to start, I am a crystal developer who is responsible for putting reports on our sales intranet, and I bought this book thinking it could help me with the new version of Crystal. To be fair, the book does a good job of showing you how to create simple reports. Unfortunately, it never moves far beyond that and is not really deserving of the title "complete reference".

Once you get through the basic material on report design, the chapters on distributing reports through the web, ASP, etc. are weak and the sections on other languages are worse-- the code examples are similiar to the projects that come with the product itself. And probably the worst part of it all, is a MAJOR chunk of the book refers to the previous versions of the product (including Crystal Enterprise 8.5, NOT 9) and outdated features with a disclaimer of "this hasn't been released yet, so here is the old stuff". Why would I buy a book with "version 9" on the cover, when it uses filler material from the previous version? It is a sad attempt to bulk up the page count and make you think you were getting something you are not. So in total, if I could rip the book in half, I would keep the first section and throw out the other half. It is still a good reference for report design, but not much else.

Crystal Reports has become the leading database report-writing tool. George Peck has become its leading evangelist. This book is the fourth and the best in his "Complete Reference" series. In previous editions he did a credible job of teaching us how to use Crystal's features to create nifty reports. While this edition has many of the same chapter titles, the content has been revised not only to reflect the new features in Version 9 but also to make the chapters easier to read. The concepts almost leap off the page.

Crystal Reports 9 is a major revision of the software product. There are multiple editions and many ways of implementing the results in an application and on the web. Peck addresses all these and provide a guide through the confusing array of choices. Most importantly, Peck provides an independent view of the offerings. He is not a cheerleader. His in-depth experience with the product in the real world is evident as he shows us alternative uses for the product and ways to implement it.

Most people will not read the book from cover to cover. Much like a dictionary, you will look for the topic of interest a read a section or a chapter. The book provides an index, a detailed table of contents and a summary table of contents to help.

The book is written in a direct person-to-person style. Peck suggests situations in which "you" may find yourself and then shows you how to find a solution. Peck's sense of humor shines through in many places. Most of the book is an easy read.

If you use Crystal Reports, you need this book.

Crystal's book is the exact counterpart to Phillipson's "Linguistic Imperialism". While the former has been called an "alarmist" (because of his view that English has been used for imperialistic purposes) the latter apparently sees no problem what so ever (and has thus been called "triumphalist"). Crystal seems to suggest that all linguistic cross-cultural problems could be solved if everyone would learn English from an early age onwards. He apparently sees nothing wrong if Asian farmers cannot read the instructions on fertilizer bags because they are in English.

Rather suspiciously, Crystal disregards Phillipson completely in this book. While there are some good arguments against Phillipson, Crystal refuses to enter the debate. More generally, it seems to me that he refuses to deal with the more unpleasant facts of the global spread of English. Better to continue writing about the happy family of English speakers!

The book is thus rather naive in its evaluation of the role, status and attitudes connected with the English language.

For those who would like to read a really damning review I can recommend Phillipson's "Voice in Global English: unheard Chords in Crystal loud and clear." which appeared in Applied Linguistics 20/2: 265-276.

This book explores the question of how English came to be the premier international language of our time. Crystal begins with various ways of defining "international language", and he explains how English alone among other widely spoken languages meets all criteria. The book includes numerous maps and descriptions documenting the spread of English throughout former British colonies. It is concise and well written.

Crystal England offers the reader a critical view of our present state in the American educational system. She voices an opinion that is shared by many educators having to deal with the heavy hand of BIG BROTHER and supports it with facts. Her philosophical point is passionate and well intentioned as were those of Plato and Dewey. I urge business leaders and policy makers to read about what education is all about viewing it with the eyes of someone who has been in the trenches of the classroom.

Crystal England takes a look at how the business model and the corporate world intrude into the American classrooms. She makes it perfectly clear in her book how schooling as business is no schooling at all. The question is asked, "Is education an art or an industry?" "What matters most product or process?" The important issues we as educator should be focusing on are developing minds, students, families, and teachers. This book goes into great detail of how school-business model does not work. She addresses issues such as expectations, marketing, standards, assessment, and legislation. After reading this book it is clear that if schools are to be successful in creating and developing students, the business model of producing products must stay out of education. This book brought out many interesting points on how teachers must teach to the standards and how curriculums are cookie cutter models to achieve the standard that are desired. She concludes that teachers should be focusing on creativity, individuality, and diversity that create harmony in the classroom. It really sparked my curiosity of how teaching should really be taught and how businesses should stay out of it.

After scoring pretty well on the math section in 11th grade, I wanted a book that won't teach me how to add but one that would sharpen my testing skills. Math Flash is too broken down so you don't earn the valuable test-taking experience. I suggest that you buy a big book with sample tests and just go through actual sections. My score dropped 50 points because I only used this book to prep for the math portion.

