A+ certification

[dragonone]

Any tips regarding this topic? Work place wants me to get certified within a certain time period. I just d/l a whole bunch of ebooks and started reading away. I thought I knew a lot about pc's, and well, there's a lot more I need to learn and get set straight.

Am i supposed to dish out the $150 for each of the exams (2)? Is is even worth it for a wage increase, if there is any?

thnx

[atomic]

i think in 1999 the A+ would have been almost worth it if you were trying to compete against an mcs* or cisco . but in 2006, u might as well find a new job for a pay increase . certifications don't mean much today .

[codetrap]

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[rinny]

Yeah i had to do the same, get certified within 3 months. Just read those ebooks (thats what i did) and go get certified. I dont know where youre working, but they may have a special discounted price for your company as they did for mine, since there are so many from that company that go for the certification.

I didnt find the tests too too hard, some of the questions are exactly the same as whats on the tests. I think i still have some/most of the ebooks i used, as well as testing programs if you need PM me and i can email them to you or something.

[locust]

its a useless cert that most places don't require it any longer

[Majestic12]

Originally posted by locust
its a useless cert that most places don't require it any longer


Agreed. C+ is like having a 3rd grade education. They'll be like... "Good for you, you passed it..." but most of it is pretty common knowledge anyway.

[atomic]

Originally posted by codetrap


Spoken like someone who doesn't have any. Given that I've been on the hiring side of the table a number of times, we've always given preference to people with certifications over people without. Even if the value of ther cert isn't that high, it shows dedication and discipline to get one.

Letter behind the name are never wasted.

"hiring side of the table" . i hope all the luck to you and your career but please drop the attitude . i have in fact worked for two incredibly large companies Symantec and Cisco systems and have had multiple certifications including CCNE and CCNA as well as various expired MCSE's and SASS . i just retired from my position at Symantec 3 days ago to pursue other ventures with my enterprise expierence.

i suspect you have a very simular career past to override my feedback?

[mushi_mushi]

As you probably know to get A+ certified you have to take 2 exams 301(hardware) and 302 (software). Each exam is 80 questions multiple choice, you get 90 min to complete the test. I think they are in the process of revising the test for 2006 if they haven’t done so already. I think they were changing the number of questions from 80 to 100 and also incorporating a third exam in the mix.

I got my A+ a couple of months ago (2003 objectives), for the most part I thought it was fairly easy. Keep in mind that respectfully you have to score 515/900 (harware) 505/900 (software) to pass the exam. Since this is an entry certification the standards are not too high. You could mess the exam up pretty bad and still pass.

The hardware portion is very basic, but you have to memorize a lot of specs, ie # of pins for pc ports, irq's, coms/lpt ports. There is quite a bit of trouble shooting on the exam, but if you have spent some time with computers you shouldn’t have a problem because alot of the multiple choice answers are bogus. Some questions you may encounter will be along the lines of:

1) How many pins does an ide cable have?
2) what’s the maximum number usb devices can be hooked up to a system?
3) Floppy drive light is always on, what may be the problem?

I thought the software portion of the A+ was by far the hardest, partly because some of the questions are hard to follow and because who the heck uses win 95/98 anymore, they may ask how to access a certain program, ie:

How to access command prompt in win 98/xp: ie run>cmd (for xp) run>command(9x)
What the limit is for fat 16/32/ntfs
What versions of ntfs are used by 2000/xp

You have to know the system files for each operating system, their purpose and some of their contents, minimum installation requirements for all flavors of windows.

Im not going to blab about all the stuff you need to know, that should give you some idea. Some of this stuff is pretty specific, you don’t have to know much about it but there are a lot of facts that have to be memorized.

Even though these exams are not to difficult compared to the ones that follow I doubt any normal person can pass then without some preparation. Even if you work with computers I seriously doubt many people can walk in and pass.

As to where to get vouchers I think http://www.studyexam4less.com/comptia.asp has the best deals. I think normal price of A+ (301 or 302) is 133US, think u can get it there for 89.

I’m not sure about the value of certificates in general. I don’t see how having it will hurt your chances of getting a job/promotion but at the same time, having it probably wont mean much either. Its all in the eye of the beholder, scoring high on the test doesn’t say much about your ability to trouble shoot computers but it does show that you did commit some time and energy, what’s that worth, only your employer can answer that.

STUDY TIPS

Check out http://www.studynotes.net/ look at the A+ study guide, excellent content. That guide alone should tell you pretty much what you need to know for the exam.
I used Michael Meyers A+ Certification all in one guide, its 1000 pages but well written, I just went over the things I needed to, didn’t read it from cover to cover. The local libraries have several copies. I also used several video tutorials, ie (learnkey) which helped greatly because you learn all you need to know with more interaction and in a shorter time frame when compared to reading a book.

