Passed Both Essentials & 220-602 Today
First of all…
Second of all…
Okay, with that outta the way, let me share with you guys my experience.
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I was lucky enough to find a place that does testing on Sundays. I felt that since no one would be out on the roads and the overall aura of a Sunday is calmer than the rest of the days in the week, Sunday would be a great day to focus and take the exams.
My test center was great. I arrived an hour early and the gentleman let me study right up until my appointed time. It was not crowded at all (Sunday) and I was actually able to memorize some stats that I could write down on my scratch pad when I was ready to go.
First test: Essentials:
Essentially, this test basically went as how I imagined it. A good overall balance of questions, ranging from stats, (what speed does USB 2.0 …) to what would you do’s ( what would you recommend for a network that consists of ….) The whole time I was taking the test I was feeling good about my progress, I knew I did good. Heck, when I saw the SLI question I knew the fates would treat me kindly on this day. It covered the outline examination objectives very well
Passed 835
Second test: 220-602:
This test was NOTHING how I expected it to be. It was so front-loaded with customer service questions, gray-area stuff that you could pick a good answer but still be wrong questions, I thought I would be in trouble with the time limit. Spent a half hour on the first 20 questions, because they were a paragraph long and I reread them three times each to make sure I understood what they wanted me to do
A lot of Networking questions, stuff with UDP, which I did not study. Wireless was everywhere
A lot of Command prompt stuff.
A lot of Notebook stuff.
Hardly any Security stuff.
Hardly any Safety stuff.
Biggest surprise this test had HARDLY ANY printer questions. One laser printer question. I wrote those steps a laser printer goes through on my scratch pad for nothing. There were definetly more laptop questions than printer questions.
The obligatory IEEE1294 question (Why is this so hard to remember what cable this uses)
The obligatory ntbootdd.sys question (You see this you immediately should think SCSI)
The obligatory pagefile.sys question.
From reading these forums people were describing the 602 test to be very close to the Essentials. I felt they were very different. The 602 was harder because in my opinion it did not cover the weighted scope of objectives that is detailed on the CompTia web site evenly. I could be wrong, but I felt that there were things that should have been covered more and things that should have been covered less. I definetly feel there were a lot of areas in the Exam Objectives that were not covered on my exam. I guess what I am saying is even though other people have experienced it, DO NOT COUNT ON THIS TEST BEING IDENTICAL TO ESSENTIALS
Oh yeah, my surprise when I was done:
Passed 840
What I did to study:
Signed up to these forums
Certblaster Tests offered on this website: Good for overall knowledge, not a realistic outline of the true tests (especially 602, in my experience)
Read COMPTIA A+ 2006 In Depth by Jean Andrews. Good overall verbage.
The question and answer follow up book to this series is a rip off and a joke. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK:
CompTIA A+ 2006 Q&A
Here is a sample of the content you will find inside:
“What is the name of the port provided by some older computers that transmits data serially”
Amazingly enough the Dummies book for A+ had a lot of useful things in there.
The best book though is Mike Meyers, that was the one I leaned on the most. Although there were some notable typos in there, it helped me with the things I was having a hard time conceptualize.
I studied for three weeks after work at Barnes & Noble with NO COMPUTER. For me this is a must because if I can get online I can get easily distracted. B&N rocks. I just took the above books off their shelves and studied till close. I did not pay one penny for an A+ book. For me it is good because if I buy a book and take it home to study, I will probably get distracted. Not being able to leave the store with the book kept my butt in there and made me study. The workers there are super cool and they left me alone in peace. The Starbucks in B&N was a godsend as well (Triple-Shot Espresso, anyone? )
After I read a chapter, I would review it again and WRITE DOWN what I felt was important, or what the scope of the test told me I had to know. Writing it down makes me remember it better for some reason.
On stats, I played a sports game. I associated Telnet with Michael Jordan. Why? Because when they asked what port does Telnet use, I just remember MJ’s uniform number was 23. Paul O’Neill was FTP, you get the picture.
I just wanted to pass along my experience to you guys because reading your experiences helped me a great deal in how to prepare for the tests. Even though I had a slightly different experience than most here had with 602, the experience you guys passed down to me helped me immensely, which obligated me to write this very long post.
I am now going to study for the MCDST cert (MS Certified Desktop Support Technician) although the Network+’s 72 questions are tempting.
All I have to do now is wait for my obligatory canned post from one of my favorite moderators and I will then truly feel certified. Let me recite it for you:
Congratulations on passing and becoming certified.
You can relax now for a while and enjoy your success.
Are you planning on getting any other certifications in the future?
Stick around and help others wherever you can.
Thank you guys so much for the help and if anyone has any questions feel free to ask.
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