70-680 Resources, what is enough?

neilpfox

First of all, great forum. I've only been studying for just over a week and this forum is great for advice.

I'm going to hopefully take the test in early January (hopefully) and this will be my first MS Cert test. (So I'm nervous)

My current plan is to revise for a month (putting in around ~5 hours a day) and hopefully cover all subjects.
Then in the second month (December) I'll run through everything again and focus on the things I'm not great at.
Does this sound like a good plan? I know it's a short space of time you see.

This past week I've been using Professor Messer, Technet and my Courses stuff and I've ran through subjects 1 and 2.
Yep, I'm doing this through an Open course so I have phone support (if I need it) and by the looks of it, basic course work to complete, which doesn't fill me with confidence, which is why I'm looking elsewhere too.

I've ordered Don Poulton's book (which will arrive early next week) and I'm going to hopefully set up a lab this weekend to put things into practice.

I work in IT (for 4 years) as an Assistant Admin for a small-med business, but I'm in an XP/Server 2003 environment, with the odd Win 7 PC.

I'm sure this will be enough to get me through the exam, but comfortably??

Thanks,
Neil.

cyberguypr

Welcome aboard. Your resources are good. Only thing I would add is setting up some sort of Win 7 + Server 2008 lab so you can practice. This is of particular importance since you are coming from mostly an XP environment.

Psoasman

neilpfox wrote: »

First of all, great forum. I've only been studying for just over a week and this forum is great for advice.

I'm going to hopefully take the test in early January (hopefully) and this will be my first MS Cert test. (So I'm nervous)

My current plan is to revise for a month (putting in around ~5 hours a day) and hopefully cover all subjects.
Then in the second month (December) I'll run through everything again and focus on the things I'm not great at.
Does this sound like a good plan? I know it's a short space of time you see.

This past week I've been using Professor Messer, Technet and my Courses stuff and I've ran through subjects 1 and 2.
Yep, I'm doing this through an Open course so I have phone support (if I need it) and by the looks of it, basic course work to complete, which doesn't fill me with confidence, which is why I'm looking elsewhere too.

I've ordered Don Poulton's book (which will arrive early next week) and I'm going to hopefully set up a lab this weekend to put things into practice.

I work in IT (for 4 years) as an Assistant Admin for a small-med business, but I'm in an XP/Server 2003 environment, with the odd Win 7 PC.

I'm sure this will be enough to get me through the exam, but comfortably??

Thanks,
Neil.

As Cyberguypr said, set up a lab, preferably with Server 2008 R2. Microsoft likes to test on the latest technology. It helps to have a DC, member server, and 2 clients to fully utilize the features and get something out of the labbing.
I've heard good things about Poulton's book and Darril Gibson's book covering 685/686 was helpful. The 680/686 exams have a lot complementary material, so it helps to have both resources available, even if you don't plan taking the 686.

btw: Welcome to the forum!