Thoughts on 70-680 (MS Press & CBTNuggets)

genXrcist

So my wife was out of town all labor day weekend and what did I do? I've been studying for the 70-680 exam as it's the last one I need for MCITP:EA and I'd like to get it done.

I figured going through the CBT series and reading the MS Press book would be interesting but not all that challenging even with all the new Windows 7 features. Boy was I wrong.

Not only are the new Windows 7 features extremely interesting (Native booting from VHDs? Bitlocker? AppLocker? whoa!!!) but it's actually been quite challenging! All this WDS stuff is pretty overwhelming ... having both the CBT Nuggets & the MS Press book really helps me wrap my head around it though.

That all being said, is it just me or does all the WDS deployment stuff seem out of place for a client OS exam? Good stuff for sure but I would have thought that this level of detail should have been in the 70-647 exam with the more generic WDS role stuff staying in the 70-680.

Just my thoughts. Happy studying everyone!

earweed

The 70-620 had pretty much no deployment stuff on it. I wish it had as the little WDS included in the 70-643 proved to be a big study for me since I wanted to learn about deployment. I just went beyond what the book covered and read some extra stuff.
Good luck on your studies!

Psoasman

The 680 book is pretty good for most of the exam objectives. The deployment chapters need some work, but if you use technet to fill in the gaps, it's not too bad. I found that after practicing and then reading the chapters 2-3 again, it made more sense.
The 685 book is also good for filling in some gaps for the 680.

Claymoore

genXrcist wrote: »

That all being said, is it just me or does all the WDS deployment stuff seem out of place for a client OS exam? Good stuff for sure but I would have thought that this level of detail should have been in the 70-647 exam with the more generic WDS role stuff staying in the 70-680.

Just my thoughts. Happy studying everyone!

The deployment objectives need to be there for the 680 to be more of an enterprise client exam than the 620. I would rather there be deployment questions than questions on Parental Controls, which were on the 620 Vista exam.

The 680 doesn't need to go too deep into the deployment technologies because the 686 and 681 are mostly deployment exams. MS really has a solid deployment framework now and we are seeing most of our clients use either MDT or SCCM to deploy Win7. We were looking for staffing resources for a project we were bidding and were unable to find people in most areas with Windows 7 deployment technology experience. (Fortunately we only needed basic PC skills for our on-site technicians because my team was going to handle all the image and deployment engineering). We couldn't find people because there aren't many people with Windows 7 deployment technology experience and those that have it are in high demand. Learn the deployment technologies and you should be busy for the next couple of years.

genXrcist

Claymoore wrote: »

The deployment objectives need to be there for the 680 to be more of an enterprise client exam than the 620. I would rather there be deployment questions than questions on Parental Controls, which were on the 620 Vista exam.

The 680 doesn't need to go too deep into the deployment technologies because the 686 and 681 are mostly deployment exams. MS really has a solid deployment framework now and we are seeing most of our clients use either MDT or SCCM to deploy Win7. We were looking for staffing resources for a project we were bidding and were unable to find people in most areas with Windows 7 deployment technology experience. (Fortunately we only needed basic PC skills for our on-site technicians because my team was going to handle all the image and deployment engineering). We couldn't find people because there aren't many people with Windows 7 deployment technology experience and those that have it are in high demand. Learn the deployment technologies and you should be busy for the next couple of years.

Good point, thank you for your post. And I agree with your assessment that their new deployment framework is top notch...for everything except XP deployment. That seems to be a big pain as it involves finding vendor drivers and injecting them manually into the WIM files. Do you have any recommendations on how to make this process easier?

I plan on mastering the WDS framework as I too see a lot of business being generated from it.

dairou18

I didn't know there was a CBT series out for the 70-680. I've been going through the M$ Press book and am finding it quite challenging, some CBT might be nice to fill in the gaps.

genXrcist

It just came out! 5 weeks ago I was going to study the 70-680 but CBTNuggets didn't have a series on it. Since they had a 70-647 series I decided to do that first. Then when I finished that and turned back to the 70-680 voila! CBTnuggets had just released the series.

It's very very good btw and James Conrad does a great job of explaining WDS & VHDs. I just actually created my first VHD, installed Windows 7 Ent to it using imagex & then moved it to a new PC and booted to it! Very cool!

dairou18

Cool, thanks for the info and good luck on the exam!