Buy

Here's where you come to buy something. Interested in saving 50% or more? Buy four or more printed books that are in stock through our online order form. If you buy 6 or more items, knock another 15% off, and if you've registered as a Preferred Customer, you'll knock yet another 5% off. Details here.

Click here to order online.

• Our guarantee
• Can't order online?
• Non-US customers
• Finding us in bookstores
• Contacting us

• Moving to Linux
• Starting out with VFP (from Fox 1.x/2.x)
• Using DOS-based apps on Windows
• Learning VFP 7.0
• Learning VFP 8.0
• Learning VFP 9.0
• A comprehensive learning path for VFP

• Upgrading ebooks to printed books

• Preferred customer program
• User group discounts
• Other volume discounts
• Site licenses
• Online order form promotion code
• Free review copies

Click here to order online.
Click here for information on your credit card's "Card Security Code".

I guarantee that you'll love our books. If you don't, I'll give you your money back. Send a copy of your sales receipt (see Contact Us), together with an explanation of what you were expecting from the book, and why you didn't get it from the book, and I'll send you a refund. Be sure to include mailing address and who the check should be made out to.

If you can't order online, for whatever reason, that's OK. You can order manually by downloading a paper order form and sending it to us after filling it out. Here's how.

1. Download the form here. It's a ZIP file that unzips into an RTF file.
2. Save it to your hard disk.
3. Open it up in your word processor.
4. Fill it out and save it again.
5. Send it to us via
(a) snail mail to Hentzenwerke, PO Box 170343, Milwaukee WI 53217 USA,
(b) fax to 414.332.9463, or
(c) email to books@hentzenwerke.com. If you want to email it, some people ZIP and password protect the file, and send the password separately as a security measure.

NOTE: This takes between two and three days to process and there's an extra $10 charge for manual orders.

We'll process your order and email you a confirmation within two-three business days (we try for the same day, but sometimes we get busy.) Your order will ship within three business days of processing. You'll also get an email from UPS when your order lands on the truck. This email will have your tracking number so you can find out where your package is.

If you're in one of the following countries, your best bet is to order direct from one of our distributors. Germany

Rainer Becker (Germany)
dFPUG c/o ISYS GmbH
Frankfurter Str. 21 b
Germany, D-61476 Kronberg
++6173-950903 Voice
++6173-950904 Fax
Email bestellungen@dfpug.de
www.dfpug.de

Australia

Andrew Coates (Australia)
Civil Solutions
PO Box 1510
MAROUBRA NSW 2035
(02) 9344 4993 Voice
(02) 9345 0893 Fax
Email books@civilsolutions.com.au
http://www.civilsolutions.com.au/hwbooks/

United Kingdom

Try Amazon. http://www.amazon.co.uk or Computer Bookshops

Elsewhere

As of July, 2004, you can order direct from us. Competitive shipping rates in many parts of the world and more personalized service than the big 'megastores'.

Naturally, we'd like you to buy online, direct from us. (It's part of our dastardly plan for domination of the solar system. Our authors and us also make more money when we don't have to split the funds with dozens of middlemen.)

However, we realize that some people like browsing through bookstores. (We've been known to do that ourselves, albeit with dark glasses and a trenchcoat.) If you're one of those folks, we encourage you to "buy where you browse." It's unfair to take advantage of a bookstore's facilities to look through books and then order online just to save a couple of bucks.

So, conveniently for you bookstore-goers, our books are available in bookstores nationwide. We ship to all of the major chains (Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-A-Million, Indigo) as well as wonderful specialty technical bookstores like the following:

Computer Book Works, 78 Reade Street, NYC
Digital Guru, 546-3 Lawrence Expwy, Sunnyvale CA
Op-Amp Technical Books, 1033 N Sycamore Ave, Los Angeles CA
Powell's Technical Books, 1645 NW Hoyt St, Portland OR
Quantum Books, 4 Cambridge Center, Cambridge MA
Reiters Scientific & Technical Books, 2021 K Street NW, Washington DC
San Diego Technical Books, 4240 Kearney Mesa Rd, San Diego CA
SoftPro Books, 75 Third Ave, Waltham MA
SoftPro Books, 6862 S Yosemite St , Centennial CO
Stacey's Bookstore, 581 Market St, San Francisco, CA

