We agree on Apress and differ on Murach. They are too basic for me. ("A class is like a blueprint for a house. Am I going too fast?")

Re outdated materials, that was the main reason I dropped out of the SetFocus C# training course a year ago. It was extremely expensive and at least the early part of the course was taught using Microsoft .NET 1.0 training materials. At one point we were working through a convoluted exercise on class inheritance and I wondered, with only a modicum of .NET knowledge, why the heck we weren't using generics. Then I realized generics came along in 2.0 and the courseware was 1.0. Not only was it outdated, the instructors were apparently obligated to present it as published.

I wound up taking an intensive C# course at DePaul at the beginning of this year, very good instructors and material at a fraction of the price. (And had a 98.8 grade average, I mention only in passing <g>).

>I'll pretty much buy any Murach or Apress book that is on a topic I need. Never been disappointed with those. The Deitel books seem good too but I bought the .NET ones too early ( when I wasn't ready to do .NET yet ) so the ones I have are for the very first iterations circa 2001 or 2002.
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>>I confess to having that mentality regarding .NET books. I've dumped at least 6 of them into the garbage can.
>>I finally got one, C# 2008 for Programmers, 3rd Edition by Deitel, that's worth the purchase price and more.
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>>>>There is a mentality in the Fox community ( or has always seemed to be ) that somehow it is "cheaper" to spend 100 hours of your own time figuring something out or stumbling around than paying the authors, instructors, framework or widget builders etc for tools and knowledge that make you worth more per hour and increase your income and professional viability. I wouldn't want to hire or contract a developer who is proud being *entirely* self taught and who only uses tools he built himself or has only what knowledge he has figured out on is own.