improve your skill in SCRIPTING!

Often confusing, and leaving important details for later, this book got confusing enough that I had to eventually put it down. It does assume that you do have some programming experience in another language and thusly does not go into the basic programming theories which programmers already know.