That said, we can't guarantee that they're going to be in stock in a particular bookstore on the day you walk into it. Why not? you wail. For the same reason that you might not find a quarter of Haagen-Daaz Chocolate-Chocolate Chip at Bob's Stop 'n Go on Route 41 in Terre Haute. Sometimes they just run out! We ship via intermediaries who are responsible for keeping individual stores stocked, and if there's a rush on a particular item, the natural lag time between the time the last widget goes out the door and the store orders more means that they might be out of stock for a bit. The good news is that the specialty stores will all special order for you as part of their normal course of business. The bad news is that, occasionally, an undermotivated clerk at a chain store will tell you tall tales (like "This book is out of print." when you know it was just published three months ago.) in order to avoid the hassle of special ordering it for you. (Hey, whaddaya expect for $8.00 an hour?)

You need to know that we're a small operation - we don't have full time staff manning the phones and turning around email inquiries in 30 minutes. If you're having problems with something, your best bet is to check the Problems/Help/FAQs link here. If you still can't find the answer to your question, email us here and you'll get an answer often the same day, and at the latest by the next business day.

Which book should I buy? We've got over billyuns and billyuns of books. Well, dozens and dozens, actually - sometimes it's difficult to know which book most closely meets your needs. Here are some common scenarios and a suggested list of books.

Our Linux books are each customized for a specific type of function - Linux on the desktop, Linux as a file server, Linux as a Web server, and so on. As a result, there isn't a 'path' like there is for learning Visual FoxPro. However, if you're interested in a migration path to Linux for your home or office, I've got some suggestions here. In those suggestions, I also point you toward the book or books (as well as free whitepapers and other resources) that might be useful in your quest.

If you're new to FoxPro in general or experienced with FoxPro 1.x, 2.x or another xBase dialect, and want to learn Visual FoxPro, your starting point is The Fundamentals. Although the title includes "Visual Studio", the majority of the book covers Visual FoxPro from the very beginning. It is specifically targeted at you folks who are coming to the Visual world from earlier versions of Fox. Note that The Fundamentals is only available in ebook (PDF) form, and we do not have plans to do a reprint or an update. For more books after The Fundamentals, check out "A comprehensive learning path for VFP" below.

Check out Alan Bourke's Painless Legacy FoxPro Applications on Modern Networks. (Ebook only.)

If you specifically need to come up to speed on Visual FoxPro 7.0, your recommended path is both The Fundamentals (which covers VFP 6.0) and What's New in Visual FoxPro 7.0.

If you specifically need to come up to speed on Visual FoxPro 8.0, your recommended path is the set of (1) The Fundamentals (which covers VFP 6.0), (2) What's New in Visual FoxPro 7.0, which goes from 6 to 7, and (3) What's New in Visual FoxPro 8.0, which goes from 7 to 8.

If you specifically need to come up to speed on Visual FoxPro 9.0, your recommended path is the set of (1) The Fundamentals (which covers VFP 6.0), (2) What's New in Visual FoxPro 7.0, which goes from 6 to 7, (3) What's New in Visual FoxPro 8.0, which goes from 7 to 8, and you guessed it, (4) What's New in Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits, which goes from 8 to 9.

We often are asked for a series of books for learning VFP, or for a comprehensive 'starter set'. Here's what we recommend: First, The Fundamentals (and What's New in VFP 7.0/8.0/9.0) to learn VFP. Then, the Hacker's Guide (for 6.0 or 7.0, as appropriate) as the fundamental reference for the language (what many people think should have been the help file that comes with VFP). (We do not have plans to produce a Hacker's Guide for Visual FoxPro 8.0 or later.) Third is Effective Techniques, which gives you the big-picture strategy (or 'wisdom') for developing applications.

Fourth are 1001 Things (KiloFox) and MegaFox: 1002 Things, which give you answers and code to over a thousand granular "How do I..." questions. KiloFox covers 'inside' VFP while MegaFox covers VFP + the outside world. Two other books that address specific strategic issues are Advanced Object Orientation with VFP Apps and Debugging VFP Apps.

The rest of our books are highly specialized, covering topics like Office Automation, Client-Server Development, and the VFP Report Writer.

The purchase price of a printed book includes the ability to download the ebook at no extra charge. (Note that not all printed books have an ebook - see the catalog page of a specific book for details.)

