MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536): Microsoft® .NET Framework Application Development Foundation, Second edition,   ISBN:9780735626195

Customer Rating: 

A little over a year ago, I travelled this journey with Java, becoming certified as an SCJP. I purchased an $800 course from them, went through it and their little practice exam twice. I passed the test on the FOURTH attempt. It was all because the test hit hard on many areas that were not covered at all in the training. Serialization was one, for example. The course covered about 1/3 of what it needed to on threading.

I learned more about these concepts from THIS book than I did in the $800 video and online class I purchased from SUN. I am about half way through, and I find the writing very understandable, the examples clear. The labs may be TOO clear in that they walk you every step of the way through the assignment rather than let you figure out some of it on your own.

The book assumes that you have some grounding - officially more grounding than I actually have - in .NET. In fact, as I recall, it asks that you program with it for a year or more before attempting this book. I agree that some experience is necessary, but a year is serious overkill. If you know java, dive right in the water's fine. If you don't, try some "for dummies" books for a couple of months before jumping into this one.

Customer Rating: 

I just passed the test with an 861/1000. I needed a 700. I found the questions accompanying this CD woefully inadequate compared to the questions on the test. They were both shallow, and much trickier than anything I found on the test. Likewise, this didn't cover some things like BufferedStream, while it went into painful detail on regular expressions which were nowhere to be found in the literally 250 questions I found in braindumps and of the 40 during the actual test (So: don't waste a second of your time on regular expressions).

HOWEVER, that said, it did have some excellent labs and explanations of topics that were on the test that I used to really KNOW what I was being asked. Did it cover each and every class that was on the test? No. Did it give me an understanding of permissions, generic classes and the like? Yeah, it did.

Customer Rating: 

I have bought this book for my training , and i should say that it was enough for me to clear the knowledge that i had and the one that gave me from reading it.

Customer Rating: 

Already knowing quite a bit the .NET framework, I originally picked this book up with the intention of filling up as much gaps as I could in about 3-4 weeks tops, and then get certified. After about 2 weeks going through it, I rescheduled my tests because there's just so many pearls in it that can not be overlooked.

It's not that the content is specially complicated, but how they managed to stuff the book with a collection of useful insights one after the other. I can't wait to get to the 70-562 ASP.NET book!

Customer Rating: 

This is a good book on .NET fundamentals. However, if this is your only source of study for the 70-536 test you may not pass. I took the test and none of the questions matched any of the 337 questions that come on CD with this book. I studied this book for 3 months and did all the practice exercises and consistanly aced both the chapter review and exam mode tests and still failed the 70-536 exam. Areas where I did well on the exam were those in which I use on a daily basis. The rest of the test was basically foreign material and this book did not cover those topics in much detail. However, there appears to be no other source of study available.