Visual

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition
$40.00
Edward Tufte prides himself on making very complex information accessible. What he doesn't understand is that the average person can not make sense of convoluted charts and graphs. Not everyone can read 5 pt type and overlapping hairline strokes, making his examples successfully unsuccessful.

Tufte's choice of words clearly demonstrates his lack of interest in the "'average' consumer." His writing is overly complicated, much too proud and irrelevant. Intimidating is the antithesis of accessible. "Excessive" immediately comes to mind.

If you are looking for a book from which to copy a few sentences to impress your boss, this book is great. If you are looking for insight into explaining very complex information to a very wide group of people, then steer clear.

Thoroughly disappointed.

PS - Don't attend his workshops. You may as well go on a "team-building retreat."

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard
$299.00
I bought VS2008 to learn C++ and C# and their Visual counterparts. The product seems to be able to support those. But I had a major problem: I wanted to install it on a 64-bit computer running Window Vista Home Premium. The templates for CLR projects and Windows Form Application compile but will not execute. I spent hours uninstalling the product, uninstalling and reinstalling the .NET framework versions, and reinstalling VS2008. Nothing worked. Researched Microsoft website and the internet in general and everything seemed to point to incompatibilities between the .NET framework, Vista, and VS2008. I gave up and installed it on an old HP computer running XP, and it runs without problems; just not the machine I wanted to use with it.

As I work more with the product I may update this review.

Visual Aid: Stuff You've Forgotten, Things You Never Thought You Knew, and Lessons You Didn't Quite Get Around to Learning
$15.00
I'm a fan of graphical design. And this book could have been pretty good. I can't help but be impressed with an effort to capture an explanation of the Big Bang on one small page, using less than 50 words. Unfortunately, the book is full of factual errors. That ruins the entire book because none of it can be trusted. Here are a few examples:
- There are 36 inches in a yard. The book says there are 48 inches in a yard. On the same page it shows a meter being equal to more than 50 inches. A meter is 39.37 inches.
- Gravity is a force that acts straight down. The "How Aeroplanes Fly" page shows gravity pulling the airplane down AND FORWARD because the plane is pitched up (as if taking off). And the airflow diagram shows the air separating off the bottom of the wing and heading straight down. It actually flows around the wing.
- NASA says submarines can dive to about 900 meters. One article I found says the best of the US submarines, the Seawolf, has a crush depth of 2400 feet (730 meters). The book says submarines can dive to 2400 meters. The "2400" coincidence makes it seem like someone didn't understand the difference between feet and meters. As a result, the graphic is scaled incorrectly by a factor of about 3.
- There are 16 fluid ounces in a pint. The book shows it as 20. Or maybe 19, with a generous reading of the graphic. And there are 33.8 ounces in a liter. The graphic shows more than 35.

Then, there might be some cool information on pages like "Proportions of a Human Face," but the graphics are poorly executed so I can't tell what's what, despite careful study. There's a page of Smilies like :-) but without any explanation. I might like to expand my repetoire, but I don't know what many of them imply.

Even physically, the book is not well made. The Human Digestive System and Heimlich Maneuver pages are physically connected. I had to use scissors to separate them.

There are another thousand or so statements of fact in the book which I didn't carefully check. But since they missed the easy ones, I have no faith in any of the more complex ones.

Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step
$39.99
I bought the book hoping for a good reference manual. However, when I try to look things up in the index, I don't have much luck finding the topics I'm looking for. That being said, I am going to try to use it as a text book and go through the lessons as it is designed. I am through chapter 2, and it did help me solve a problem that I was having with a program.