MS Press Book and Questions

susuandme

I took the 270 exam, and 75 percent of the questions are
not even phrased similarly to the MS Press Book.

The MS Press book give you lessons, definitions, and goes over all of
the objectives for the exam.

It doesn't give you any scenario based lessons on what will be on
the test.

The best way in my opinion to prepare for the 270 exam is to read as
many sample questions you can get your hands on, this will be very time
consuming because the questions are lengthy, and reading about 1000 lengthy quetions will take many weeks.

Second, after you read the sample questions, it is important that you WRITE DOWN THE EXPLAINATION ON THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU GET WRONG, AND EVEN SOME YOU GET RIGHT. YOU WILL SEE THAT MANY OF THESE EXPLAINATIONS ARE NO WHERE TO BE FOUND IN THE MS PRESS BOOK.

THESE ARE SCENARIO BASED QUESTIONS, IT IS NOT LIKE READING A BOOK, THE MULTIPLE CHOICE CORRECT ANSWER WILL NOTJUST JUMP OUT OF THE PAGE IN FRONT OF YOU. YOU MUST FIRST SPEND TIME FIGURING OUT WHAT THE QUESTION IS REALLY ASKING, WHICH IS CONFUSING, YOU MUST THEN SPEND TIME FIGURING OUT THE CORRECT ANSWER, THIS WILL EAT YOUR TIME UP.
AGAIN, THE BEST METHOD IS READ AS MANY SAMPLE QUESTIONS AS YOU CAN GET READ. THEN MAKE A WORD .DOC FILE FOR EACH OBJECTIVE. RIGHT DOWN THE EXPLAINATION ON EACH TOPIC, AND EACH OBJECTIVE. ORGANIZE EVERYTHING INTO OBJECTIVES. BEST OF LUCK

Sie

susuandme wrote:

The best way in my opinion to prepare for the 270 exam is learn the topics and understand the technology

Trunkated and corrected your post.

Not being funnny but the best way to pass the exam is to learn all of the topics and undertand why one choice is better other another.

Taking practice exams will help but when suplimenting proper learning and study.

Slowhand

susuandme wrote:

I took the 270 exam, and 75 percent of the questions are
not even phrased similarly to the MS Press Book.

The MS Press book give you lessons, definitions, and goes over all of
the objectives for the exam.

It doesn't give you any scenario based lessons on what will be on
the test.

You're absolutely right, the MS Press book by itself isn't enough to pass this exam, nor is it enough to read only it and be considered a Windows XP administrator. You need to study multiple resources, and there's a piece of the puzzle that some people miss when reading the exam objectives:

Microsoft wrote:

Audience profile
Candidates for this exam operate in medium to very large computing environments that use Windows XP Professional as a desktop operating system. They have a minimum of one year of experience implementing and administering any desktop operating system in a network environment.

Without any experience, reading the book is little more than memorization. You need hands on-practice, which could include on-the-job experience or doing some lab-work while you're studying. Simply reading and regurgitating facts will not make you a good systems administrator, nor will it allow you to pass an exam that is meant to test your experience and knowledge. While your method of doing practice exams, going and looking up the answers, then studying the related concepts isn't inherently wrong, it is a very inefficient way of going about your studying. And, at the risk of repeating myself, simply doing a lot of reading without any hands-on practice won't help you understand the topics any better, no matter which way you go about doing it.

susuandme wrote:

The best way in my opinion to prepare for the 270 exam is to read as
many sample questions you can get your hands on, this will be very time
consuming because the questions are lengthy, and reading about 1000 lengthy quetions will take many weeks.

Not only is this a pretty backwards way of learning something, (read the questions, then go find out your answers,) it also reeks of suspicious activity. What "1,000 lengthy questions", exactly, are you referring to? I may be completely mistaken, but this really does begin to look more and more like a justification for using a **** rather than studying, albeit an elaborate one. I obviously hope I'm wrong about that, but I can't help the nagging feeling at the back of my brain as I read the initial post.

susuandme

thankyou for your help, I have read the objectives very carefully, and am considering a 5 day boot camp for on hands training. Right now, I study from about 4 of the best books on 270, and ordered 3 more which are on the way, I find that each book fills the gaps of some of the other books, and have different approaches, better tips and others have better illustrations. I study from many questions many of which are on the cdrom included with the books.

I defnately need handson experience though, I see it would've made quite a difference actually doing everything that I've been reading. thankyou