this was truely a great book and i enjoyed reading it, however i desired more interpretation on "the secret sayings of the living Jesus." i thought the authors would elaborate in depth the sayings they've discovered, but rather they were just presented. I'd recommend buying the book, that is for sure, but you should research the gospel of Thomas deeply before you undertake the reading.

I am a CS major and recently studied this book in the computer architecture course. The book does not presume prior logic design or assembly language experience. The writing style is quite lively, unlike the dry tone of most science authors. The book is a good mix of theory and history, and has a distinctive 'Fallacies and Pitfalls' section at the end of each chapter that lays to rest the common misconceptions and ill-practices pertaining to the topic of that chapter. The authors are quite well known in the computer design field and anything they say is authoritative and current. Unlike many other books on computer design and architecture, the authors follow a unified approach and build a RISC machine chapter by chapter, introducing new concepts gradually and thoroughly. The detail is remarkable, and the authors have favoured explaining in depth a particular, simple architecture rather than going for a sort of a survey of all the prevalent famous architectures. I found this to be very useful in understanding the basic concepts. Nevertheless, there is a 'Real Stuff' section at the end of most chapters to give one a flavour of full-blown, real-world computer architectures. The diagrams in the book progress from simple to very detailed for a particular portion of the architecture. The chapter on assembly language of MIPS is also very good. Some reviewers have complained about the progressive style of the book, whereby the authors continuously refine an idea. I found it helpful on the first read, as it takes you gradually to the final design. I am sure if they had not done this, students would then have complained about the book being too difficult. However, the book *is* verbose in places. Also, it would have been better to use more headings and other visual aids to categorise and demarcate topics. The exercises are pretty good and the complaint about the examples not having enough mathematics is really not valid, as that is the level of *mathematics* applicable to computer architecture. Overall, an interesting book that I enjoyed and benefitted from a lot.

I used this book to learn about computer hardware and architecture. One must realize that the subject matter (that the book discusses) is quite difficult and requires much thought. In spite of the difficulty of the material, the book explains topics quite well. It focuses on specific computer architecture implementations. Thus, it is mainly up to the readers to understand the implementations by reading the book carefully, and ask themselves if there are better ways to implement the computer design.

The book is a bit verbose. I wish it were more succinct. Also, the book could have done a better job explaining the esoteric topics in even more detail such as virtual memory. It also could have provided more examples to help the reader understand why the various designs work.

Overall, not a bad book, but it is certainly not for beginners that have no previous knowledge of basic digital design (such as MUXes, decoders, encoders, gates, flip-flops, state diagrams, state tables, K-maps, etc.).

Some may wonder why so many teachers, in Universities, Colleges and elsewhere, have selected this textbook among so many other choices.

First, this book presents an authoritative introduction on a popular type of architecture: the MIPS architecture. As the basis for the Pentium class of systems, one can hardly avoid a good coverage of MIPS in a Computer Architecture and Design class. Secondly, the authors have taken great pains to indicate common fallacies and pitfalls as well as "real-world" examples (even though they may be slightly outdated since the writing of this book in 1995). Thirdly the book is fairly comprehensive in breadth, if not always in depth.

This brings us to the real reason this textbook enjoys popularity among teachers: flexibility. Teachers often use a textbook not as a reference, but as an aide in teaching. Usually this means that the exercises, presentation and diagrams are helpful in covering a particular topic. Patterson and Hennessy provide the essentials of MIPS architecture while leaving enough room for teachers to use their own methods of presentation and emphasis. Since the book makes use of logic design but does not require it as a prerequisite (while giving a very good high-level overview in Appendix B), students from a variety of background (hardware or software) can make use of this book without being held back. A teacher may choose to cover logic design in parallel, or seperately, put more emphasis on pipelining or glossing over it, and either offer an extensive coverage of MIPS assembly or ignore it altogether This effectively allows for a wide berth in teaching possibilities.

What's in it for the student? Pay careful attention to your teacher's lecture! (But you know this already) Use this book for its excellent diagrams and for its explanations if you need to understand a particular concept in more details. Use it to do the exercises of course. In the rare event that you understood completely the lecture the first time, do not hesitate to skip ahead to find "Final" diagrams and summary tables.

A note on P&H's incremental method: while it may initially present some difficulty for a reader accustomed to receiving ready-made answers, it is an excellent way of understanding the design process which is inherently incremental in scope and functionality. When studying a series of diagrams (such as 5.19-5.24 or 6.31-6.35), visualize the intermediary figures as stills of a picture. The entire sequence of figures may be played in "fast-forward" to see the evolution of a design or the activities along the instruction datapath. The last figure in such a sequence may then better understood and appreciated.

Last but not least, do not hesitate to read and consult other references such as Tanenbaum's Structured Computer Organization, MIPS reference docs available online and MIPS design companies websites. Do not forget what a Computer Architecture and Design class is all about: learning to design your own architecture one day in the real world!