I can not believe that this books exists. One can not fathom how powerful this book is until it has been used. I would HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone shooting for an 800 on the math. The reason I am recommending this book to the elite is because I have scored a perfect on the math using this book! My score fluctuated at first but ever since I got this book in my hand they have been really high.

This is a beautifully produced book in full color. Describes all the retired pieces as of 2000, but not those still in production so avid collectors will still need the book by Warner. This book like that of Warner lacks an index by product number. Missing more than a few pictures (an empty box has been left in the text), which hopefully the author will include in a later edition. There is no space left on the page for the collector to write any notes.

Really a great price guide as long as you don't have any recent pieces. The name says retired, so don't go looking for current pieces prices.

I think Fast Planet could have done a lot better if they would have taken more time. The book jumps around too much. Also, if you are trying to teach someone else, it makes it awefully hard.

Not a great book by any means, scattershot at best. However, it does seem to be the best of a weak crop of Crystal Reports "power user" training books. 10 lessons and a forgettable appendix. Lessons themselves are all over the place (i.e "now apply formatting so that it looks like the example 5 pages previous", "refer to bullet points in previous section").

The definitive "power user's workshop" remains to be written.

Vastly overpriced at 55 dollars.

I feel this will provide all user with a more real world look at what Crystal Reports can do and give them good examples to take back with them. I have been looking for two years or better to find something of this caliber. I have spent several years working with Crystal Reports both as a consultand and as an instructor, and found some new tips in your curricula.

I found this unhelpful and useful only to amateurs who have little to no experience with radio. A good starting place mayhap but not for people who know this material

While I disagree with some of the authors sentiments about the quality and purpose of Citizens Band radio in our society, the material is suitably written and technically accurate, and for those without technical knowlege it would be rather usefull. I found some of the "lingo" humorous, but overall it was a bland read. I consider CB too limited to be a reasonable alternative to FRS/GMRS or Amateur Radio, as the author has implied it is. For un-licensed operation, the Family Radio Service (FRS) and General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) are far better alternatives than CB, and are easier to use as mobiles and portables (walkie-talkies). You can even get an Amateur Radio license *without taking a morse code test* these days, and the privileges that come with that license are far beyond what CB could ever possibly offer. Read "Now Your Talking!" to see what I mean. Writing a book about CB radio, or in any way contributing to it's maintenance, is about the equivalent of feeding a rabbid dog: it's going to die sooner or later, and is a problem (to the licensed radio services) while it's around, so why not 'put it down' and be done with it? -just my opinion

Great illustrations and commentary about CB on both a radio and cultural level. Will keep it handy in my 4WD as a reference book for my CB. As a result of this book, I finally figured out and fixed the mystery of my SWR problem! I always wondered why CB was such a fad before, and now I know. It's a lot of fun!

Big, Big, Big Disapointment. I anxiously awaited the arrival of this book with the hopes that it would help with many issues not covered in the Crystal Reports Manual. Unfortunately, this book was a big disapointment as I found it to be very similiar in content to the Crystal Reports Manual. Of the 50 plus computer books I have purchased from Amazon.com, this is the only lemon.

Though it doesn't cover every area of Crystal Reports in great depth, who has time to read that many pages anyway? This book is an excellent reference for those of us getting our feet wet with Crystal, without overburdening us with lots of pages we'll never read. I like that it had good tips scattered throughout the book and I am recommending it to the Crystal users I have to support as a software developer.

Prima's Official Guide to Seagate Reports 7 is a must-have valuable asset for any IT professional. It gives the best overview of report structure and creation I have seen. It's easy to harvest many practical put-to-use gems from the pages of this Crystal Reports guide. This well-planned guide will help you to provide information to your firm's decision makers in timely fashion because of the many useful examples that are provided. This guide presents basic topics in a clear manner and makes advanced topics easy to grasp.

This book is not worth one star.

Ms. Elsbeth implies this book is authentic indian stone medicine.

It is NOT. If you want Native American or new age material; look elsewhere than reading this conglomeration and getting confused.

Page xii-xiii: "The stone people - the earth angels, devas, dwarves, elves" _| The Indians worked with the stone people and the little people. Devas, dwarves and elves are Celtic of origin.

Page xvi: "The Celts left their tracks literaly etched in stone in the Ancient Celtic alphabet called Ogham". _|What does the Druid alphabet have to do with crystal healing?

Page xix: "The South American rainforest, our main source of oxygen" _|What does THIS have to do with crystal medicine? Furthermore; I am all in favor of preserving the rainforests, but the rainforests are NOT the primary source of oxygen. Trees only produce oxygen during daylight hours. They use oxygen during hours of darkness, and trees are dormant part of the year. Trees are a further oxygen depletion system when leaves decompose. The real source of oxygen is from the oceans (this will not win friends and influence people, but it's true).

Page 3: "The Lakota address the Great Spirit as Tunkashila" _| Only part of the Lakota. The more common name is Wakan Tanka.

