I was excited to see a book detailing practical COM applications using Visual Basic. The core material is solid, though the book could stand to go into a little more detail (373 pages is not quite enough, I feel.)
I think more explanation could have been given to the basics of COM, though the author himself admits this is not a book for beginners.
A major complaint is that certain important details (such as using regsvr32 to register the DLLs) aren't repeated more often. The reader shouldn't have to read the book cover to cover, just to be able to get an example to work.
Another big complaint I have is that the FileSpider program simply does not work the way it is. The code to traverse the DOM is there, but the code to actually download the files is simply not there. It simply displays message boxes telling you what you selected. This was a huge disappointment and seems to be indicative of a product rushed too quickly to market without adequate review.
Take note O'Reilly. Your books have no compare on the market in terms of depth, but that doesn't mean you can let your quality control slip. Simply providing examples that work the way the book says they do would have changed this review from a 3 to a 5.
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