Microsoft discloses details of "Career Assistance Package" (aka CHEAP eLearning)

astorrs

A fantastic offer from Microsoft has been leaked on the Born To Learn blog. I usually don't bother with the eLearning courses due to their costs, but this is something everyone here should seriously consider in aiding their studies.

Way to go Microsoft!

On Friday, we’ll formally announce our Career Assist offer, a very, very, very cool (IMHO) add-on to Second Shot. Works like this:

Register for Second Shot starting today and get ANY Microsoft Official E-Learning Collection for only $35 USD!


You already know Second Shot provides a free retake if you fail your exam. Now, and until June 30th, if you register for Second Shot, you get an E-Learning Collection for just $35! (usually priced up to $349). That’s a pretty amazing discount—90% in most cases!


Is there a catch? Yeah, just a small one: your e-learning will only be available to you for 90 days. (We normally provide 18 months when you purchase at full price, but really: if you don’t finish a course within 90 days, are you ever going to finish it?)


If you’ve already registered for second shot recently, don’t worry: you can do it again (and must do it again if you want the cheap e-learning).


Full details and registration link coming on Friday.

Oh and don't forget Transcender is running a 25% off deal until February 26th on all certification practice test packs.

bertieb

Great catch there astorrs, thanks!

skrpune

Hrm. I was hoping there would be more to their career assistance program.

Anyone out there that's used MS e-learning who can offer some opines? Even though it is a good discount, I don't want to go blowing extra money on stuff if it's not going to add significant value to my studies. Like for 290, I've got TestOut & the MS Press book and am doing home practice on a virtual lab...is the e-learning going to be worth it?

jnwdmb

I didn't find the Microsoft learning text to be extremely useful, but it is a great product to have as a supplement to your other studies due to the labs that are in it. I would not recommend for every exam, but if it an area or exam that you are having trouble with, and you have some extra funds, it would help you at exam time. I think that it's biggest advantage is that it is issued and written by Microsoft, and because it has their "label" on it, the labs cover any simulations that you might encounter on an exam. They also happen to use the same question structure and format (as well as company names) that you will see on the actual written exam. It is quite frankly a tool to help you understand the Microsoft way of thinking, and though it may not necessarily teach you the concepts better than other study materials, it would benefit you when sitting their exams.

I will say that it will not work if you plan on only doing some of the labs.... many of the labs call for you to do certain exercises (some saved, some not) that will will influence future labs. What i mean by this is that you cannot get the learning course for 70-291 and skip the DHCP sections to focus on the DNS portions....you will have to do all the labs in sequence for it to be effective. I hope i dint confuse anyone with this last portion of my post.

Starke

I think eLearning is worth it, it was enough for me to pass the Hyper-V test with just a little hands on. FYI it's just a generic promo code of SECONDSHOT, if you don't want to go through signing up for Second Shot.

JDMurray

.NET developers should be aware of the Microsoft Official E-Learning Collection for Developers, which also includes many hours of free training for .NET 3.x, WPF, WWF, WCF, ASP.NET and AJAX, SharePoint, Visual Studio, and .NET security.