On opening the book I was pleasantly surprised by the layout - plenty of white space and short paragraphs interspersed with screen shots.

The book, in my opinion erroneously, assumes that you will have a copy of VS.Net to hand. That is not at all certain when looking into the possibility of a platform transition.

C# is covered quickly and concisely, this is a great way of learning a new language, but it doesn't go into enough depth.

Winforms is covered lightly, but lacking any meaningful detail, this is largely worthless.

Coverage of web services and ASP.Net is much better, going into considerable depth. This is, however, at the expense of a heavier writing style.

Most aspects of .Net are given some coverage, with the notable exception of file I/O.

Overall Gibbons provides a good overview of the transition from Java to .Net for web developers, but not for application developers.

Don't expect this book to do anything more than get you started on the path to .Net development; the grandiose claim on the back cover that 'By the end of .Net Development for Java Programmers a professional Java developer should be capable of tackling a real world software project in .Net using C#.' is way over exaggerated. Expect to buy other complimentary reference works as well.

Unfortunately I am unlikely to return to this book for a second reading. This book is over priced and not recommended.