Labsim/Test out Review for A+ ~~ WGU

A little background info:
I passed my A+ cert last week. I took both tests on the same day. I have ~12 years’ experience troubleshooting SOHO networks and systems and finally decided to get a degree and certs.

I used 2 things to study for the A+ exam. I used the Labsim/Test out course, provided by WGU. I went through both the essential and Practical information in about 2 weeks total. I also used the Professormesser daily pop quiz questions for extra testing. I used these the day before my exam, mainly because I was nervous that I had simply memorized the test out questions. I didn't use any videos or anything else on professormesser's site, only the daily pop quiz questions.

On to the testout review:
Overall I found the information well laid out. The information is presented in a way that if you had absolutely no PC experience, you would have little trouble following and learning the material. There are 3 different instructors throughout the videos. There is a younger guy, a bald guy, and a monotone guy (their names might have been mentioned? but it wasn't really important to me).

I found the younger guy much easier to listen to and follow. Even though most of the material was review of years of work, you could pay attention to him and not get overly board. The younger guys videos did get a little long and he talked about things mutliple times, but for a beginner, the sheer detail he goes into would be great. The main problem with the younger guy is his material is a little dated, which is why they added the other two instructors.

The other 2 instructors really don't need broken down to themselves. They don't go into as much detail as the younger guy and they are both very monotone and boring. They do ok at getting the information presented as long as you can stay awake. There videos are much shorter and they don't do as many illustrations to present the information. These two do however do most of the newer product videos, such as vista, windows 7,etc. They do know the information and go through it ok, just a little faster. I think they would be a bit harder to learn from for someone new to the industry, just because of the speed they go through it and lack of detail.

After each video there are summaries. I mostly just skimmed the summaries and never really gave it much thought. While writing this though I was looking at the summary page and I see there is a print button. So I guess they would be useful to print out as your study notes. Not really sure, I didn't bother with notes.

There are also interactive labs. For someone with a lot of time in a case, these are more annoying than helpful. If you are new to the IT world, or have very little time inside of a case, these would give you decent hands on experience. They go through installing all hardware, configuring the bios, into OS installs, settings and backups. The labs went through with very little issue, and all in all seemed well done. There was really only 1 or 2 bugs in all the labs and you could work around them.(I knew this was something complained about in previous posts about the older labs).

There are also practice questions at the end of every section of material and then domain practice tests at the end of the course and also an actual practice exam that more mimics the exam itself. My biggest issue with these practice tests was the fact that the domain questions are the same exact questions you see while going through the material, and then the actual practice test is the same questions again. So for instance, if you go through the networking section, maybe youll have 120 questions on networking. When you finish the course and go through the domain practice questions for networking, you will get all 120 of those questions in a row as the domain test. Then if you continue in order and take the actual practice exam, any network questions on the exam you will have already seen the same exact question twice.
I wish they would at least change the wording of the questions or add new ones or something. I would say to me, that was the biggest downfall of the whole course, and I would strongly recommend practice tests and questions from other sources so you can see other wordage to prepare for the exam.

All in all the information was decently presented and I had only seen a handful of questions on both tests combined that weren't covered in the Testout information. In my opinion the testout software is plenty enough to pass the exams if you follow it close and can learn the information inside and out, which is pretty great considering how beginner friendly it is as well.

I was actually a little disappointed with my 819 and 837, so if I had to do it again, I might add a book or even just take a little more time to go over bus speeds and Windows requirements etc. You will see some questions on the exam with 2 correct answers also. In those cases you need to know the more right answer.

If anyone has any questions or comments feel free to ask/add to.
Darryl