Passed 70-210 today!
rcoop
Member Posts: 183
This isn't my first MS exam, but it sure wasn't like I remembered the last one.
I've been studying off and on for the past 5 months or so, but I was pretty sure I could pass it on experience alone. When I saw 150 minutes for 50 questions, I laughed, thinking who the heck would take that long... well, I found out today 'me', I had 7min left when I finished. I guess I'm a slow reader or something. After two hours of sitting there working through these overly wordy questions, I hit the previous button (on accident, instead of next) when I was on question 48, and BAM! I get some crazy Windows error message (I was already getting stressed because of the time limit, and now I was thinking I might have to redo another 2 hours of exam.... AHHHHHHHHH!!!
)... so I get up to talk to the testing guy, and say "Please, you gotta fix this! I'm dying here...", and thank God, he pulls it right back up to question 48, still answered with my 9 minutes on the clock... Whew! 
I thank the VUE gods for having fault tollerant software (or at least the ability to recover from a crash).
For all my stress I passed with an 836, so at least I didn't walk away wondering why I had just put my nerves through all of that (that would have taken years off my life I think).
Thanks to Webmaster for the great site (forums, TechNotes/StickyNotes, and Practice Exams), it really was a tremendous help in me passing today.
Other resources (in addition to TechExams.Net) I used to study:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Pro Self-Paced Training Kit 2nd Edition (Microsoft Press ISBN:1-57231-901-1)
Mike Meyer's Win2K Pro Certification Passport (McGraw-Hill ISBN:0072193670)
PrepLogic Premium Exams for Win2K Pro 70-210 (x 4 Practice Tests)
CramMaster 70-210 Special Edition (free) Practice Exam (the more I used it, the more I liked the CramMaster's engine and system)
To a minor degree I also had TestOut's training and practice software (which covers both 70-210/215 together).
The test:
I enjoyed the different combinations of question styles (i.e. multiple choice, multiple answer, drag-n-drop, select from the diagram), but many just went on and on with wording that didn't have much use to the point of the question being asked. I normally read questions twice before selecting answers, but I caught myself reading three or more time in a few questions. Also, I don't know if it is a resolution issue, but many of the questions are split between three frames, all with scroll bars (and some with both vertical and horizontal scroll bars). To MS's credit, it won't let you continue without scrolling all the way down (for every frame) or all the way to the right, which is really great. Another really cool thing about the multiple choice/multiple answer questions, is that they always tell you how many correct answers there are (and won't even let you accidentally select more), and explains whether each correct answer on its own would satisfy the answer, or if both answers selected are required to solve the problem issued by the question.
Although you know now how I feel about the length of the questions, the testing style is really good, and I think CompTIA should work on creating straight forward multiple answer questions, or clearer designation of what the question is asking for.
The only thing I remember seeing that I actually selected as an answer, but had never heard of before, was regarding a file with the .acw extension. I knew from the question it had to do with Accessibility options in Windows, and it looked like the correct answer, but I hadn't seen it in my experience (haven't had to set up any of the accessibility options for any users at work, except for maybe large cursors and icons) or in any of the material I studied. Since getting back I did additional research on it, and it appears to be the file extension used for Accessibility Wizard Settings. I don't know if it was the correct response or not to the question asked, just found it interesting.
Good luck to everyone still in the studying phase, and I'm off to start on 215.
Take Care,
rcoop
I've been studying off and on for the past 5 months or so, but I was pretty sure I could pass it on experience alone. When I saw 150 minutes for 50 questions, I laughed, thinking who the heck would take that long... well, I found out today 'me', I had 7min left when I finished. I guess I'm a slow reader or something. After two hours of sitting there working through these overly wordy questions, I hit the previous button (on accident, instead of next) when I was on question 48, and BAM! I get some crazy Windows error message (I was already getting stressed because of the time limit, and now I was thinking I might have to redo another 2 hours of exam.... AHHHHHHHHH!!!
)... so I get up to talk to the testing guy, and say "Please, you gotta fix this! I'm dying here...", and thank God, he pulls it right back up to question 48, still answered with my 9 minutes on the clock... Whew! I thank the VUE gods for having fault tollerant software (or at least the ability to recover from a crash).For all my stress I passed with an 836, so at least I didn't walk away wondering why I had just put my nerves through all of that (that would have taken years off my life I think).
Thanks to Webmaster for the great site (forums, TechNotes/StickyNotes, and Practice Exams), it really was a tremendous help in me passing today.
Other resources (in addition to TechExams.Net) I used to study:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Pro Self-Paced Training Kit 2nd Edition (Microsoft Press ISBN:1-57231-901-1) Mike Meyer's Win2K Pro Certification Passport (McGraw-Hill ISBN:0072193670) PrepLogic Premium Exams for Win2K Pro 70-210 (x 4 Practice Tests) CramMaster 70-210 Special Edition (free) Practice Exam (the more I used it, the more I liked the CramMaster's engine and system) To a minor degree I also had TestOut's training and practice software (which covers both 70-210/215 together).The test:
I enjoyed the different combinations of question styles (i.e. multiple choice, multiple answer, drag-n-drop, select from the diagram), but many just went on and on with wording that didn't have much use to the point of the question being asked. I normally read questions twice before selecting answers, but I caught myself reading three or more time in a few questions. Also, I don't know if it is a resolution issue, but many of the questions are split between three frames, all with scroll bars (and some with both vertical and horizontal scroll bars). To MS's credit, it won't let you continue without scrolling all the way down (for every frame) or all the way to the right, which is really great. Another really cool thing about the multiple choice/multiple answer questions, is that they always tell you how many correct answers there are (and won't even let you accidentally select more), and explains whether each correct answer on its own would satisfy the answer, or if both answers selected are required to solve the problem issued by the question.
Although you know now how I feel about the length of the questions, the testing style is really good, and I think CompTIA should work on creating straight forward multiple answer questions, or clearer designation of what the question is asking for.
The only thing I remember seeing that I actually selected as an answer, but had never heard of before, was regarding a file with the .acw extension. I knew from the question it had to do with Accessibility options in Windows, and it looked like the correct answer, but I hadn't seen it in my experience (haven't had to set up any of the accessibility options for any users at work, except for maybe large cursors and icons) or in any of the material I studied. Since getting back I did additional research on it, and it appears to be the file extension used for Accessibility Wizard Settings. I don't know if it was the correct response or not to the question asked, just found it interesting.
Good luck to everyone still in the studying phase, and I'm off to start on 215.
Take Care,
rcoop
Working on MCTS:SQL Server 2005 (70-431) & Server+
Comments
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janmike
Member Posts: 3,076
Congrats on the pass, rcoop!
Good luck on 70-215, and thanks for the insight into the exam's characteristics."It doesn't matter, it's in the past!"--Rafiki
