70-680 Passed !!

Hi guys ! Just passed my 70-680 (yesterday afternoon), I'm really over the moon !
First of all I really want to thank all of you because it's discovering this forum that I happen to know Professor Messer, 70-680 Official book and other extremely useful pieces of information about the MS Exams.. so just.. Thank you !

A short and brief piece of writing about my experience.
I'm a Help Desk Technician at an Italian Company's IT department. The exam was tough to me because I've always worked with Win 7 Pro so I'd never heard about topics like BrancChache or DirectAccess - and so on - before starting studying for the exam.

Here's my preparation, that took about 3 weeks :
- Watched all the Professor Messer's Videos
- Watched all the ITFreeTraining Videos
- Purchased the Professor Messer Notes about the 70-680
- Purchased the Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-680)

Ok, now the questions part :

I'm a beginner in the MS Certifications field so ... what is better to do now ? I'm thinking about the 70-685 ... would it be a correct choice or do you have any better pieces of advice ?

For my next exam I'd like to buy the replay ticket package but.. what if I pass the test on my first try ? Will I either waste the replay ticket or will I be able to use it for my next certification ?

thanks in advance,
a huge hello and happy holidays from Italy

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Comments

darius.nbp

Congrats,, I am envious, I wannabe next in the queue of pass candidates. Thanks for this post

McxRisley

I would suggest maybe going for some vendor neutral certs like the CompTIA Security +

Nicolo

McxRisley wrote: »

I would suggest maybe going for some vendor neutral certs like the CompTIA Security +

Never heard about CompTIA certifications (I've just had a brief reading of their website).
How much are they valuable or taken in consideration by employers compared to the MS Certifications ?
Thanks a lot for your answer though !

greg9891

Congrats! Excellent News

DAVIS NGUYEN

Congrats!

McxRisley

They are more valuable than MS certs because they are vendor neutral and confirm a wider array of knowledge instead of just one platform. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking MS certs, Just saying that unless you apply for a job the requires a specific MS cert (which is a pretty rare thing, unless it has to do with servers) CompTIA is probably the better choice.

Nicolo

McxRisley wrote: »

Just saying that unless you apply for a job the requires a specific MS cert (which is a pretty rare thing, unless it has to do with servers) CompTIA is probably the better choice.

thanks for clarifying it first of all.
I've been a Desktop Support Techinician for 6 years and now I'd like to move abroad with my wife. Since I've got a rather wide experience on Windows PCs I'll still looking for a Desktop Support Job, maybe with a higher role or responsibility.

Given that, I was wondering : would it be better to get the 70-685 or get the Windows 10 MCSA (697-69

?

Anyway , I have time, so I'll certainly have a think about CompTIA.

(forgive my english if it's not always perfect, I'm italian and I live in italy)

Nisseki

Considering you're in Italy, I recommend to look at job boards and see what certifications employers are looking for in your chosen path.

For example in the UK, Cisco is in demand in most networking jobs.

Nicolo

Nisseki wrote: »

Considering you're in Italy, I recommend to look at job boards and see what certifications employers are looking for in your chosen path.

For example in the UK, Cisco is in demand in most networking jobs.

Actually, since my wife's going to stay in Dublin for a month (8 Jan - 8 Feb) and I'm going to visit her (18-25) we are considering Dublbin as a contry to move in (we have also a couple of friends there).

I had a brief look over the job posts about Helpdesk related jobs and they say the MS Certifications are not mandatory but they will be highly appreciated. Many job offers demand knowledge of both Win7 and Win10 and some AD.

That's basically why I've chosen to start getting some MS Certification. And I have to say that seeing "PASSED" on the screen made me feel a lot proud of myself and gave me a rather big dose of self confidence.

Cisco is for who's got deep knowledge and understaing of networking . I don't by now , just superficially, enough to manage and troubleshoot clients .

Thanks for your answer Nisseki !

(I have time to think though.. we plan to move not sooner than March/April of the next ("this" within a couple of hours actually).

Nicolo

Wow Skyliinez92 , thanks a lot for taking so much time to answer !

I took a look at the link you provided about the MCITP cert and I will certainly consider that as an option.
However , I'd rather take the MCSA for Windows 10 (698 & 697) for three main reasons :

- Windows 10 is a much newer OS and it's different from Windows 7. Getting this certifications will allow me to prove my skills about 7 and 10 (I think the two most widely used Windows OSs)
- 697 covers a lot of topic about technologies I've never got in touch with like Azure , Hyper-V , Intune , O365. It'll be an occasion for learning new topics and getting my technical skills and knowledge wider and better.
- I'm not saying I'm putting the idea of 685 away but I prefer to give priority to the Win10 MCSA.

What do you think about my plan ?

thanks in advance.

samuel.mcsa2016

Hi all,

Im in the phase of preparation. As the guys said in the begining that he -

Watched all the Professor Messer's Videos
- Watched all the ITFreeTraining Videos

I have watched all that and did the practical again and again in my laptop. I am running virtual machines under VMware to practice.

Just one thing I wanted to ask that 'Is it really true that one can easily pass the exam by memorizing questions and answers from exam **** ?'
Since, I am nearly finishing my training and will repeat all practice, I might as well pay for some recent exam **** and memorize everything (around 600 questions)

DR14

I just passed it today! I used mostly the Prof. Messer videos and study guide. MeasureUp questions helped also.

And I strongly recommend doing labs if you can.