Good luck with your preparations, if you have any questions feel free to shoot me a PM

[Ben]

Originally posted by atomic


"hiring side of the table" . i hope all the luck to you and your career but please drop the attitude . i have in fact worked for two incredibly large companies Symantec and Cisco systems and have had multiple certifications including CCNE and CCNA as well as various expired MCSE's and SASS . i just retired from my position at Symantec 3 days ago to pursue other ventures with my enterprise expierence.

i suspect you have a very simular career past to override my feedback?


OWN3D!

Nice work DJ :thumbsup:


And yes, A+ is for all intents and purposes for any REAL IT job useless. Wow, you can put together a computer and know what a mainboard is... woo hoo </sarcasm>

I think that your company needs to update it's policies, unless the company you work for is something like CompuSmart/BestBuy etc etc that prides it'self on having "A+ Certified Technicians".

A good mix of Certifications AND Experience is key, a lot of emphasis being put on the latter. Really comes down to the IT hiring manager and their style. Do they like to see someone with solid hands on experience, or a couple years of classroom work with a fancy couple letters after their name, but no Experience. Some do, but in the schooling, where you're never under pressure, you dont have a real system down costing $$$ every hour it's down, staff and management breathing down your neck for a resolution, and the overall shitty feeling you might get when something dumb like the exchange server database corrupts and you dont know how to unmount the store, becuse all you ever read about was Exchange Server 5.5, and dont know aything about 2003, and all you hear all afternoon is faint comments throughout the office from staff about how they didn't get that email, or missed that deadline. A+ is pretty cut and dry, there's not a whole lot to stray from, which is why it's one of those certifications which doesn't hurt either way. A Processor is a processor, a RAID controller is a RAID controller, CMD Prompt is CMD Prompt. It's further up the food chain where experience really makes a difference.

If you like your job, get the certification, to increase your experience. Maybe they'll even foot the bill.

As said above, it's really in the eye of the beholder. It is nice to have a stamped peice of paper I suppose.

[GTS Jeff]

Originally posted by codetrap
Given that I've been on the hiring side of the table a number of times, we've always given preference to people with certifications over people without. Even if the value of ther cert isn't that high, it shows dedication and discipline to get one.

Letter behind the name are never wasted. I work at an IT recruiting firm, and I think you're full of shit.

[94teg]

Depends on the certification.... some are valued more then others. And some are worth taking.. as long as you learn the material and not just memorize it for that week...

Just like all the paper MCSE's around that don't know how to join a domain...... bahahahaha

[PaleRider]

get early expiry voucher if you really need to take A+. IMO it's waste of time. Real IT jobs doesn't care about A+. Acutally, any cert you do not have experience to backup with = useless.

[badMotoFinga]

I got my A+ a few months ago ... Alot of useless information .. mostly outdated technologies ... Definetly not worth taking ... go for MCDST instead ... I only took it cuz it was easy and I like building computers and I had already had A+ training which was included in my program.

To save a bit of money u can get exam vouchers off either of these sites. Check the Hot Deals.
http://www.getcertified4less.com/
http://www.itexamvouchers.com/

Also for help there are websites called braindumps .. you can google it and they usually contain questions and answers the same as or very similar to the actual exam. Most ppl consider this cheating but the A+ exam is a buncha useless knowledge unless you're becoming a PC historian.

[Toms-SC]

A+ < My balls

[FivE.SeveN]

Does the A+ still cover shit like "this is how you format a floppy disk in MS-DOS" or "Installing Windows 95"?

Even the hardware side of things is getting old. I dont see a point to studying for a cert that you probably won't ever use in-practice cause it's out of date...

And any employer that wants said out-of-date cert... well. yeah...

[JeremyD]

If you are learning something from reading the A+ course material and trying out what you have learned on your own systems then it isn't a waste of time. But don't expect it to get you a job or jump you into a new tax bracket.

[dragonone]

i'm just doing a summer and part time position @ bestbuy for the morning, they want me to get A+ certified
i figure i have nothing to lose taking it and can dig thru the pages like when i dug thru the DOS book back in the days
thnx a lot for the information, deal websites and study tips:thumbsup:

[codetrap]

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[codetrap]

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[GTS Jeff]

Originally posted by codetrap


Perhaps you didn't understand my point.. if you have two people that have like skills, and one has a crapload of certifications, where the other has nada.. who will you pick? lol I would bring them both in for an interview and see who's more presentable...certs be damned.

[locust]

your your bestbuy position you don't actually need an a+ cert i worked there in geek squad for over a year and they kept asking for it but they never paid for it so i never finished it useless cert