Programming Windows 5th ed.

Hello, I'm trying to get into Windows programming and I've been told by a friend that this book (The one by Charles Petzold) is the best place to start. I know C++ pretty well, so that isn't a problem, but I'm worried about how old the book is. I doubt most of the code has changed between Win98 and today, but if I study this 1600 page tome will I get stuck with a modern compiler on some archaic term that isn't used anymore? I guess what I'm most worried about is wasting my whole summer reading this and learning a lot of stuff that is completely useless today.

Also, I know that everything is going to 64-bit these days with Windows 7 and all, and I'm worried that I'd be even further behind because of that with this book, should I not waste my time with it and look for something a little more modern?

Thanks, hopefully you guys can stop trolling for one min and help with a real question.

I'm currently reading http://tinyurl.com/6po357 , which was last updated late 2001. It focuses on game programming, but early on it focuses on things like window classes, handles, resources, the WndProc callback, etc.

I'd also recommend Microsoft Internals by Mark Russinovich and David Solomon. It basically explores features of the WinNT kernel.