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MCSE 2003 study resources for an old hand..
Turgon
Banned Posts: 6,308 ■■■■■■■■■□
Any comments on appropriate study resources for MCSE 2003 are most welcome. I can build a home network so if anyone would like to recommend hardware please shoot!
It's unlikely I will be embarking on this until later next year so Im scanning for resources at this preliminary stage. My last MCSE was undertaken through 1998 and 1999 in NT 4.0. Resources used where hands on experience at work, Sybex, Que, Microsoft Press and Exam Cram. I used no practice tests other than the questions available in the books.
Could you all chip in with your preferred books and study kits for the core exams and electives for 2003 please. I realise Longhorn is on the horizon as well so by all means comment on that if you wish.
Incidently would MCSE 2000 prior to 2003 be sensible or would I really not miss much? I supported Active Directory and Exchange 5.5/2000 and 2003 from year 2000 right through to 2003.
Practice tests...
I don't have a lot of exposure to practice tests and have never tried one for MS exams. The only practice tests I used during my MS support days were a couple of bosons for cisco exams, CCNP switching, CCNP routing and CCIE written. I have no idea where we are upto with Microsoft practice tests these days. I understand MeasureUp are one vendor and STS are another. I used a few STS for Novell exams and they were pretty comprehensive in terms of explaining Novell features and applications.
Cheers
It's unlikely I will be embarking on this until later next year so Im scanning for resources at this preliminary stage. My last MCSE was undertaken through 1998 and 1999 in NT 4.0. Resources used where hands on experience at work, Sybex, Que, Microsoft Press and Exam Cram. I used no practice tests other than the questions available in the books.
Could you all chip in with your preferred books and study kits for the core exams and electives for 2003 please. I realise Longhorn is on the horizon as well so by all means comment on that if you wish.
Incidently would MCSE 2000 prior to 2003 be sensible or would I really not miss much? I supported Active Directory and Exchange 5.5/2000 and 2003 from year 2000 right through to 2003.
Practice tests...
I don't have a lot of exposure to practice tests and have never tried one for MS exams. The only practice tests I used during my MS support days were a couple of bosons for cisco exams, CCNP switching, CCNP routing and CCIE written. I have no idea where we are upto with Microsoft practice tests these days. I understand MeasureUp are one vendor and STS are another. I used a few STS for Novell exams and they were pretty comprehensive in terms of explaining Novell features and applications.
Cheers
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Optionsdynamik
Banned Posts: 12,312 ■■■■■■■■■□
2003 will be in use for a number of years, so you're not going to be hurting yourself by going that route. I believe the 2008 exams aren't even going to be available until 60 days after 2008 RTMs. You can upgrade to 2008 with 1-3 exams (depending on the level you want to achieve). I wouldn't start with 2000 unless you specifically need it. I believe those exams are retiring soon anyway.
The MS Press books are usually pretty good. Walking through the exercises is great practice. It can help to supplement them with an exam cram or another written source as well.
CBT Nuggets is good video-based training.
Transcender makes great practice tests.
You don't need a hardware lab. Just use virtual machines with VM Ware or Virtual PC. Just make sure you have a system with 2-4gb of ram to handle the load. You should be fine with a decent CPU since none of those machines are actually doing anything. Everything will come to a crawl without sufficient memory.
My typical routine is MS Press with virtual lab (get VM Ware if you can afford it), CBT Nuggets, and Transcender. I'll throw in another written resource if I feel like I'm missing something.
You can get a technet download membership for $349/year, and you can download unrestricted versions of any MS product. You can build quite a setup between all the various versions of standard, enterprise, r2, etc.
I also use http://safari.oreilly.com for all my books. $40/month for as much as I want. They have everything from Cisco, O'Reilly, MS Press, and many others. That saves me a ton of money.
Good luck with your MCSE!