Electronic Principles

The new editions water down the information like that famous scene from trading places....."Pork bellies which are used to make bacon - like in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich..." the original Malvino is a great way to learn basic electronic circuits with solid state devices for students who have not taken calculus...for those who have taken calculus, there's always Hayt.....

Following the rave reviews, I picked up that book (6th Edition). Not that I am a beginner in electronics, but I wanted it as a beginners reference that would remind me of some of the basic concepts that I may have forgotten since my electronics course in college. The book definitely has many positives. It is well laid out, the graphs are beautiful. It is visually appealing. As for information it seems accessible in many places albeit sometimes oversimplified.The main issue is that the explanation isn't always clear and doesn't always drive the point home. I give you too examples. When talking about AC analysis of amplifiers, I wish the author had taken some time to explain the concept of superposition. Not that I didn't know it from Circuit theory. But the fact that it is at the heart of AC analysis, makes failing to mention it at the very beginning annoying. I remember that this was one of my biggest confusing parts about AC analysis. Why do we short circuit DC sources in AC and open caps in DC. He only mentions superposition in passing later, and definitely had this been my first book I would have been through a lot of confusion. He also kept on using the term "AC ground" without explanation. I can imagine a beginner would be very confused, thinking that this is a real ground. In reality, it just means constant voltage. He also never explains that the premise of this analysis and that the use of superposition is based on the assumption that the transistor is considered a linear device in this case even though it isn't but we try to approximate it that way. I remember back in my college days, I would try to always think of the transistor in terms of transistor curves and exponential equations. Had anyone explained to me that I shouldn't bother and just assume the transistor is linear, it could have saved me a lot of agony.You see my point? He says things, throws terms, but he doesn't always get to the heart of it, neither does he address all the things that were confusing me when I was starting to learn the subject. That's why I'm saying it's a good book, but it is overrated because a great book would have addressed these confusing matters.Another example is when I opened up the JFET chapter since I have good background on MOSFETs but didn't remember much of JFETs. He has some good explanation in the beginning but I really disliked his discussion on biasing. For example on page 432 he would say "Since VGS is a negative, the source voltage will be slightly larger than the gate voltage". Says who? why? no explanation. I don't think the second part of the sentence necessarily follow from the first part. Also equation 13-12 is not explained where it follows from. Well it's kind of late night and may be I am slow, but I just think it's not well explained.Aside from all that, you have full page examples that asks you to divide or multiply like it is an arithmetic problem. You have the equation, a few numbers, and all you mentally need to do is to substitute numbers in the equation. I do not really know what purpose that serves aside from making the book bigger, especially when the example comes right after the equation. No insight gained nothing, just plain substitution.Of course I can't pinpoint every single shortcoming that I saw for lack of time, space, and mainly because I haven't read the book cover to cover, just picking chapters that I feel I want to brush up on the material in them.So do you believe me when I say overrated?

Recently I began building little analog circuit devices as a hobby. I wanted to start learning how to analyze existing devices and learn how they work, as well as how to design my own circuits. I had taken an electronics lab as part of my undergraduate degree, and we used "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill, which is a popular book, so I picked up a used copy.Although Art of Electronics has lots of good stuff in it, it doesn't really explain how many of the circuits work. It's more of a recipe book. Electronic Principles by Malvino does a good job of explaining how different circuits work. It has extensive coverage of different types of op-amp circuits that is especially useful. As a sometime physics teacher, if I were going to teach an electronics lab I would probably recommend this book to my students as a supplement to whatever textbook the school decided they should use.

This is a really great book, everything is explained in a very relaxed and clear way. It really seems like the author is a great educator who wishes for the students to understand it as simple as possible. Yet that is also the downside of the book, its very simple, theres no calculus, the algebra needed is elementary, and math seem avoided whenever possible.The great thing about this book is that it covers several useful (yet simple) applications, so it combined with a more rigourous and in depth book such as Sedra & Smith "Microelectronic circuits" which lacks applications but covers most of the technical and physical aspects needed to know about electronic devices, will give you a solid understanding regarding analog electronics.

Had used this book and this version back in the '80s when I was in college. Had since lost the book but was happy to find it here on Amazon and a the price I did ($0.01)!!! In fact, it arrived just in time for me to refer to it for a project I'd been contemplating. Although somewhat dated by today's standards, it still provides a wealth of theory for discrete semiconductor devices and circuits. A must-have for anyone working with discrete electronics devices. Also provides a concise basic electronics and electrical theory review. 5 stars for sure!!!

My only downgrade is the cliched “it can be shown that ... “ and a magical formula is written down. After going to the web I’ve found most of the supplied formulas are easy to deduce and it would’ve taken little extra effort to helpfully demonstrate so get ready to go to YouTube for extra tid bits. Overall the book is good for a bachelor level tech worker that needs to do basic calculations. Lots of easy error free exercises and the math is nothing but high school algebra and prerequisite circuits. I don’t even recall a single phasor or matrix solution involved.

This book was a great deal. This book was used but was about as close as you could get from being new.This was an ITT tech book. I was probably a $100 plus book brand new.I bought it for a few dollars.I is fairly technical and a little above a beginning basic electronics like Grob Basic Electronics 4th edition.I would buy from this vendor again. I bought a book for $75 from another vendor saying it was used. It was in pretty lousy shape and thought I was ripped off.

This book provides good content of Electronics for MSc (In Physics) from Indian Universities. Almost all the topics have been covered (however some topics like h parameters don't have sufficient discription so you will have to refer them from other sources, stability factor is also skipped). Also suits for competative examination like iit jam but so far, I don't know whether it will be sufficient for net, gate or other exams as well.One more important thing is that, this book demands patience and trust while reading, because some topics which are starting point for some other books take too long to be discussed.

The book was in great condition. Overall happy with the purchase! Thank you!

Had borrowed this book from a friend to read about electronics but found it so good that I bought my own version to add it to my own library.

Excellent book ! Good explanation ! Good basic !Worst delivery experience ,no bubble wrapping !!

This was for my son for his coursework and it is exactly what he needs for studying Electronics at Uni.