Passed 70-271

This exam was painfully simple. Passed with an 883 and had an hour and 15 minutes to spare. I now have to say that you truly do need to adapt to a new way of thinking and a whole new test experience when you sit a Microsoft exam. I sat the 70-270 last Friday, finished with only 15 minutes to spare and only scored 731.

My previous testing experiences were CompTIA exams and I have sat the CCNA 3 times and have yet to pass (my best score was 775).

I did 4 hours of 70-270 material review to sit for the 70-271. This exam had sims (4 of them), if you want to call them sims. I had lots of DNS related questions and then just a smattering of others thrown in. What the weird thing is with these sims, Microsoft almost gives you 70% of the answer by not making most of the wrong configurations or selections not interactive. It's like they steer you to the right answer almost. They should be like a Cisco sim (a fully interactive console session to a router or switch).

I clearly encountered 3 questions on this exam which I had on last Friday's 70-270 test. I encountered no duplicates this time. As a side note, the place I take my exams (New Horizons Computer Learning Center), is both a Vue and Prometric test site. I tested with Prometric last time and had a garbage PC with a 17" CRT. Today my exam was through VUE and I had a modern PC, wireless mouse and keyboard, and 19" LCD. I asked the Proctor and he explained that VUE ensures that the PC's and monitors are ultra modern and Prometric could care less. At my last exam he suggested off the record that I sit this exam with VUE for a better experience. Boy was he right!

Here's the deal, both VUE and Prometric provide a standard for their exam experience, and in this test takers opinion, VUE is head and shoulders above Prometric . No lag and a nice PC with VUE. I will NEVER again take an exam through Prometric unless it is my only option within 100 miles of my location.

Tomorrow is 70-272 and a MCDST for me. YAY!