I purchased this book from Amozon, attempted to read the first 3 chapters and returned it all within 24 hours. The writting is very unclear and I had a hard time following the topics. It was difficult to tell what they wanted us to try and what they were they were trying to explain. Maybey somebody with a few more years of experience in Visual Basic may have found this book usefull, but if you are new to VB, I strongly recomend against it.

This book is a bit too convoluted and indirect about the things it must cover in order to make you an effective VB5 ActiveX programmer. I've seen it done much more efficiently. I got two thirds of the way through it and had to lay it down.

If you are an absolute beginner in Windows CE programming you will not find answers to your questions in it. You need a lot of skills to read it through. Sample code is excellent: very short, useful and IT WORKS!

Chapter Headings:

1. Getting Started with Visual C++ for Windows CE 2. What's Different about Windows CE? 3. Building User Interfaces - Command Bars and Bands 4. Using the HTML Viewer 5. Working with Standard Controls 6. Incorporating Common Controls 7. Activating the Common Dialogs 8. Working with Graphics Devices 9. The Object Store: Files and the Registry 10. Advanced Object Store: The Database API 11. Threads and Processes 12. Controlling Interprocess Communication 13. Winsock and Serial Communications 14. Printing 15. Targeting the Palm-Size PC 16. Using AppInstall to Redistribute Your Programs 17. Working with the Contacts Database API 18. Creating Mail-Enabled Applications 19. Monitoring Power and System Resources 20. Communicating with the Desktop 21. Creating ActiveSync Modules 22. The Cure for the Common Crash 23. Debugging Windows CE Applications with Visual C++ 24. Advanced Topics: MFC, ATL and POOM

This is a generally good introductory book on Windows CE programming. It does not try to teach you C, Windows and Windows CE programming all at the same time, rather it concentrates on the differences between Windows CE and other versions of Windows. The book was written by three well-respected BSQUARE employees; BSQUARE is one of the leading Windows CE development and porting companies.

Several of the chapters cover topics specific to Windows CE, such as command bands and bars. Since the Microsoft documentation for these controls is somewhat lacking, this is very useful. Other chapters cover areas which are common to both Windows CE and Windows 95/98/NT but nonetheless do a good job of pointing the areas where Windows CE differs.

Probably because the book was written by three authors rather than one it doesn't flow quite as well from one chapter to the next quite as smoothly as other books of this type. Each topic is, though, covered well. There are some strange omissions, however, such as very little discussion on Unicode. Readers would be well advised to also obtain Richter's excellent Advanced Windows for a comprehensive discussion on Unicode (and many other) topics.

A very useful chapter discusses how to get your program installed using the Windows CE Services (now called ActiveSync) Application Manager. Since coverage of this topic is woefully lacking in the Microsoft documentation, this information alone might be worth the price of the book.

All of the examples in the book are in straight C. C++ is not used at all while MFC and ATL are just touched on in the last section. The included CD-ROM contains the book's source code and evaluation copies of bSQUARE's bUSEFUL and bPRODUCTIVE application suites.

At $24.95 cover price (may be less on Amazon.com) and about 450 pages this book is a welcome relief from the trend these days of $50-$80 1000 page monsters.

Fair disclosure and disclaimer: I was the technical editor for this book. I had no input on the content or design of the book, but I did correct factual information where necessary and point out where explanations were unclear etc. The opinions stated herein are mine alone and not those of my employer or anybody else.

NOTE: Amazon.com wouldn't let me post a review without selecting a star-rating. Since I had a hand in the book's production I didn't feel that it was appropriate for me to rate the book. I've therefore given it 3-stars so as to not influence the average too much.

I bought this book not knowing a lick of Win32 API programming, so I had to take a crash course in Win32 programming first, as the book starts off assuming you know the API. Thankfully, it leaves MFC and ATL to the last chapter and focuses solely on C and the API.

One problem I had with the book is that the examples in the text are often quite wrong in terms of number/use of parameters, and leave out some details that can be misleading. Besides the examples, the text has frequent misleading information (p.44: "First you can call the CommandBar_InsertButton() function..." Later on the same page: "The other function you can use to add buttons is the CommandBar_InsertButton() function..." - the first quote should have said CommandBar_AddButton())

If you are paying attention and following the book closely, you will weed out these inconsistencies, though, and should come out of it with respectable knowledge of CE.