Review in progress - Major issues with supplementals
594221
So far, this book has met my expectations from a content point of view. I was hoping for a clearly written breakdown of the writing process for comics that, in particular, demystifies the preparation and development phases. This section, in particular, has been very helpful and is, for me, what makes this book essential. I will update and finalize my review when I have finished reading the entire book.

I did, however, feel compelled to write a quick review at this time because I do not like the way the Kindle version handles the supplemental material. Instead of just printing the outlines, treatments, scripts and illustrated pages as pages in the book, the Kindle version lists a hyperlink to the publisher's website where that material must be obtained. The reader has the option of reading the material on the site or downloading it to their tablet via PDF. Both of these options are extremely inconvenient and force the reader to juggle either the book and a PDF reader or a browser on their tablet. Constantly switching back and forth gets old fast.

Frankly, I don't understand why these materials weren't just included in the sections that they were intended for? That is how any other How-to Writing book that I have read has handled this particular issue. Obviously, material costs (ie paper) couldn't have influenced this decision but, whatever the case, this choice really mars this highly-anticipated and, so far, excellent book. I certainly hope this issue will be corrected in a later update. If you're dithering between the Kindle version and a physical copy, I suggest going with an actual book. This weird issue may cause me to double-dip, depending on how essential I find the overall book.
4322711
There are a full 20 pages of errata for this edition. You can knock all of that out in a couple hours if you really buckle down, but it was just one more hassle in my Step 1 studying. A lot of the errata was identical to that from the 2011 edition; hopefully they fix it in 2013.
459795
Just got the soft cover version. Looking forward to developing more of my brain's capacity as Mr. Right promises practicing this series of exercises will in the 70 day program performed consistently for 10 minutes max daily. I have the kindle version and have gotten up to starting the exercises part. It was then clear to me that you need to softcover version (unless you enjoy going  through a lot of hurdles) book in order to fashion the exercise cards from the book to work with.

Why only three stars if I have not started the exercises yet? Because like most self published works, Mr. Right neglected to provide a table of contents. A huge no no in my view. This makes his format smack of amateurish design. I will say however, that so far I have not spotted any misspelled words or grammar errors.

Also, Mr. Right mentions "studies" and "experiments", but as far as I can tell so far into the book he fails to provide a single source to any of these studies supporting his method's strength and effectiveness, therefore asking readers to take him at his word. A big mistake as far as I am concerned. I am proceeding with trying out this method not so much because Mr. Right has provided sufficient evidence of the success of the method presented. More some because I am a dedicated seeker of methods to improve my brain's performance. Also I could not find a single reference to Dr. Patrick Kelly's intellectual exercises that this book's method is patterned after. Not a single reference was found. I will refrain from saying this is suspicious, but I will say it is highly surprising.

Bottomline, the proof of this pudding will be in its tasting. So I will taste it over 70 days to see if it provides the benefits promised. I hope so.

After finishing the book and at least half way through the 70 day program, I may come back to revise my review. Hopefully any revision will be a positive one.
4286209
As other reviews mention, there are many portions of the book that were omitted (by my count over 40). These omissions do not appear to interrupt the flow of the content of the book, however.

Something that I did not notice prior to purchasing is that there is a 2 device limit--which I am unsure of how to switch between the two devices I downloaded it to. In fact I am not certain which other device I put it on to even attempt to remove it. Amazon should have a way to easily note which devices are using the licenses and a way to pause or transfer between them.

In conclusion, the primary material is present, but the continued pompous behavior of academic publishers prompts me to rate at 1 star--price is not different enough from the physical one to justify the LACK of information and the LIMIT of two device use and Amazon does not appear to have provided a way to easily transfer the limited licenses between devices.
4782999
Probably, the book isn't that bad--it's just that the ebook version is missing text and contains extra line breaks. I learned from calls to Amazon's service reps that others are having this problem (although the entry level support person said that no complaints had been received). It took a referral to her supervisor to learn that 5-6 others had this problem and that the "publisher was looking in to it".

