First you should know that I have not read the released version of this text. I was lucky enough to receive a manuscript and review the draft for the publisher - it was great! The title does not reflect the fact that this is not another "let's take a tour round the namespaces" book.

The authors do not assume reader familiarity with Windows CE or embedded development in general and cover these topics as appropriate; furthermore, they go into great detail describing how to achieve results via PInvoke, which is essential given the compactness of the .NETcf.

This book is essential for all .NETcf developers. However, there will be a small minority (e.g. targeting simple SQL-based apps with VB as their only background) that could find the info overwhelming. On the other hand, an experienced eVC developer may find a lot of info not specifically related to .NETcf.

Apart from everything one needs to know about drawing text and fonts, highlights include a great overview of the Windows CE platform. It is a "must" for desktop developers who are moving to the .NETcf. Other sources don't consider this at all. The memory management section is fantastic. No matter what programming background one has (eVC, VB, .NET desktop framework); this stuff is invaluable and not covered anywhere else at the time I read the draft. It is a shame for the authors that the book took so long to be published and some of this stuff is now available online...

Apologies for not going into greater detail on the contents but to sum it up, if you will buy a book on the CF 1.0 today then this is the one to have - I should know as I have read every other CF book on the market :-)

You have probably heard of Sun's J2ME - Java 2 Micro Edition. This is a slimmed down Java that is meant for development of applications on mobile devices, where memory, screen size, power and other resources are very limited. Now J2ME has been out for a few years, and has done well in the marketplace.

Now comes Microsoft's reply. .NET Compact Framework. The sheer bulk of this book (over 1300 pages) is a good indication of the amount of effort Microsoft has put into its rebuttal of Sun. Brand new software offering!

Certainly, the broad functionality here matches that currently offered by J2ME. The languages are different, of course. Here, you would use Visual Basic. But the range of widgets, and how to program them, are essentially equivalent. If you are indeed hailing from the J2ME world, there should be few surprises here.

Perhaps a slight difference with J2ME is that here Yao and Durant describe how Microsoft lets you tie in your GUI all the way back to a Web Service running on a server. Microsoft and others expect Web Services to grow vastly, so here they provide an early way to integrate your applications with it.

I spent some quality time with this book over the weekend and was very impressed. If you're new to .NET, there are good introductions to the technologies. If you're experienced you can pretty much skip these and go straight into programming for the compact framework. This book really provides a thorough understanding of Windows CE, so you really get an idea of what's going on behind the scenes. If you go through this book, you should be a pro at Compact .NET programming, and probably .NET programming in general. Though written in C#, this book should probably be helpful to a VB developer as well (I don't know if there's a VB version in the works).

One of the reasons that this book is so incredibly thorough is its size. At 1300+ pages (close to 1400 counting the index), this is by far the largest book I have from this series.

Fortunately, you should be able to thumb through this text as a reference manual even after you've completed it.