How long to prepare for 70-680

steph746

Hi...just wondering about how long I should study for my 70-680 exam. I have desktop support experience on xp (about 5 years) and just some experience with Windows 7 working on a migration project.

I'm using the Sybex (William Panek) book. This should be sufficient?

Thanks in advance...

Chitownjedi

Unfortunately no one can ever give you a great estimate on how long it takes you because only you know how fast and how much you generally understand/learn/and retain what you read. (Labbing is very important, don't forget to lab!)

The objectives are a good guide to go on, I know its a typical answer but, hey, studying is not that complex... try to learn as much as you can about the listed objectives in the time leading up to your exam, and give it your best go.

The time thing is just based on you knowing when you ready based on your own ability to prepare.
I usually feel comfortable and have felt comfortable with between 40-60 hours worth of study for 70-680 70-686 so far. Your time may however vary

cswimc

Personally, I studied for an hour a day for 2 weeks before the exam and took it without really researching it. My company suggested I take it for a raise in salary. I signed up for Test King, took the practice exams until I scored 90-100% and skimmed through the 70-680 Training Kit book. Unfortunately, I did not pass, but I scored a 660 which was close.

The second time around I have been preparing now for 4 weeks and plan to take it in the next 3-4 weeks once I have thoroughly studied. Maybe this will help, but as Chitownjedi said above, your time for studying may vary.

xocity

not sure if test king should be referenced on the forum, according to CertGuard | IT Certification Exam Security & Integrity, It shows that test king is a BrainDump Website. Wouldnt reference it again, im sure mods will delete post for that, just saying,

Back on subject, I have my exam scheduled in 2 weeks, been studying for 5 weeks so far so 7 weeks should be enough I think. But it would be upto the person. Not everyone can pick up on everything that fast, some people are just geniuses and some people just have different study methods of learning that are faster then others, and something people skip over sections because they know some of the material. If you have your CCNA or have networking experience, you can skip out on the ipv4/ipv6/subnetting section which saves like a couple days, so it really depends on person.

lsud00d

Watch the Professor Messor videos for this exam, they are EXTREMELY helpful.

kriscamaro68

Ditch test king as they are braindump garbage. user professormesser.com and itfreetraining.com for some good videos that are not cheating.

Rosco2382

Chitownjedi wrote: »

Unfortunately no one can ever give you a great estimate on how long it takes you because only you know how fast and how much you generally understand/learn/and retain what you read. (Labbing is very important, don't forget to lab!)

The objectives are a good guide to go on, I know its a typical answer but, hey, studying is not that complex... try to learn as much as you can about the listed objectives in the time leading up to your exam, and give it your best go.

The time thing is just based on you knowing when you ready based on your own ability to prepare.
I usually feel comfortable and have felt comfortable with between 40-60 hours worth of study for 70-680 70-686 so far. Your time may however vary

How do you recommend going about labbing? I seen some threads earlier but as a moron i forgot to bookmark or remember the title of thread. I'm starting to prepare for this certification and want to put as much effort as i possibly can to pass.

DEC901

Transcender is an EXCELLENT test prep resource!!! But again, as previously mentioned no one can tell you when you're ready or how long it will take to get ready!!! The advice and suggestions here are spot on!!! Just dig in and enjoy the ride 'til is stops!!! Don't forget to keep your arms and legs in the car at all times!!!

Chitownjedi

Sorry for late response been busy and studying...

I have VM workstations setup and lab using 2 Installs of Sever 2008 R2 as well as about 4 Installations of Win 7 and 2 XP to practice my migrations. My computer spec's support it. I did all my labbing (and still do) from this current setup.

cgrimaldo

Hi Chitownjedi, do you mind posting your specs of your computer? Thanks

lsud00d

I have a similar VM/lab set up to Chitwonjedi and mine is as follows:

Proc: i7 2600k
RAM: 16gb
HD: 1tb HDD, 60gb SSD
Video: GTX 560ti
OS: Win7 64bit

All of these things will affect your ability to run simultaneous VM's. The processor is very important if you want to run a VM farm of sorts (must be capable of virtualization technologies and multiple cores and/or hyperthreading help tremendously) and the RAM is also important as well since you're giving dedicated memory to each VM.

About7Narwhal

My setup is similar in hardware and VM clients as lsudl00d. I am on Windows 8 with 3 tb of storage and a 120 gb ssd for the os (Video Card, RAM, and Processor are all the same as lsudl00d). The storage is virtualized across multiple drives and is my main bottleneck. When I boot my VMs, disk utilization reaches and stays at 100% (thinking a drive is going bad). Other than that, the above setup will handle it like a champ.

Chitownjedi

Yeah I have an
i5 2500k with a small O'C (Stopped gaming heavily)
16GB Ram
3TB of storage and a 238GB OCZ SSD for my OS
Running on Windows 8 now, and took my old Win 7 image and popped it on a VM for nostalgia....
Was running Sli'd 570 GTX for Battlefied 3 and all that stuff when it came out, but it transitioned very nicely into a Labbing machine that fits my needs... for now at least!