70-647 & 70-649

undomiel

So last month I had taken the 70-113 beta and gotten my 3 free vouchers from that. I had decided that they would be best put to use as an upgrade for my MCSE to MCITP:EA. I had originally planned to do my testing over January and possibly February since I would be traveling for Christmas and work was kind of crazy. Plus work had picked up the MS Press study pack for the MCITP:EA exams so I wanted to work my way through that. Well since my employment status changed abruptly on Friday I decided yesterday sure why not take advantage of the second shot and see if all of that work in a Server 2008 environment has taught you anything. So I scheduled the 647 & 649 for today in that order. The 647 wasn't too difficult, I would place it between the 290 & 291 in difficulty. Most difficult questions were on certificates just as when I had done the MCSE. Fortunately I've learned more since then so they didn't send me reeling like back then. Passed with a 858. I'll take that. Then I immediately jumped into the 649. That one was pretty difficult! Not because the questions were particularly challenging in and of themselves, but because it hit my weakest area which is Terminal Services. Ouch! But apparently I know something about them as I scored 880/820/812. I'll take those as well!

I appreciated the more to the point nature of the questions. Though it also made it easier to fall into the trap of skimming the questions. Fortunately that didn't happen to me. Surprisingly I didn't encounter any sims. I thought that the 647 was supposed to have them but apparently not.

So my thanks go to God for granting me knowledge to pass, my former job for granting me the time to test more swiftly than originally planned, and finally for my wife being supportive of me taking these exams even though it cuts into my job searching time. Up tomorrow -- 70-620! Hopefully I don't come out with egg on my face.

dynamik

Now who's ahead of who? My, how the tides have turned...

So you found the upgrade to be more difficult than the EA exam, huh? I was expecting the opposite. Is that MS Press pack just the books for the three exams the upgrade encompasses? I only have the Syngress book specifically for the upgrade. Maybe I'll skim those on Safari...

That's a pretty sweet deal though. It'll be interesting to see how much that EA helps you out with your job hunt since it's still relatively new. Keep us posted.

undomiel

If I can pass the 620! Yeah the pack just had the books for the 70-640, 70-642, 70-643 and 70-647 instead of specifically for the upgrade. I didn't get a chance to look at them though, I only got through a few specific chapters of the 647 book since that was the one I was planning on doing first. I wasn't particularly impressed with the book as it seemed more like a high level overview of things rather than digging into the nitty-gritty details of how things work. I was especially disappointed in its section on DFS. I still picked up some useful items from it though on NAP. Maybe the earlier books went more into the technical details though.

If I get it we'll see if the EA helps out on the job search ... I'm certainly hoping so ...