I'm very pleased to see a book review that doesn't fall into the %100 category of "this is the all in all, greatest, king of books" reviews. I don't know why, but people tend to be very lenient at the time of making criticisms on technical books. Maybe they think authors deserve a chance for all the effort they put on the material. But at the end, the one who gets the worst part is the professional who buys that book thinking that is a piece of gold to find out (after spending a good bunch of bucks) that 90% of it is on the BOL's.

I'm not apologying on "not buying books", I only say that if someone wants to provide a good reference and charge for it, that someone needs to include the kind of "added value" to the book that makes it worthy. With the huge amount of Microsoft technical information everywhere nowadays, spending money for info you can have everywhere makes no sense.

That's what makes guys like Mark Minasi so successful at the time of selling books. They spend a lot of time compiling the material and over all, they include their "personal touch" and their experiences in a fun way.

Books are still a great source of learning, but readers are being more and more demanding and to be a successful tech writer you have to take that into consideration before your first copy/paste operation from BOL to your "masterpiece".