70-620... seems a little pointless

I've decided its time to upgrade my mcse and plan to go for mcitp:ea. I went for the easy option and started with 70-620 however so far it seems relatively pointless. The exam consists of material i already covered in the xp exam (which i did as part of my mcse), is comon sense or completely pointless!

I'm not trying to take away anything from people who have passed this, it just seem a bit of a joke that this is part of the mcitp:ea cert/track. Half the material seems to be for home use!

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Slowhand

It's the nature of the beast, unfortunately. Just like school, sometimes you have to learn things for these certs that you don't really want to study or that you don't really think you'll need. For me, a lot of the things on the XP exam were no-brainers, and I could have learned RIS on my own without the exam. Still, it was required for the MCSA cert that I hold, as well as MCSE. Naturally, I wish that 70-620 had been offered so that I could have taken just that as my client OS exam, and have it cover both MCSA/MCSE and MCITP: Enterprise Administrator, but that's how it goes.

Sometimes you just have to do the exams, whether you like them or not. After all, it may be $125 'wasted' right now, but compare that to potentially getting a better job or higher salary down the line when you have a cert that's sought after.

dynamik

I'm really disappointed this exam is part of the EA track. Off the top of my head, these are the things I was most surprised they didn't cover (I'm sure there's more):

File permissions
Printing
Anything domain-related
Deployment
Performance monitoring
Event Logs

It's a fine exam for basic stuff, but why did they choose this for the EA track? At least 622 does a little better.

Mishra

I agree with Dynamik in that the 620 is Vista centered and not really about the core basics of Desktops like permissions/event viewer thus shouldn't be in the EA track.

I didn't really see many topics on the 620 that were in the 270. Here are the topics I ran into

Calendaring
RSS
IPv6
Remote Desktop
Pop-up blocker
Sidebar
IE Add-ons
Multiple users on 1 computer
UAC
Tablet-PC
Readyboost
Vista Hardware Requirements
Windows Defender
Vista Upgrade Advisor
Wireless

The only thing similar was remote desktop. Everything else was Vista related.

Tyrant1919

I agree 622 should be required instead of 620.

SWM

After completing the EA exam (70-647) I cannot understand why a client (vista) exam is incuded at all in the track. The 647 exam concentrated on AD and site links etc, so either a Server 2003 exam or a more generic networking (routing) exam may have been more appropriate.

Agree the 620 is a wierd and strange exam for the EA path

wedge1988

Microsoft arent retiring the MCSA/MCSE 2003 track at all (says on their website) so go for that if you dont feel the new exams are up to spec.

It might be worth mentioning that 620 is an MCTS, im sure microsoft will release some sort of exam in the future like and MCITP exam that covers more of the fundamentals for a business environment. or maybe they will release a second vista exam for the enterprise and rename the 620 to a home exam?

poortech

620 is a joke, I pass the exam in the same day as the 290 and its so easy, no need to study if u have some experience with vista. and my fovorite part is the short direct question (thats why its easy) :P

dynamik

wedge1988 wrote:

Microsoft arent retiring the MCSA/MCSE 2003 track at all (says on their website) so go for that if you dont feel the new exams are up to spec.

It might be worth mentioning that 620 is an MCTS, im sure microsoft will release some sort of exam in the future like and MCITP exam that covers more of the fundamentals for a business environment. or maybe they will release a second vista exam for the enterprise and rename the 620 to a home exam?

622 covers the "enterprise" components of Vista.

MCITP: Enterprise Support Technician requires 620 and 622. That's sort of like the MCDST for Vista.

It is also included in the MCITP: Enterprise Administrator, which is the most prestigious designation on the systems administrator side of things (roughly correlates to a 2008 MCSE). This is what most of us have issue with. 620 is a relatively useless component of the MCTIP: EA. 622 would have been more applicable.

yourmysin

Honestly, I struggled during the exam. I was actually very shocked to receive my score of 700/700. After discussing it with a friend, we each had completely different question categories.

I had a ton of networking questions as well as configuring windows applications. I think part of my problem was taking the exam with little preparation. What little study time I have had has been dedicated to my CCNA and Security+.

AndrewNP

I sat my 70-620 yesterday

Scored 930 so I am prety happy. Yes I did study but not as much as some other exams.

I think the thing with this exam is there are guys like myself who have gradualy done harder and harder exams to get to MCSE ect and now with the next gen exams Vista is like the old 70-270 so its something of a step down.

