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CompTIA A+ Complete Review Guide: Exam 220-701 / Exam 220-702 ReviewUPDATED 10/20I'm getting ready to take A+ on Monday - the first of the two tests - to make up for not passing it back when I was a kid, and to increase my marketability. This book seemed to be what I needed; I don't really need a full-on education about hardware and software as I work in IT, but I do need to freshen up on the hardware side so it's in line with what the test wants of me. I picked this book because it seemed credible from various web sources. And in truth, it is quite comprehensive...the contents are thorough, starting out with the requirements for each exam, then going into detail about the components. However, not all is well.
First, the way they present the information is not conducive to a "review" guide. A normal review guide goes briefly over each section under the premise that you already have a basic understanding of the components and just want to...well...review the material in a quick, possibly bulleted, brief format. This book isn't it. This covers everything from ground up, which is not a bad thing, but that's not what I wanted. There is a full on A+ study guide that I would have bought instead if I wanted the full info - I wanted quick and dirty bullets and maybe some imagery (there is imagery). There are quick-and-dirty items under Exam Essentials, but as you'll note later, it's after all of the paragraphs. It makes me wonder why there is a CompTIA A+ Complete Study Guide: Exams 220-701 (Essentials) and 220-702 (Practical Application) at all. I mean, a Complete STUDY Guide I would expect to be comprehensive. A Complete REVIEW Guide I would expect to be streamlined and down-to-the-point for those maybe who already are in IT and just need freshening up without the handholding that this book does at times. Personal opinion. And yes, my fault for not going to a local bookstore and flipping through it, but unfortunately the price was right, and I was eventually able to get what I needed...just took longer than I had hoped to parse through the information.
Second, and most notable...since I couldn't immediately and readily get what I wanted from the book, I figured I would go straight to the disc. Big mistake. The flashcards ask questions in such ambiguous ways as to be useless; the test isn't like that. Things like, "What is the desktop interface referred to in Windows Vista?" Their answer? Aero. Aero is not an interface. Aero is a style OF the interface, also referred to as Desktop Composition. Seeing this inaccuracy I went to the bonus exam for Essentials. It asked me a question, probably the easiest question in all of IT: "How much capacity does a DVD have?" Their answer? 1.6GB. Huh? If anyone reads this review and can point me to a DVD that size, I'm all for it, because my understanding is that basic single sided DVDs are 4.7GB; dual layer DVDs can go up to 9 or thereabouts; and Blu-ray greater than 30GB (MiniDVD, which is actually 1.4, is the closest I could find. But that is NOT the same media as DVD, same as MiniDisc is not the same as CD). By all means, if someone has information that validates what the test said, I'll do a mea culpa and correct this review. In my opinion, it's a glaring issue for someone preparing for this test.
UPDATE 2: Found another error which could be a big problem on the disc, under the Practical Application Bonus Exam 2, question 49. It asks for a Windows Recovery Console command to list services/devices on the system. The answer is Listsvc; the quiz shows that as option C, but when you do "Show Answer", it tells you the answer is D, "Listsvc". It's quite likely the named answers were just transposed, but basic editing errors such as this really affect a person's ability to study.
In summary, do not get this book if you intend to have any success on that test IF you don't know what you're doing. Otherwise you won't know the difference between the good answers and the bad ones. Or, if you're the kind of person who reads books end-to-end you might be fine ignoring the CD completely. All I know is, this is my 6th Sybex guide (the other 5 came with a school program), and they all have been lackluster. This one is the worst of them all, IMO.
All that said, I will say that I did pass the Essentials exam quite handily today (830 out of 900). But I believe that to be more a result of the different format of the test (it's a LOT more modern and easy to navigate than the older version I took) and my hands-on experience from my job, than the contents of this book. I would say about 80% of what the book calls "Exam Essentials" were not even mentioned; things like the differences between the various RAM types, CMOS/BIOS, AGP/PCI/PCIe/ISA/IRQ, none of it was even mentioned. The test is in a similar layout to Microsoft exams where it's either a scenario based question (i.e. "user is reporting that...") or just a straight question about what to do with thermal compound. I will update with the progress of Practical Application, which I'll take 10/20. For the record, The older equivalent of Practical Application (Core Hardware) was what I failed by one question a decade ago, so the outcome of that test will likely also be skewed by my work somewhat - unless it goes into older stuff like IRQs and whatnot, because I don't deal with those of course.
UPDATE 3: So I passed Practical today (865 out of 900...not sure how I did better on this one as I guessed on quite a few ambiguous questions, but whatever). Funny thing: I didn't study the book at all. Not one lick. And it's good that I didn't, because the test had NOTHING to do with any of the Practical sections in the book. The Practical is basically a 100% scenario based suite of 100 questions that cover the same material you went over in Core Essentials, just put to practical use in a scenario where you're trying to troubleshoot issues or set something up. The book and the exam cover things so disjointedly that you won't get much out of reading it through. What I suggest doing here is to skim through the chapters for Practical, and focus on your known weak spots ONLY. Practical has some Vista, XP and Windows 2000 questions. The only real hardware I got was about SATA, IDE, and BIOS/CMOS. Use this section of the book as a quick refresh; I HIGHLY recommend hands-on experience with this stuff. It'll make this test a breeze.CompTIA A+ Complete Review Guide: Exam 220-701 / Exam 220-702 OverviewOrganized by exam objectives, this is a focused, concise review guide that works hand-in-hand with any learning tool, including the CompTIA A+ Complete Study Guide, 2nd Edition.
The CompTIA A+ certification is the industry standard in terms of measuring a technician's hardware and software knowledge. As the most popular entry-level certification, it is particularly popular among individuals switching from another career to computers.
This focused guide will help you focus on preparing to take the CompTIA A+ certification exam!
A well-organized, ideal companion study tool to the Sybex CompTIA A+ guides
Each chapter discusses the main topics that are featured in the two parts of the exam
Discusses hardware, troubleshooting and maintenance, operating systems and software, networking, security, and operating procedures
Author is a well-known certification columnist and bestselling author
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.
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