This is a must have if you are serious about Chinese. Even one of my Chinese teachers/colleagues, (who IS Chinese), has one on his shelf!
The dictionary is organised 100% ABC according to pinyin. Unlike most dictionaries which orggnise the words in alphabetical order after each head character, this one really is totally arranged according to pinyin and, although the characters are there in the text, they are not counted for arrangement purposes. This makes it an extremely helpful resource for purely aural work, (listening to things where there is no written text, general conversations, talks and lectures in Chinese etc).
You can also use it to look up words in a written text as there is the usual radical index and so on at the back. There are also some charts about different forms of romanisation and so on.
Bear in mind that it is only Chinese-English and is no substitute for the best bilingual publication you can afford, but is still well worth the money if you need something to help you follow the content of aural better. I also use it extensively to check the tones of words and to double check characters when I know the pronunciation already.