70-290 Passed.

jb82

Hey, first post here. I passed the 70-290 today with a score of 942. I was actually thinking i would be closer to 700 but I got a bit of a shock when it said 942! I had previously done the 70-282 SBS exam, anybody who has done that exam will know its a mother, so I had some good knowledge already when it came to backups and NTFS / share permissions. This test really hammered home backups and NTFS permission and Performance monitoring. I used the sybex books and transcender to do the study. Also ran throught the 20 questions for 70-290 on this website,

I must say I'm a little disapointed that microsoft are NOW testing WSUS. All their training material (even on the MS learning centre website) says that in the 70-290 you will be tested on SUS even though it is obsolete. I think I still got the questions on WSUS right but it just shows that Microsoft couldn't give a rats backside about updating their information when in comes to people studying for their exams. Maybe they do this to reap in re-test fees to cover for lost finances over their BS peice of crap, fat, cup cake eating Vista OS.

Anyway, enough ranting, back to slick, clean, STABLE ubuntu .........

astorrs

Congrats on the pass. Taking a break or onto something else?

And you're right about 70-282 it really does cover a breadth of topics.

jb82

Yeah, im reading the sybex 70-291 study book right now. I figure i might aswell keep my brain in study mode. I noticed you have the MCSE cert. How do you compare the degree of difficulty betweeen the 290 and 291?

somedudefromthenet

jb82 wrote:

their BS peice of crap, fat, cup cake eating Vista OS.

rofl

astorrs

jb82 wrote:

Yeah, im reading the sybex 70-291 study book right now. I figure i might aswell keep my brain in study mode. I noticed you have the MCSE cert. How do you compare the degree of difficulty betweeen the 290 and 291?

I think the biggest thing people struggle with is the "newness" of everything covered in 291. Most people when faced with 290 are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of backups, updating their PCs, permissions, etc and the tasks required in the objectives (creating user accounts, etc) make sense.

291 is different. Most people who don't already have a background in IT (and therefore didn't already learn this stuff elsewhere) think of DNS as the magical way website names get translated into IP addresses, and DHCP as the way they get their IP address from their ISP. They've never been asked to understand the "nitty gritty" of it until now and its all somewhat abstract.

As such its gotten the nickname "the beast" on these forums. All I can offer is don't underestimate it, lab up everything you can (use a virtual environment), take some practice exams (from either Transcender or Self Test Software) when you think you've gotten it and if you're not scoring in the 90% range go back and study the things you don't completely grasp (don't rely on the Microsoft Press MeasureUp exams for this one - they suck).

Future exams build off this one so having a solid foundation here will help you out down the line.

Good luck!

jb82

Yeah, i agree with the measure up stuff. I used them before with the 70-282 and found them to be as usefull as a soggy, deflated football. I'll stick with transcender, the questions they ask seem to be quite tough in comparison to the exams i have sat.

astorrs

LOL, I love your use of colorful vernacular in describing everything Microsoft today.

jb82

Poor old microsoft. I better lay off them. They must be missing Bill.