Rating:  - Great book -- terrible service
This is one of the best written books I have ever seen in any computer language book. I love the color-coded sections that clearly separate the code from the comments and the main text. It makes it much easier to read and keep your place. Everything is very thoroughly addressed. There is an abundance of references and further study materials. Even the paper is of high quality, so I was very disappointed and surprised when I ran into problems with support.
When I ordered the book, I ordered the training course version, but the cyber classroom CD did not work. I emailed for help and one month and two other emails later they replied, telling me that they no longer offered support for the cyber classroom, since my book was "too old". There was nothing in the license about a support expiration date. I just bought the book about the time Dietel released their latest edition, so the book was not more than two years old. I am sure the latest cyber classroom was not much different than the older versions and it would have taken maybe five minutes of their time to help me, but my personal impression was they were too lazy to want to help and were not dedicated to their customers. I might be wrong about this but I would not take chances again.
After a little debugging of the contents of the installation, I got the cyber classroom to function on my own and again I was disappointed. The cyber classroom was just a simplified version of their book. The "interactive" part was just simply clicking on the links that took you to the next chapter. How is reading the same thing as what is in the book supposed to be like going to a classroom? It did offer a way to compile and run the sample programs in the book though, but I did not need a cyber classroom CD to do that.
I very highly recommend buying Deitel books, but I also very highly recommend not getting any of their software CDs or training courses that go along with those books. It just jacks the price way up and although your experience may vary mine, in my opinion it is not at all worth the much higher price, as I thought it would have been. I will not make that mistake again.
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