Page 3: There is the Yuwipi ceremony which uses the power inherent in the sacred stones." Ms. Elsbeth has confused the Inipi ceremony with the Yuwipi ceremony.

Page 57: There is an illustration of the seven chakras. The chart is incorrect.

Page 79: the author goes into palmistry.

Page 99: the author (tries) to show an illistration of the meridians. She shows a few accupuncture points on the body (without showing ANY illustration of the meridians. Furthermore; the Chakra model, and meridian model are mutually exclusive. If the Chakra model were correct; then accupuncture could not work.

The ONLY redeeming quality of this book is the 16 pages of color photos between page 168 and 169.

Mahalo. Two Bears

My heritage is Irish-Native American (specifically Seminole & Cherokee) so I was very interested. My main hesitation comes from the assigning of crystalline structures to various signs. I would have preferred to see the Native American totem animal descriptions used (rather than the Western zodiac terms) Also, my husband is a jeweler & it is hard to find stones that are suitable for setting in some of the specified crystal structures. I liked the fresh approach but ended up donating the book to our local coffee shop/study library.

This book is full of useful information for both indian and wiccan uses of crystals. The encyclopedia is a must for creating indian arts and crafts.

I'm a graduate student with a focus in computer technologies and writing, so I approached this book with an attitude of "what can I learn about language and the Internet?" The answer, unfortunately, was: not much. If you're at all familiar with the Internet and use email regularly, most of Crystal's book will just be covering a lot that you already know. Crystal gives the impression of having just discovered the Internet--e.g., he voices frustration at the number of non-relevant hits from a search on a word like 'depression', something that most of us have figured out strategies to deal with (and which he, as a linguist, might find interesting). Some of the solutions he suggests to the search-engine problem are already out or in beta, yet he doesn't show any familiarity with such developments.

Crystal admits up front that his aims with this book are modest -- basically, he wants to ask whether the Internet has affected language and language use. Um, well, yeah it has.

But he never answers the question that my undergraduate English professor made us ask of all of our paper theses--So what? Why/how do these changes matter? What larger significance do they have? As a linguist, Crystal isn't perhaps so interested in social or political commentary, but never was there such a disembodied look at language. It's as though because the words appear on a screen, we don't need to think about the social, political, or economic pressures that influence these "language communities" he's looking at. He admits that market forces are driving which languages get to be used in the "global village" but then acts as if that fact is of little consequence.

Crystal's method is best described as descriptive--but he doesn't have much to describe, as his sample for analysis includes his own email as well as that of his two children. And as far as I can tell, he doesn't attempt to tie in these changes to any kind of linguistic theory (with the exception of his use of Grice to explain the cooperative nature of conversation). I'm also struck by the lack of evidence that he's read in this area at all--no citation of Sherry Turkle, for example, whose work would have been informative for the whole chapter he spends on MUDs.

If you know next to nothing about Internet-related communication (email, web pages, MUDs) then this book would be a good introduction for you (hence the title of this post). Viewed as an very introductionary text, I'd probably give this a slightly higher rating, because it is clearly written.

David Crystal, one of the world's eminent linguists, has given us a desperately-needed academic resource: this text. Although, as other reviewers have pointed out, some of the conclusions drawn are fairly obvious, this text is useful to have such conclusions stated concisely, in a single location, by a recognised linguist.

The book discusses the effects of the Internet on language, specifically English. Anyone who has spent any length of time online has noted that the language used online is a strange mix of formal and informal, abbreviations and highly-specialised jargon. How does this effect the language as a whole? Crystal does not pretend to answer this question, but raises questions for later research.

As with any book that discusses an aspect of the Internet, some pieces of the book are out-of-date. Search engines are more robust than when Crystal surveyed them. MUDs are essentially dead, replaced in part by massively-multiplayer online games that have their own linguistic ramifications.

In all, this book is an interesting and clearly-written broad introduction to the application of linguistics to the Internet. It is not an advanced text, although the nearly-exhaustive footnotes and citations are an excellent resource for a reader who would like to learn more.

I read it. I really did. It was painful.

Not because David can't communicate, his writing is easy and sometimes fun. At no point was content hard to get through - what stunk was having to read the book cover to cover before I grasped the book's true value - as a weapon.

As another reviewer pointed out, most of the "conclusions" are what some may call "no brainers." Like, duh! The truest value this book provides is that its hard bound, written by "the guy who wrote the Cambridge dictionary," and therefore immutable.

Think about it. How often do we get into subjective tug-o-wars regarding what users are or are not doing? This book is hard bound, written by a "world famous linguist," and thus proves whatever point I'm trying to make, depending upon which direction the weapon is pointing.

I know it's slimy. I don't care. Its a tool, allowing me to quell schedule-breaking controversy, and as a reference to other research (which is much appreciated!)

So for that reason the book is well worth the investment.