Now what I think is interesting is why 70-270 (xp) does not count towards EA or SA - under MCSE 2003 you could use XP or 2000 client exams as a credit. It would have been logical to expect them to do the same and count XP or Vista this time. However I would say it is something of a political move to get IT pro's to drive a higher takeup of Vista. The thing is that most IT pro's love WinXP because its fast and does everything they need - management says "save money/lower costs" so the easiest way to do that is just keep using XP since it works fine.

Personaly I think the biggest mistake with Vista is the fact there is a 32bit version so its not a clear path forward. The 64bit version of XP took way too long to be released and when it was it was more of an OEM product to bundle with high end workstations (for CAD ect) from HP, Dell,whoever.

To make matters even more confusing on top of their being 32bit and 64bit versions of Vista there are so many variants.

- a lot of them simply don't make any sense such as basic versions that are too slow to run on low end hardware anyway - these machines would have been better off with XP home. Then you have the starter, home basic and home premium - yet on the premium version you do not get "premium features" like bitlocker, remote desktop, image based backup ect.

astorrs

Given what you guys are saying about how easy it is, I'm thinking I should try to wing it this month (it wasn't on my list) so I can take a second shot next month if I don't pass. That way I'll be a step closer to my MCITP:EA (which I'll do at some point down the road - not high on my list right now)..

No time to study but I've used Vista on my personal laptop for about a year... hmm...

arnerm

Yeah it is kind of pointless as just today they began to take more wraps off Windows 7. I had been studying lightly for 2 weeks and I support a few domains where clients use Vista so it wasn't hard at all. This exam was really lacking in many regards. Figured I might as well give it a go before second shot ended. 953 I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw the score.

RobertKaucher

AndrewNP wrote:

...
Now what I think is interesting is why 70-270 (xp) does not count towards EA or SA - under MCSE 2003 you could use XP or 2000 client exams as a credit. It would have been logical to expect them to do the same and count XP or Vista this time. However I would say it is something of a political move to get IT pro's to drive a higher takeup of Vista. The thing is that most IT pro's love WinXP because its fast and does everything they need - management says "save money/lower costs" so the easiest way to do that is just keep using XP since it works fine.
....

Well, there is no client exam for the MCITP SA track at all, but the reason for not including the XP exam in the EA track is that so many new features of the Server 2008 application infrastructure do not work with XP, SSTP VPNs for example. However, the flip side to that is the 620 does not come even close to touching these concepts. Mine had far too many questions about configuring gadgets for there to be any room left for serious questions that were based on the IT business world. The quality of the questions for the 2008 EA track were far better.

RobertKaucher

astorrs wrote:

Given what you guys are saying about how easy it is, I'm thinking I should try to wing it this month (it wasn't on my list) so I can take a second shot next month if I don't pass. That way I'll be a step closer to my MCITP:EA (which I'll do at some point down the road - not high on my list right now)..

No time to study but I've used Vista on my personal laptop for about a year... hmm...

Astorros, DO NOT underestimate this test. At least do some test prep before you sit. I have a buddy who bombed it thnking it would be cake. It was, he just wasn't as prepared as he thought he was.

preecy

Well I sat the exam this morning and passed with a score of 884. Although this wasn’t my highest scoring MS exam I can say in all honesty I did very little (or what I’d consider as little) in terms of preparation for the exam. My study consisted of; watching parts of the Testout cbt video (I skipped through some of it), reading a few MS articles (such as Vista upgrade paths & minimum requirements) and going through practice questions included on the dvd. I suppose the Testout dvd was handy as the instructor does a great job in getting over what you are required to know. I’d recommend it to people who are perhaps starting out on their MS qualification track. However saying this, if anyone has any hands on experience of Vista and is familiar with the ‘questioning style’ of an MS exam, I’d probably go as far to say its passable by simply using articles/sites on the net and a little common sense.

My exam consisted of 64 questions and I was given just over 3 hours to complete. I was finished in 70 minutes and can’t recall a single question which was domain/AD related. As somebody already pointed out, most questions had four possible answers (as do most MS exam questions) out of which two were completed ridiculous. This left you with a 50/50 chance of getting the right answer. Therefore if you had any kind of idea of what they were talking about you knew it was in the bag.

As I said earlier, I’m not trying to take away anything from people who have sat this exam. I just feel it’s had no relevance to the other exams which are required for MCITP:EA. Anyhow sorry for ranting on about it... now this exam is out the way (having wasted time and money on it) I hope I can actual start learning W2k8 and hopefully get a sense of achievement from gaining the EA qualification.

Kasor

I will start from this one. Since it is similar to Vista... Thanks for the info.

Anyone is working on 640?