70-686 Material for the 70-680 exam? Y??

Exam101

Hello all! I'm new to the site and so far it appears to be a great site!!! I've been in IT for a very long time now and purchased many books but NEVER followed through with the exams. This is going to be my year for the MCITP:EA no matter what.

I am like most others in that I can not believe how bad our choices are for materials for this one exam. It seems as if this MAY be the toughest exam of the entire MCITP:EA course. I even read that someone was thinking of abandoning the entire MS direction due to 70-686!!

I'm going to make it my first hoop to jump through. I have read a few remarks about the necessity of getting material for the 70-686 exam to pass the 70-680 exam. Can someone explain why this would be necessary other than the obvious which I would think would be only to round out your knowledge of Win 7. I just want to be sure that I spend wisely what little money I have to get through these five exams.

By the way, so far I think I'll purchase Don Poulton's kindle edition of 70-680 and possibly a Transcender since I have a great discount for them. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!!

earweed

Part of the reason for studying 70-686 material for the 680 exam has to do with the fact that the MS Press book for the 680 is such a piece of crap. It also has to do with the 70-680 being so strongly aimed at the enterprise environment. Another book you may wish to look at is Darril Gibsons Windows 7 Portrable Command Guide which just recently came out. It's cleared up a lot of what the MS Press book didn't give me when I was studying for the Windows 7 exam (which I never got around to taking)

Psoasman

The 680 and 686 exam material complement each other. The 680 exam expects you to have knowledge of Server 2008 and 2008 R2. Its always wise to use more than one source when studying for an exam.
I am reading through the 686 MS book right now. The thing that irritates me about reading this book is that it will give some information and then state: "for more information on xxxx, refer to the 680 book - which is full of errors! I have been just going to technet instead and printing out what I need for my notes.

I have also heard that the 640/642 exams will help with the 680 exam.

Exam101

earweed wrote: »

Part of the reason for studying 70-686 material for the 680 exam has to do with the fact that the MS Press book for the 680 is such a piece of crap. It also has to do with the 70-680 being so strongly aimed at the enterprise environment. Another book you may wish to look at is Darril Gibsons Windows 7 Portrable Command Guide which just recently came out. It's cleared up a lot of what the MS Press book didn't give me when I was studying for the Windows 7 exam (which I never got around to taking)

Thanks for your response! I will definitely purchase Darril Gibson's guide! It's starting to appear to me as if I need to look into taking the 640/642 exams first! I think this is valuable feedback and wish I could get a little more info on this as to 640 first and then 642, etc.. Thanks again!!!

Todd Burrell

If you are going for your MCITP:EA I would HIGHLY recommend getting the Server 2008 exams done first - and leave 70-680 for last. I am doing the upgrade MCSE route so I took 70-649 (upgrade exam for 640, 642 and 643) and 647 - and the info in these exams has been a HUGE help with the 70-680 material. I am finding that a good deal of the Win 7 material is review from the server 2008 stuff and the knowledge for those exams (like Group Policy, WDS, DirectAccess, BranchCache and IPv6) have all been a big help.

I will say that the 70-680 MS Press book is not as horrible as everyone says, but you do need to pull the errata and update your book. I would also very highly recommend walking through all of the practices for the MS Press book - and do stuff like creating images and create a PE DVD, etc... The hands on is very helpful.