If you wish to understand the IBUY Portal, don't count on this book to help you. I didn't like the style and structure of this book. I got the sense that this book was just another rush publication with a group of programmers getting together, assigning chapters with desired content and then got down to pulling and writing code.

WROX needs to do a better job of controlling quality and up front planning for their books. Sorry, but this book shows none of that. The design of the existing site was mostly crammed into a single chapter. A decent database diagram was not included and no UML or other diagrams were presented so we could easily understand the Object architecture. Instead, the documentation was simply a straight lift from sql server table descriptions. I found myself drawing my own diagrams as I went through the book. An architect's perspective was desparately needed in this first chapter.

I won't be buying any more WROX books if things don't improve by enforcing good technical writing standards for their publications.

I didn't much care for this book. It never really explains the how or why, it just lists code. "Now we'll add an edit button: Now we'll add a delete button: ". There's no explanation of what the code means, how the ASP pages link to the code-behind pages, etc.

I'm not sure who the target audience is. It's not technical enough for geeky types, but too technical for administrative types. I guess it's aimed at script kiddy types who want to copy code without really understanding how it works.

I bought this book because I have been thrust into the Intranet development world, and I really don't have a lot of experience building multi-functional web pages. I bought this book to really help me understand the IBuySpy portal, and I have used it to customize that package for a couple of different web sites now.

The Good:
The book is very good at explaining the various components of the IBuySpy Portal. It's a lot like a tourist map; highlighting certain pieces (while complete overlooking other aspects).

The Bad:
As others have noted, this book doesn't go deep into explaining ASP.NET, or how to use classes in the .NET architecture. It merely allows you to copy a lot of code, cross your fingers, and see something work.

The Ugly:
As with most "best-of-breed" solutions from Microsoft, stuff breaks. While this particular manual does point out why some stuff doesn't work as well as intended, it doesn't go into a lot of detail (and don't expect it to catch everything).

In Sum: Buy this book if you have a need to get an intranet up and running quickly, and want to impress your non-developer friends. Don't buy it if you're expecting to use it to learn ASP.NET.

I'm a BIG WoT fan--I own all the books--which is why I couldn't resist the urge to buy this book. The main reason why I got it is because I've always been fascinated about the lands of the Seanchan and Shara. Although the book doesn't tell you much about those lands, there are MAPS of the WHOLE WORLD. There are Age of Legends maps and present-day maps. As for the artwork, it is not that good. The only picture that does a good job of resembling a character is the one of Lanfear. Now keep in mind that everyone's idea of "beautiful" will differ. Also keep in mind that Lanfear has different shades of beauty. The reason why I like that picture is because it makes Lanfear look attractive--at least--BUT AT THE SAME TIME you can see her potential for evil. It's that dark look in her eyes. As for the book itself, you'd expect more from Robert Jordan. I've heard somewhere that his pile of NOTES is TWICE as large as the whole series. If that's the case, I wonder what he's leaving out. I like the 7 book covers enclosed in the middle--but you can't take them out without damaging a very expensive book. These book cover pictures don't have the lettering, just the picture, and they take up two pages apiece. I just wish that they would have been made into tear-out posters. Finally, I don't understand why Robert Jordan published this book when the series wasn't even done yet. Tolkien was smart enough not to do that. In short, when the series IS done, you can bet that Robert Jordan will have to crank out ANOTHER textbook with ALL the covers and everything else. All in all, I'd say that ONLY HARDCORE WoT fans should get this book, if not for the artwork then for the narrative. Or, better yet, wait for the FINAL (?) textbook-like Wheel of Time book to come out.

While I agree that this book is NOT up to RJ's usual high standards, I found myself unable to put it down. It read like a history book, and I guess that's what it really was supposed to be. As for the art. Well, it's fairly rough. However, I interpreted the pieces as being "period pieces." (Folk art?) If taken from that angle, they are not that bad. If one imagines the author hastily scriblling the pictures to illuminate the text, they are enjoyable. Of course, I've never been that critical of Mr. Sweet either. Overall, I'd say that the book is ESSENTIAL for the avid WoT fan. If you are not sure about your dedication to this epic series, then stay away. If you are a true fan, you'll enjoy it despite its short-comings.

First off, a word to the wise: if you haven't finished all seven books of the series yet I highly recommend that you don't read this book. Otherwise you will most certainly find some stuff out that you weren't quite ready to know. Which makes me think, why would Robert Jordan put the time and effort into putting this compilation together when he hasn't even finished the series yet? I guess that means that when the series is finally tied up that there will be some other encyclopedic guide for readers of WoT to invest in. In any case though, I have learned better than to hold my breath. As far as the quality of this particular piece, the book is a terrific reference for anyone who is into the series in the slightest and it really puts everything into perspective. Yet, on the other hand, I was really rather disappointed by much of the artwork included in such a written treasure. It just doesn't measure up to the reputation of the fantasy series itself.