Question for those with years of IT experience..

I have been in IT field since 1996 and received my MCP in 1997. I never took the A+ exam but now my company is requiring that we are A+ certified. My question is should I be able to just go in and sit in on the test without a lot of studying? What study guides, books or CBT would you recommend? I feel that I should be able to ace this test fairly easily due to my experience but I just want to be sure..

thanks for your input.

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120nm4n

It really depends on what you have been doing in IT. Personally, it's not stuff all stuff that I deal with on a daily basis, so I had to study for it, even though I passed my 70-270 without studying.

NetAdmin2436

I don't have the experience you do but my 2 cents would be this....

Be careful underestimating this since they may have some rather specific questions like....

1) A 16X DVD reads at ______ KB/s?

If you know that off the top of your head without googling, great. At bare minimum I'd still look over the objectives from the CompTIA website, then decide what if any areas you should refresh yourself with.
http://certification.comptia.org/resources/objectives.aspx

I would also get a study guide from Cramsession (it's free).
http://www.cramsession.com/

CompTIA exams are expensive, so you don't want to risk failing. CBT videos are generally pretty expensive, so that might be overkill for you.

Daniel333

Comtia exams really don't have much to do with experience or knowledge. They are heavy in trivia.

My experience with the exam was very negative. Memorization of trivial IRQs and Memory addresses.

How's this for typical,

what command displays IP address configuration an a Windows machine?
A) ipconfig

winipcfg
C) netstat
D) ping

What IRQ does a standard PS2 mouse function on?

What memory address does one find a LPT2 port on?

Name the order the Windows 2000 operating system loads it's boot files?

skrpune

just an FYI, most people report that IRQs aren't on the exam anymore...and I think they've dropped memory addresses too, but not too sure about that one.

In general, I'd agree with others that the A+ isn't totally representative of what you should/will know after a couple years experience as a tech. But it's an entry level exam and it is what it is, and it tests you on basic techie stuff - nothing that should be too taxing to cover for someone who's got experience.

I tend to look at it this way:
Just like you will take classes in high school or college that cover topics you SWEAR will have nothing to do with your life/career/major and will never ever ever come up again, you will see some things like this within the A+ objective and exams. But they sometimes *do* come up, and even if they don't a little bit of extra background knowledge never hurt anybody. Just my two cents...

brad-

I just took it a little over a year ago, and it was not as simple as everyone made it out to be. I've got a few years under my belt too, but much of what is on the test is random left field crap or extremely simple questions. I wouldnt recommend taking it without knowing all the trivia in 2 different resources...same for N+. If you're going to pay for the test, you better know you're going to pass it given how costly they are.

fritz72

Just took some practice exams and boy do I feel stupid. It's kind of like "Are you smarter than a 5th grader". You know deep inside that you know it but when the question comes up your mind goes blank. I'm gonna have to read over some material and take some practice exams. Thanks for the replies.

Plantwiz

- Spend a few weeks on preparing.
- Download the objectives as pointed out above.
- I'd buy/borrow a Meyers books or Sybex book (personally, I'd buy it, but if your whole work is requiring it, perhaps someone else has finished with their copy??)
- Schedule and take the exams and be done with it.

I'd actually, very diplomatically, determine why they feel you need to go backward in your certification path. I'll take experience over certs on my team almost everytime. But then again, I'm more impressed by what someone does then what they say.

Turgon

fritz72 wrote: »

I have been in IT field since 1996 and received my MCP in 1997. I never took the A+ exam but now my company is requiring that we are A+ certified. My question is should I be able to just go in and sit in on the test without a lot of studying? What study guides, books or CBT would you recommend? I feel that I should be able to ace this test fairly easily due to my experience but I just want to be sure..

thanks for your input.

Very few certification tracks actually assess what you may have learned on the job. When I started 12 years ago I needed plenty of help and reassurance from a time served PC guy in my first job. I knew processor and network theory covered at University that would have flown over his head, but they didn't teach us how to build out PCs and get them operational in terms of applications, printing and connectivity on a company network, much less the file editing required on a PC in those days and Novell Client configuration. He was really good at that and I learned a lot. But if he had turned up for the A+ exam he would have been stuffed.

You will need to take time out to cover the necessary minutia to pass the test.

DuncanF

I've been in IT for 7 years now and have to go back and do this because I need to get HP certified for server support. You need A+ and Server+ now to get that.

I did some of this stuff at college and promptly forgot it after what ever exam I needed it for. It's definately worth looking over some of the basics. Even if it's just to get a feel for the exam and the way they ask the questions.

Netwurk

A+ is actually pretty cool to study for. Grab a PC (your own of course) and tear it down and then rebuild it. An older one will do fine, and are actually more challenging. Some of the new boxes have a lever that makes the whole process just too darn easy and you won't learn anything.

If you can afford it, buy some parts and build your own custom rig.

Just be careful with that power supply and try not to be standing on a rug