Haven't heard anything yet.
2890824
This is a good review but it was full of errors.  At least there is an online resource listing the errors and corrections.  It took about 2 hours to make all the changes, but it was worth it.  Good resource, I just wish there were not so many errors.
1665540
I wrote to the editorial team, but I wanted to let other potential buyers know about some SERIOUS typos contained in this book:

Pages 222-223: Information supplied is for Uniformed Services University, NOT Tufts University. There is no other listing for Tufts.
Pages 368-369: Information supplied looks like it is for West Virginia University School of Medicine, NOT Washington University in St. Louis. There is no second listing for Washington University in St. Louis. This is one of the top medical programs in the country, and should absolutely be listed properly.
Pages 372-373: There is a second listing for West Virginia University School of Medicine, but it is unclear which pages provide the correct information for the school.

Had I not been paying attention, I would have decided not to apply to some schools that are a good fit for me.

Medical school applicants have enough to worry about, without having to deal with incorrect resources. I'm sure there are more mistakes than I have found here, so I am no longer going to use this book. It's completely useless.
4060664
My biggest complaint is the bad index. A supplement with corrections is definitely warranted! A few examples: index - fish tamales page 90, actually page 88. Index - green pork pork tamales page 91, actually page 89. Index - fava bean tlacoyos page 88, actually page 91. Index - tamales with chicken mole page 89, actually page 90. Index - cheese tlacoyos page 88, actually page 91. And on and on and on. Maybe I will spend this winter revising the entire index. If ever a book needed a new edition already, it's this one. Reading some of the other comments on recipe errors, I'm starting to cringe, what else is in store I have yet to discover?
2223619
I bought this book based on all the glowing reviews here...and ya know what?  You can't believe everything you read.  This book is great WHEN it has what you need.  But there are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many omissions on common words that one needs a reminder in spelling.  Case in point:  the word "erythromycin", a common enough generic name for an antibiotic, was not listed here.  How ridiculous.  Frustrating.

I am coping with the omissions here by writing directly on the pages words that should be included but aren't, as I encounter them in my studies.  Of course nothing is perfect.  But this book needs some major, rudimentary updating.
3979449
This book would be excellent if it simply had a few sentences of summary for each chapter.  What I mean is this:  Yes, have the long-winded explanation but also include a short summary of what each chapter says at the beginning or end of each chapter.

Dr. Holick has been researching Vitamin D (or should I say Hormone D) for decades and is eminently qualified to preach on this topic.  But most of us would rather start with the short story (cut to the chase) and have the details available if we wish to get more in-depth.

Also, I don't remember Dr. Holick acknowledging that supplementation might be different than getting your vitamin D through the sun.  There is a very big and important NIH study going on right now that looks at vitamin D supplementation.  That study will finish in 2014, but the results will be not be available until a few years after the completion of the study.  It is possible that study could show us some negatives in regard to vitamin D supplementation.  There have been a few minor chinks in the armor of vitamin D supplementation that Dr. Holick does not discuss.  That is perhaps OK since these things have been quite minor and not well documented, but I still think a tiny bit of caution is warranted.  Boy, I'm not saying this well at all!  Maybe I need to be more long-winded :)

I currently believe in getting a fair amount of vitamin D and trying to get it from sunshine when possible.  If not possible, get it from supplements.  But there are some things we don't know about vitamin D and a lot of what Dr. Holick says is subject to possible change in the next few years.  Keep your ears and eyes open.

All in all, a much needed book that properly strikes at the medical leviathan and exposes another area of misguided and harmful dogmatism (counseling against all direct sunlight).  The book would be 4 and 3/4 stars if it had a summary paragraph for each chapter.
2217715
I was considering buying these cards, but the gross error on the cover has given me cause for pause. (Cover reads: AND A+! It should read AN A+!)  Makes me wonder how many other mistakes there might be!  Thank you.
4597473
I am in the process of studying for the exam and overall the books are helping considerably.  However, the other customer review talked about errors in the answers to the simulation problems and he wasn't kidding.  There are numerous errors (incorrect answers) throughout.  It is not a big deal when you know the topic well and are confident in the answer, but when you are unsure of the correct answer, it is a real headache!

