alt.certification.a-plus - Passed A+ Core Exam Today

Author

Passed A+ Core Exam Today

Carrito

2004-02-23, 12:24 pm

Well I passed my first ever cert test today and came away with some
insights and some amazement. First of all I cannot believe that I
studied all the CPU stuff and specs on cache sizes, especially for the
newer processors. That's about all I can say on that. One thing that
got me though was that about half of the test was really not that bad.
But some of the questions the wording was either terrible or the
answers were so close or could have been more than one that it was
confusing or in the least vague. I think that if I had went back and
read back over my book one more time I would have done a little bit
better. I scored a 590 which I was dissapointed at but at least I
passed I guess. Now I need to study for the OS part which from what I
have read on here seems to be harder. Hopefully I will study more of
the stuff that will actually be on the exam than stuff not on it.

Does anyone have some advice on good areas to really know related to
the OS part of the test? I am only running Windows 2000 Pro on this
computer and haven't used XP but a few times, and haven't used 98 or
95 in years. Will this be a problem?

Thanks for listening and the advice....

Does anyone know when you actually pass the tests and then get the
card or whatever in the mail, does it list your scores on it or what?
I mean what is actually on the cert card that you get in the mail?

Vapor

2004-02-23, 2:24 pm

As with all things, even this tidbit found in alt.certification.a-plus
proffered by Carrito shall pass.

> Well I passed my first ever cert test today and came away with some
> insights and some amazement. First of all I cannot believe that I
> studied all the CPU stuff and specs on cache sizes, especially for the
> newer processors. That's about all I can say on that. One thing that
> got me though was that about half of the test was really not that bad.
> But some of the questions the wording was either terrible or the
> answers were so close or could have been more than one that it was
> confusing or in the least vague. I think that if I had went back and
> read back over my book one more time I would have done a little bit
> better. I scored a 590 which I was dissapointed at but at least I
> passed I guess. Now I need to study for the OS part which from what I
> have read on here seems to be harder. Hopefully I will study more of
> the stuff that will actually be on the exam than stuff not on it.
>
> Does anyone have some advice on good areas to really know related to
> the OS part of the test? I am only running Windows 2000 Pro on this
> computer and haven't used XP but a few times, and haven't used 98 or
> 95 in years. Will this be a problem?
>
> Thanks for listening and the advice....
>
> Does anyone know when you actually pass the tests and then get the
> card or whatever in the mail, does it list your scores on it or what?
> I mean what is actually on the cert card that you get in the mail?

Congrats on the hardware pass.

According to the test objectives (and personal experience) you are going
to want know some about Win9x and DOS. While studying keep in mind not
only what/where a particular option/utility is but also the steps taken
to get to it.

Follow the link for a breakdown of the objectives:
http://www.comptia.org/certificatio..._objectives.pdf

Good luck,
--
\//\P0R

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...
I want to achieve it through not dying." -- Woody Allen

David BlandIII

2004-02-23, 4:24 pm

My advice is to take several practice tests and simply study hard in the
areas
which you don't do as well on. most books contain a CD with some practice
tests
on them and I'm sure there are web sites available that do the same.

I'm in your exact position and I took my first practice test yesterday after
finishing only 2 of the nine chapters that I intend to read. I only got 45%
of
the answers correct but I figure that's OK since I've only read 20% of the
material so far. I found that I knew a good deal about general OS
fundamentals
(particularly from my experience with DOS over the years) but that I really
lacked specific knowledge of many Windows files, commands and options.
There was a particularly good amount of test questions related to installing
and upgrading the various versions of Windows - what commands and what
media was needed to do the job in each. The questions covered Windows 95,
98, Me, 2000, XP, and to a much lesser extent NT 4.

Since many of the questions won't be as obvious as with hardware I
suppose it will be somewhat harder than the core test but with sufficient
study we should both do well. I figure it will take me about four weeks to
have it all down. I personally like to cap my studying off with the Exam
Cram series for about three or four days to quickly reinforce things I'm
unsure of and to test myself.

--
David Bland

"Carrito" <dhead97@aol.com> wrote in message
news:f2e6db3.0402230829.5febfb7d@posting.google.com...
> Well I passed my first ever cert test today and came away with some
> insights and some amazement. First of all I cannot believe that I
> studied all the CPU stuff and specs on cache sizes, especially for the
> newer processors. That's about all I can say on that. One thing that
> got me though was that about half of the test was really not that bad.
> But some of the questions the wording was either terrible or the
> answers were so close or could have been more than one that it was
> confusing or in the least vague. I think that if I had went back and
> read back over my book one more time I would have done a little bit
> better. I scored a 590 which I was dissapointed at but at least I
> passed I guess. Now I need to study for the OS part which from what I
> have read on here seems to be harder. Hopefully I will study more of
> the stuff that will actually be on the exam than stuff not on it.
>
> Does anyone have some advice on good areas to really know related to
> the OS part of the test? I am only running Windows 2000 Pro on this
> computer and haven't used XP but a few times, and haven't used 98 or
> 95 in years. Will this be a problem?
>
> Thanks for listening and the advice....
>
> Does anyone know when you actually pass the tests and then get the
> card or whatever in the mail, does it list your scores on it or what?
> I mean what is actually on the cert card that you get in the mail?

Carrito

2004-02-24, 12:24 am

"David BlandIII" <dbland5@msn.com> wrote in message news:<_9t_b.501$921.319@nwrddc02.gnilink.net>...
> My advice is to take several practice tests and simply study hard in the
> areas
> which you don't do as well on. most books contain a CD with some practice
> tests
> on them and I'm sure there are web sites available that do the same.
>
> I'm in your exact position and I took my first practice test yesterday after
> finishing only 2 of the nine chapters that I intend to read. I only got 45%
> of
> the answers correct but I figure that's OK since I've only read 20% of the
> material so far. I found that I knew a good deal about general OS
> fundamentals
> (particularly from my experience with DOS over the years) but that I really
> lacked specific knowledge of many Windows files, commands and options.
> There was a particularly good amount of test questions related to installing
> and upgrading the various versions of Windows - what commands and what
> media was needed to do the job in each. The questions covered Windows 95,
> 98, Me, 2000, XP, and to a much lesser extent NT 4.
>
> Since many of the questions won't be as obvious as with hardware I
> suppose it will be somewhat harder than the core test but with sufficient
> study we should both do well. I figure it will take me about four weeks to
> have it all down. I personally like to cap my studying off with the Exam
> Cram series for about three or four days to quickly reinforce things I'm
> unsure of and to test myself.
>
> --
> David Bland

I wish you luck. I was using exam essentials 6.0 and the cram master
software and did it until I was scoring 98% on both software programs
for the core and also having read the core section of the book I had
bought. I guess this is why I was kinda dissapointed at my score. I
read here from others about how the questions were sometimes vague and
grammatically incorrect. Well yeah it's true. I still havent figured
out which of the four printers they gave me as an example would not do
color printing. LOL I got home and that was the first thing I looked
up. Come to find out they all print color printing, so Im kinda like
at a loss as to what the correct answer was. I just hope the OS test
is both less wordy and less vague. But in the end, even after using
both exam software packages and reading those chapters once, there
were still several questions that I really could not remember anything
about. Not reading them in the book, or even using the software. So
who knows.

Carito

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