MCDST books

Jaqmar2001

I've just bought the two Microsoft Press MCDST books from Amazon. I am familiar with Windows XP for quite some time now. Is it really necessary to have a laptop with Windows XP Professional on it or, could I just learn from the book without practising with the software.

I don't have the finances to buy another laptop and the software that they are reffering to (Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office 2003 Professional). I only have the two Home editions on my laptop.

What should I do about this??? Do I go out and buy another laptop with the Professional software or just learn from the book???

Martin.

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dynamik

You can do some of the things with Home, but you might be missing out on some functionality.

You can get an XP Pro Upgrade on eBay or wherever for $95. You don't have to buy a new machine. You can also look into virtualization. However, I think Home isn't as well support (if at all), and you would still need an XP Pro license.

Jaqmar2001

Thanks that answers my quesstion.

So I can buy the Windows XP Pro Upgrade and Office 2003 Pro Upgrade, and that should be sufficient????

dynamik

Yes, you can "upgrade" from Home to Pro.

You'd obviously need some version of office to be able to upgrade that. However, you may have a hard time finding a 2003 version since 2007 has been out for awhile.

Jaqmar2001

Sounds good.

I have seen an upgrade of Microsoft Office 2003 Pro on Amazon.co.uk

RobertKaucher

You could also use the software that comes with the MS Press books on a virtual machine. Virtual PC is free. Thhis would not only allow you to do the labs but it would also allow you to break the thing without causing any problems. Yyou should not activate the trial Windows XP at all. Just install it, use it for testing for 14 days and then reinstall it. This will give you plenty of experience with installing XP.

Jaqmar2001

What do you mean when you say, I should not activate it. Do you mean register it?

I have already got a laptop with Windows XP Home Ed installed. Does it mean I could install the trial version, that comes with Microsoft Press books, over my exisiting Windows XP, and all will be okay?

Martin.

dynamik

Jaqmar2001 wrote:

I have already got a laptop with Windows XP Home Ed installed. Does it mean I could install the trial version, that comes with Microsoft Press books, over my exisiting Windows XP, and all will be okay?

Not if you care about the data

You could partition your drive and dual-boot or you could look into virtualization. Virtualization isn't well supported on XP Home. If you look at Virtual PC 2007's system requirements, it only lists XP Pro.

Tech109

The main focus of the exam is XP Professional, since that is what's used in enterprise (Active Directory) environments - so the exam assumes that you have some experience in that area.

I found that having XP Pro was beneficial, because even though I have a lot of experience with it, there were some things I had never done before, or hadn't done in a long time (like verifier.exe or setting up an alternate hardware profile) so I was able to practice that as well as reading about it.

Your best bet for studying will be a multi-faceted one - read a good book, take lots of practice questions, and get hands-on practice.