Archive for January, 2012
Over the many years technology has changed and CompTIA has rolled along with those changes. Only A+ and CTT+ require two exams to attain certification.
Beginning January 1, 2011, one of the biggest changes CompTIA brought about was ending certification for life. The theory was A+ was considered a broad and entry-level certification. This meant that a successful candidate would’ve either left the business, or moved up the food chain.
To meet the standards set by the ISO (International Organization for standardization) and ANSI (American National Standards Inst.) CompTIA now requires either recertification every few years, or maintaining a log with them, proving Continual Educational Units (CEU)’s.
Honestly, there is a lot of bad information out on the Internet about the A+ exams. It may have been true at the time it was created, but isn’t now. For example:
The older exam 220-301 series in A+ had a question like what is the standard length of the parallel cable? It was a bad question because of the radio dial choices, two were actually correct. It depended on whether the parallel I/O was IEEE 1284 (15 feet) or not (10 feet).
In the older days to get a NIC card working you had to throw Jumper switches to set the IRQ and memory I/O address. These ISA-based cards have been long gone. So too is being able to regurgitate on the exam what IRQ typically does what.
What is needed to pass the CompTIA A+ Certification
Two exams are needed to attain the CompTIA A+ Certification. These are 220-701 (CompTIA A+ Essentials) and 220-702 (CompTIA A+ Practical Application).
Passing Score:
675 for CompTIA A+ Essentials
700 for CompTIA A+ Practical Application
(on a scale of 100-900)
Number of Questions:
100 questions for each exam.
Exam Languages Supported:
English, Spanish, German, Turkish, Japanese, Traditional Chinese (Taiwan), Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, Arabic
Tips for the Exam:
When taking a CompTIA exam, always remember what would be a ‘best practice’. Each question is standalone, and has nothing to do with other questions you may have seen.
Further, keep in mind a ‘best practice’ sometimes has little to do with the real world.
The second test for A+ (Practical Application), while being pretty fair, it can be daunting to someone without a broad background of experience. An exam candidate could be challenged by questions that are other than Microsoft Windows.
How to Prepare:
One final thought is the exams are not inexpensive. It can be costly to do a reconnaissance mission on either A+ exam. An excellent resource for keeping the overhead down would be to see the videos done by Paul Gadbois. The series from trainsignal.com is over 38 hours (equivalent to five days in the classroom) and is available online for less than $300. That comes out to less than eight dollars an hour!
Trainsignal is CAQC (CompTIA Authorized Quality Curriculum) approved.
The chatter about the Windows server 2008 R2 Active Directory exam (MCTS 70-640) reveals the classic Microsoft mentality. That would mean difficult questions across a wide variety of subtopics.
There is no shortage of thoughts about the classic chicken and egg dilemma regarding Microsoft certification. Microsoft exams are intended to weed out candidates that do not have practical experience. Employers have little taste for hiring when a person does not have MCTS 70-640. This creates quite a dichotomy.
It is also true that the teams which do the actual item writing on not allowed to talk to the other Microsoft employees that create the training material.
There is no shortage of material for preparing for this exam. What there seems to be an extreme shortage of is good/current material for this digital witch-hunt.
Is Microsoft’s position that the exam will test on the latest and greatest versions. How that works in reality is dependent on how fast item writers can create new questions and have been verified by the psychometrician.
I can say definitively that the exam covers R2 specific features. For example, the new commands like djoin.exe and AD Recycle Bin.
I first became an MCT in 1997. My experience tells me that brain dump sites are a waste of time money and energy.
In reviewing study materials to break the chicken and egg dilemma created by Microsoft. I was a little surprised and quite delighted to see http://trainsignal.com come up with the top of the list for suggested guidance.
I suspect the reason for this is the training is video-based. Most of us can absorb new material faster by seeing than reading.
Further, since the exam is based on the assumption of Active Directory servers being in separate physical locations, the magic of video is like instant teleportation. And certainly without the expense of setting up different physical servers.
Happy New Year 2012 everyone!! I wish you health, happiness and prosperity. Thank god that 2011 has gone forever. It has been a tough year for many people, mainly because of the economic downfall in many countries of the world. Since most of you that visit my blog are people that work in the technology sector (especially in networking), and since I guess you have specialized skills that not many people have, I hope that the recession has not hit you as much as other people. A great way to be always in demand (regarding jobs) is to acquire as many professional certifications as possible. Cisco certifications are always highly appreciated from employers all over the world, so your new year resolution for 2012 can be to earn at least one Cisco certification. Start with CCNA and then you can take it from there.
Anyhow, I wanted to list also the most popular posts on this blog that got the most visits in 2011. Here it is below:
Configuration Tutorial For Cisco ASA 5500 Firewalls
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