Customer Reviews

Learning with LabVIEW 8

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Good book and software. I am currently a physics student taking a class that uses this software. I am fairly impressed with both the book and the software. If you plan on buying the full version don't bother with the student version. If however you are like me going to school and don't plan on buying the full version anytime soon then the student version is well worth the money.
Book is pretty easy to understand. It is almost a little too basic and slow moving but it is fairly thorough which is good.
It is nice to have the student version software so I can follow along with the examples in the book and try the exercises without having to head up to school to the lab.

To get started learning about LabView, I ordered a copy of the Student Edition of Labview 8 in October. It arrived, I installed it, everything was happy for a bit. Then I upgraded to Leopard. The installer complained, claiming the media was bad (I was very careful with the media, and even copying the media works fine & without error).

I called in to NI to see if they had any ideas.

They explained that LabView version 8.5 came out in August (remember I purchased this from Amazon in October; I'd unfortunately made the assumption that Amazon would be carrying the latest edition), and 8.2, the version that came with the book I bought, is not supported on Leopard. And apparently NI's policy, at least on student editions, is to require customers to purchase the new revision rather than offering upgrades.

I'm assuiming Amazon is still only selling the 8.2 edition (there's nothing I can find to indicate this book/software are 8.5).

Update Nov 2008: NI has finally addressed the issue; search through their forums for how to get a replacement disc that will run under Leopard.
Update 2 (also Nov 2008): The replacement disc installs, which is of course good, but then the program crashes if you try to do the "Mass Compile" recommended when the program comes up. Since this has been a known issue for quite a long time, this is another pretty big disappointment.

Amazon actually has the LabView 8 Student Edition (2 CDs) software package listed, but it links to this book. This book is just a book! It does NOT have the software included. Despite what other reviews imply, and what the link and descriptive text implies, there are NO CDs (nor are there supposed to be) with this Book. The LV8 Student Edition software will run you another $80+ dollars, if you can get it.

In addition, as you go through the exercises, you will find that for many of them, the author has laid NO foundation for actually doing them. It is only when you hit later chapters that you will be shown how to do the tasks set for you in previous chapters. Not always the case, but often enough to cause the waste of hours of time trying to poke through the vast number of VIs to find what you need.

I have also found that a number of the components for VIs in the Building Blocks library one downloads from Prentice Hall (Mandatory!) do not actually load and are missing SubVI components.

Do yourself a favor and get a different book.

I am a software engineer, new to Labview. I bought this one a few months ago for a limited-scale project at work. I now think that if I could get only one kit to get started with Labview, this would again be it.

The book has a nice balance of simple and intermediate techniques. It is pretty concise yet has good scope of coverage. The included Labview Student edition is Excellent and includes a ton of examples and many of the advanced features of the full product versions of Labview to get you introduced to some more meaty capabilities.

I highly regard reduncance in learning, but I knocked one star off the top because it is slightly too redundant, recycling thru previous material a little bit too much for my taste. The chapters appear to assume that there has been some time since your last session and you have forgoten a chunk of the last one. Or maybe they just wanted less linkage and interdependence between sessions. But do not let that stop you from getting this resource.

This was another book my son needed for college and was able to save lots of money buying it here.

My students could learn LabView using this book. When the book was ordered through our Bookstore in 2008, it came with the student edition of the software on a CD. When I ordered the book through Amazon in 2010, there was no CD. This is a big omission!!! Also, when I gave my CD (ordered in a previous year) to my students, some of their laptops could read the CD, but others couldn't.

The book is just good for beginers as for those who likes GUI programming experiments with test equipment. The software version in the book can do a lot of things that can be used with many examples over NI website.

This is a book and smart software to learn and work. Very good for engineering students and labs.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131999184/ref=cm_cr_rev_prod_title

The book was in brand new condition and arrived within the time frame as promised.