Disappointed with the new Testout delivery methods.

Has anybody else tried the Testout products recently? Got a license for the whole suite and they no longer do CD delivery, it's all online and you can download immediately which is nice with one exception. Each individual section and sub-section of each LabSim (course) has to be downloaded individually. They don't have an option to download the whole LabSim at once and once you select one sub-section it begins the download but if you move to another section before it finishes then the download ceases.

It's a good price for all of the courses you get, and the content isn't bad but the delivery method is fairly time consuming and tedious if you desire to download a whole LabSim ahead of time if you will be using the courses on a laptop somewhere that you don't have an Internet connection. Just my random rant...

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Comments

Devilsbane

There are some portions of Transcender that are only available online too. It is just their way of controlling who can access it and when.

msteinhilber

Devilsbane wrote: »

There are some portions of Transcender that are only available online too. It is just their way of controlling who can access it and when.

You can access it offline, you only have to be online to call-home every 21 days. It's the download of the course itself. You have to click on each section and sub-section of the course to download each particular section. So as an example, the CISSP is 11 sections and 38 sub-sections, each one requiring you to click on it and remain there until the download finishes before moving to the next.

Would be fine for someone going through it while they have Internet access, but if you're away from an Internet connection and want to download ahead of time to plan for that it's a bit of a pain is all.

earweed

I tried that non-cd method with the 83-640 and didn't like all the wait time. I liked it for the Sec+ because I had the CD and didn't have to wait for downloads.

motogpman

Have their stuff for the MCSE 2k3 stuff, was looking at the MCITP stuff, not sure if I will go with them if this is the case. I do everything on a laptop and not sure if I want the hassle, which sucks, since I have really enjoyed the 2k3 products.

msteinhilber

motogpman wrote: »

Have their stuff for the MCSE 2k3 stuff, was looking at the MCITP stuff, not sure if I will go with them if this is the case. I do everything on a laptop and not sure if I want the hassle, which sucks, since I have really enjoyed the 2k3 products.

Don't get me wrong, it's not something that is enough to make me not want to purchase the product. It's still an excellent value for what you get if you take advantage of some of the promotions they usually are running. It was just particularly upsetting at the time as I was about to head out for a couple days over the weekend where I honestly wouldn't have had Internet access easily and I now had to invest about 45 minutes monitoring my notebook now and then to see if the current section had finished downloading so I could move on to the next.

99% of the time if I'm using this, I will very likely have Internet access either at home, work, or a public hotspot somewhere. Just caught me at a bad time when I was going to be trying to use it that 1% of the time and wasn't prepared to invest as much time as I did downloading the course one section at a time.