Occasionally someone buys an ebook and then decides they have to have the printed copy as well. If you bought an ebook from us, here's how to upgrade it:

1. Fill out an order form here. Name, address, credit card info, including card security info.
2. Circle which book you want to upgrade, and write in "Upgrade ebook -> printed".
3. Fill in the cost:
a) Difference in price between ebook and printed (usually $10), plus
b) Shipping (about $5-7, depending on where we're shipping (UPS ground), plus
c) $10 handling charge
4. Send it to us via fax (414.332.9463) or email (orders AT hentzenwerke DOT com) (zip up the file - don't just send it in an email!)

We usually get these taken care of within one business day. Sometimes two. You'll get an email confirmation when it ships via UPS.

Preferred Customer Program

Want to receive an additional 5% off of all purchases through us? How about being the first to hear about new books and being informed about updates to source code and ebook files? These are some of the benefits of our Preferred Customer Program.

If you sign up for the Preferred Customer program, we'll email you two to four times a month with info like...

* updates to electronic files (source code and ebooks) for current books
* updates to FAQs and Errata for current books
* announcements about new books
* announcements about new white papers posted on our site
* and other announcements that I deem newsworthy (like GLGDW info)

The advantage here is that you don't have to keep visiting our website, hoping to find some goodies - we'll 'push' the information out to you instead. How much does it cost? Nothing. Ever. Instead, we'll automatically knock off an additional 5% from orders you make through our online store.

How do you become a Preferred Customer? Go to the Buy Books page here, and click on Online ordering. If you're already in our database, log in using your email/password, and update your customer information page. If you're new to our database, click on the 1st Time Buyers link and follow the instructions to create your customer profile. In both cases, once you've saved your customer page by going to the order form, you can exit your browser. Your information will be saved.

User Groups can make bulk purchases and receive a sizable discount and free shipping. Here are the rules:

1. Discount is 30% and free ground shipping to the 48 contiguous United States.
2. Orders must include a minimum of 20 books.
3. Orders must be paid for by one check or credit card payment, and must ship to a single address.
NOTE: Each order must include at least 20 books - not just the first one. In other words, this isn't a cumulative purchase quantity.
Contact us here to order.

Looking to make a bulk purchase for your company or organization. Perhaps you're running a training class and need a lot of books for your students. Or perhaps you're making a big buy for the whole development department. We can help you out in a variety of ways. Contact us here for more information.

If you purchased a single-user copy of an ebook, either with a printed book or by itself, you have a license to make as many copies for yourself as you need - on your home and work computers, on a laptop, a backup you keep in the safe deposit box, on your PDA, whatever. But this belongs to you and you only.

If your buddy asks you for a copy, tell them to buy their own. If your co-workers ask you to put it on the file server so multiple developers can access it, you will need a site license to do this. Giving or selling copies of this ebook to others is illegal and robs us and our authors of income that we have rightfully earned.

If you work in a multi-user shop and want multiple copies or a site license, you've come to the right place! A site license for an ebook allows you to place the ebook on your server and have multiple people access it, or have multiple people make copies of the same ebook for their own workstation or laptop.

A site license for a book is priced according to the following schedule:

1-5 people: 100% of the price of one printed book. (e.g. Your company buys a $50 book. Your company has five people who want to share the ebook that comes along with it. A site license that covers the additional four people (in addition to the original purchaser) would be an additional $50.)

6-10 people: 200% of the price of one printed book. (e.g. a site license for a $50 book would be an additional $100.)

11-25 people: 500% the price of one printed book. (e.g. a site license for a $50 book would be an additional $250.)

26+ people: 1000% of the price of one printed book. (e.g. a site license for a $50 book would be an additional $500.)

On the Items page of our online order form (step 4 for those of you who are counting), there's a box labeled "Promotion Code" and next to it is a link to this page. So what's a Promotion Code? Once in a while we run a promotion, like in a magazine advertisement. Those promotions have codes attached to them - and this box is where you enter that code.

Complimentary review copies are available to people who want to review our books for print or online publications. Please email us here with the following information:

1. Your name
2. Your email address
3. Your shipping address
4. Your telephone number (specify day/eve)
5. The name of the publication/organization you are writing for
6. The URL of the publication/organization
7. The intended date that the review will appear
8. Lists of/links to other articles/reviews you've written

Review guidelines and expectations:

1. We expect you to understand who the target audience for the book is and read/review the book appropriately.
2. Given (1), we expect you to be honest about your opinion. It doesn't do potential readers any good if you're writing a glowing review about a book that you really don't think deserves it, just because you got it for free, ya know?
3. We expect that you also take a few moments and add your comments to the book's page on Amazon.com.