At least the answers to the multiple choice questions don't seem to have any errors.
2320163
I bought the book and got the CDs included and noted that I could not find the supplementary items online. I have uploaded them to my OneDrive and Mega account for everyone to access as I know how hard it is to find.
Mega: https://mega.co.nz/#F!fV5mlRAb! cHG1getuuhudSuV9te49BA
OneDrive: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A6BD04D9A7CE916E!708319&authkey=!AFZ8byRZtU-hXHA&ithint=folder%2c
552051
This was the most helpful material in my pursuit of my MCSD to this point. It covered more material better than some of the Microsoft Press texts. However, there were errors scattered throughout my edition (October 2000, First edition). Often these errors appeared in the review exercises at the ends of the chapters.
Luckily, the publisher is on top of these and may correct them in later editions. The O'Reilly web site includes the corrections to the errors. I downloaded the corrections and found them to be a reasonable solution to the problem. O'Reilly invites its readers to submit corrections and suggestions. The process appears to be working.
456084
I bought the 2nd edition (on paper) to prepare for the Advanced Test Analyst examination.
I would give it 4 stars, but there are some formatting problems that, ironically, nobody checked for before printing.
For example on page 59, discussing Multiple Condition Coverage for an "A and B" condition

"we can calculate the number of tests needed (22)"

Sure the number of tests must be 4. How did they come up with 22? Either the "to power of" operator is not printed, or the superscript was not properly formatted.
It should have been 2^2
On the previous page there is another occurrence of the same problem.
And another one again on page 59, near the bottom

"Since there are five atomic conditions, we would expect to see 25, or 32, unique rows on the table"

Obviously it was meant "2^5, or 32, unique rows". I find it sad that a book on testing did not get enough proofreading.

And who came up with the idea of printing the ISTQB glossary entries in black on a dark grey background? Sans serif, to top it off.

Content wise, the book is not bad. My problem is that now I don't know whether to trust the book with regards to the ISTQB content. Surely if the "25 or 32" mistake slipped by, content mistakes might lurk there.
2076813
I'm a second-year medical student taking step 1 in March 2012. I bought the 2010 FA book when I started, and marked it up as we went through the subjects in school, just as I was advised. So two months ago, I had a totally personalized (and heavily highlighted) book that I thought would be great for rapid reviewing.

Back when FA 2011 came out, I didn't really care since the changes were incremental, and it seemed like they actually took more information out to make it higher yield. There were error corrections, but that list was publicly available so I didn't care. When I gave a talk to incoming first-years in August (before 2012 came out), I told them to do what I did (buy it now, annotate it, then keep the same version for the boards), since updates to FA weren't a huge deal. It was more important to have your notes in there.

Then I saw FA 2012. I bought it immediately, and I haven't opened my highlighted 2010 version since.

The fact that this version is in color is HUGE. In particular: biochem pathways are much easier to understand (rate limiting steps stick out more, important aspects are better emphasized) and color histo/heme/micro slides are inline with the text (rather than at the end). Also, the entire text just looks nicer with the subtly colored headers and emphases. I know that sounds small, but when you're staring at the thing for 8 hours a day you start to appreciate it.

So to students taking the exam soon, I'd recommend taking a look at this book. Also, I'd recommend going to Staples or somewhere similar and getting the pages spiral bound (this is my preference) or punched into a 3-ring binder.

Now the caveats:
It isn't integrated with USMLERx (the study service by the FA people) yet. The videos in Express are still for 2011, and the flashcards are for 2011/2010. So the page numbers don't match up. As a side note, I thought that this would be a fantastic service but it's been kind of a disaster. They've had tech problems that totally shut me out (not the stress I need right now), it's buggy, and it's just not very well polished all around.

Doctors in Training also matches up with 2011 right now, but that will be updated soon from what I hear.

Some people complain about the quality of the paper, but I've actually found it OK. Highlighter can leak through since it's pretty thin, but it's actually better than previous years.

Also, parts of the book still seem unfinished, with some poor-quality B&W pics still spattered about and some errors present that should have been fixed. And right now, you don't have an errata list.

But to all med students studying for the board: GET FIRST AID. It is the most important resource you will have.
4925312
To everyone who has purchased Martin's latest "Introduction to Technical Analysis", we do apologize for the lack of the link featured on the cover. Unfortunately, as the author, we cannot control what happens to the manuscript or external files promised once a contract is signed by the author and publisher and the work has left our control.  Once the author signs over the rights, he loses all rights to the work. Again, the publisher owns these rights legally.  Please note we provided the files to the publisher, so they do exist, but were unfortunately left out of the final copy prior to printing.

As for our site pring.com hosting the file; we cannot. This is a legal issue and we would be challenged by the publisher for illegally posting copyrighted material.

We do hope the publisher will correct these errors when the next printing of the book occurs. However, in it's defense, the book has been updated from the earlier edition which was in print for 15 years and is a great learning tool for beginner technicians!

Good luck and good charting! :o)