Tremendous! i passed my hardware 2day! with 740

nel

just thought i let u guys know i passed my hardware 2day and it feels great. ended with 740 literally 20 mins ago and now am getting ready to go back to work but its party time 2nite! !

thanks for all the help with the questions i have asked, practise exams and the tech notes!

porengo

Congrats!

janmike

Congrats on the pass!

dubbs112

So what did you think??

How long did you take to prepare? I will probably be taking this exam in the next few weeks.

Plantwiz

Congratulations nel!

nel

dubbs ----> the exam was not wat i was expecting (and i mean that in a gd way). i am a person who gets very nervous for exams (just like most ppl i guess). so i was sh*ting it when i went in. the woman at the desk was very kind and instead of waiting around 30 mins or so (to get more nervous ) they sent me in and underway i got.

the exam was in exactly the same format as they practise tests on here and other sites/cd's - all multiple questions. some of the questions you had to re-read twice as they try and trick you (so be aware of this) but most questions can be answered by process of elimanation of the presented answers.

i have worked in IT for nearly 4 years and this is my first cert along with a ba honours degree i am currently doing so my experianced helped also.

i work with both hardware and software but i revised things such as CPU pins etc just incase they came up on the exam and they never did (but theres a chance they may on yours! also know your socket types. i was quite suprised by the exam because i recieved a couple of questions twice just presented in a different manner and i also recieved things like "what does WEP stand for" and "what does POST stand for"

i also work with networking a little and my knowledge covered the parts on the exam but if you dont have that knowledge i would suggest you get to know the diff cable specs and diff topologies etc because i had quite a few questions on the networking side (around 6-9 q's)

along with my experiance i used CBT nuggets - which if you can get a hold of i would suggest. this helped me alot as i learn better from ppl describing and showing me things that from books.
i also setup labs to help learn the areas i have never used before like scsi etc.
the only book i used was exam cram 2 and the question book you can get from amazon.co.uk for £22. ***i must point out that even though the book suggests cram i would never recommend that for an exam** i used this as merely a reference. i also used the preplogic practice tests with the cd and the practise book i got with this has got around 500 questions for the hardware part which was also helpful.
i would suggest trying practise exams from this site, mcmcse.com and free-tests.com which are all v.good.

i asked upon this site (if you check a few of my posts) about when you should take the exam - i was getting 75-85% regular in my tests - and they said i was not ready unless i was hitting 95% and it turns out my final mark was more than his - so i would say this is untrue - everyone is different, go for the exam when YOU FEEL READY. i was nervous but i felt ready so i spent £100 booking the exam, went, took it and passed. and now for the last 2 days i have been partying and enjoying myself before my OS part. overall i was studying no longer than a month in my spare time outside of work etc.

by the way the exam now consists of 100 questions to be completed within 90 mins (just so you dont get caught out when you arrive). i completed the 100 within 40 mins but i re-read and went through my questions and answers a second time - as this is the sensible thing to do.

...anyway i know this has been a long post but i hope this has helped. let us know on the board how you get on. anyway am off on a dell SAN course then i will be on my way to studying the OS part.

Gd Luck!

Webmaster

That is tremendous indeed, congratulations!

by the way the exam now consists of 100 questions...

Thanks for mentioning that, I need to update our A+ pages...

i asked upon this site (if you check a few of my posts) about when you should take the exam - i was getting 75-85% regular in my tests - and they said i was not ready unless i was hitting 95% and it turns out my final mark was more than his - so i would say this is untrue - everyone is different, go for the exam when YOU FEEL READY.

We'll continue to give the same advice nevertheless. The thing with practice questions is that you tend to memorize them after you used them a couple of times, so the score is not comparable with the actual exam score. Scoring a certain percentage is not a guarantee you will score the same or more on the exam. But if you have the product, continuing to use it until you reached 95% will allow you to get the most out of the product.

nel

webmaster --> i was meaning no disrespect regarding your later comment. i agree scoring more on the practise tests will be better than scoring less, i was merely pointing out that it depends on the person taking the exam as everyone is different and people may score 100% on the practise tests but it depends on your performance on the day with the given questions. hope theres no hard feelings

Webmaster

Don't worry, I didn't take any offense to what you were saying, nor did I find it disrespectful. And I agree with you, you should go for the exam when 'you feel ready'.

trick000

Good one! Congrats!