Microsoft Visual Basic .NET Step by Step--Version 2003 (Step By Step (Microsoft)) 
The salient feature of this text is the author's patient presentation style, which stresses "traditional" VB programming. (While VB 6 did technically support Web programming, the unarguable reality is that most developers have built form-based programs for years.) This volume shows you how to use the same techniques for the new VB .NET. The author begins his presentation here with a clever slot-machine application to get you started. Other early sections cover the basics of VB .NET from a language perspective, including basics like variables, data types, and flow control statements. This handsomely printed volume makes use of two-toned color (in blue) to highlight differences between VB 6 in VB .NET, making it an invaluable resource for programmers making this transition.
Other essential technologies get their due here as well, from basic control programming with Windows Forms, integrating with ActiveX controls, to a very approachable guide to the new ADO.NET APIs for databases. Coverage of how to bind data to a variety of controls, plus using the new VB .NET DataGrid control, will show you how to do all you did in VB 6 in the new .NET. Instead of getting bogged down in details, the author does a good job of presenting what working programmers need to know. Later chapters delve into .NET APIs for working with files, strings, and collections. This title doesn't pretend to cover ASP.NET in any detail, though there is a useful introduction to the subject, as well as how to use the Microsoft Internet Explorer Object to build VB applications that display HTML and other Internet content.
The reality is that most VB 6 programmers will have to learn a lot when it comes to .NET. Before launching into a whole new paradigm of Web development, this book shows that today's VB has a lot to do with the older VB 6 standard. This text will be nearly indispensable for any VB 6 programmers making the leap to .NET. It even suggests that rumors of the death of the traditional client-side VB application may be somewhat exaggerated. This title shows you that the new easier deployment and productivity features of VB .NET may extend the life of such applications in one of the best-available tutorials for learning VB .NET, bar none. --Richard Dragan
Reviews
The problem that I have with this book is that it fails to introduce the reader to the big picture. This book will show you how to do all this handy-dandy stuff and after reading it, you will easily be able to build your own applications but you wont have a true understanding of VB.NET. You won't have a clue how all of it works together wich will put a demper in your coding abilities. I would only recomend this book if you buy it along with another book such as; [...]
The author makes it a point to compare Visual Basic .net and the underlying .net architecture to VB 6 in frequent sidebar discussions throughout the book. In other words, he assumes that the you as the reader have used and understood older versions of VB, and he uses that as a reference point. If you have not, this content is practically worthless to you.
However, the coding and GUI navigation instructions that he gives are aimed at raw beginners! In this case, Halvorson seems to be talking to people who have never written an "if" statement in any language and who are more or less neophytes to the Windows interface in general. What's worse is that he doesn't assume that the reader accrues any expertise through the course of the book, as he continues to supply the simplest of instructions about how to open a project, access code windows, etc.
Still, this book would give a fair introduction to coding in VB.net to a borderline technophobic beginner. Its frequent hands-on assignments from the accompanying CD are helpful if sometimes ponderous in showing the simplest of points. If you've ever coded anything before or are in a hurry, this book will make you fidgety; however, it does have a good index that helps it to serve as a command reference.
Press down the arrow key
......
and then
Press down the arrow key
....
and then
Press down the arrow key
??!! the author can fill pages and pages with this kind of "step by step" instruction. It's not a matter of being new or not to VB .NET, it's a matter of expecting the author to assume that the reader has some common sense. Avoid this book!