Pro Windows Embedded Compact 7: Producing Device Drivers (Expert's Voice in Windows)

Technical contents actually live up to the book's subtitle - "Producing Device Drivers".For novice WEC7 device driver developers, this book has a good amount of useful information.However, I wished for more explanations and additional details in a number of places. For example, in Chapter 7 (The essence of stream device drivers) more explanatory texts about hDeviceContext and hOpenContext would have been nice. Also the same chapter is too light on how to write a driver that can be opened multiple times.My main gripe about this book has to do with lack of quality control in how the code examples are printed. Specifically, in numerous places the code indentations are all messed up. They look like someone just copied and pasted in there and never looked back. I hold APress largely responsible for not providing edits and proof-reading. I'm also puzzled how the author let slip such large number of mistakes before printing.I have bought many APress books starting in 2000. Their earlier publications were often very good in quality control. But I've seen many misses in their newer books. Today APress's business strategy seems to be to crank out many books fast, damn the quality. Or, perhaps the company has become "too big to care".

I returned this book after an hour of reading. The book has potential, but there were too many errors, poorly formatted code, etc. to make it worth the price. When learning a new API, like the Windows Embedded Compact 7 DDK, errors in the learning material are simply unacceptable. The author appeared knowledgeable, but this reads like a first draft in need of a editor who knows CE7 and a few revisions. Given the price tag, I was unwilling to do the editorial work for the publisher to find and figure out the errors.

If you're doing WinCE 7 or WEC-2013 device driver development this is a must have.