HatesFury

The last time the A+ was updated was in 2006, however there's no way of knowing if the book published in 2006 was before or after the test was updated, so i'd steer clear of that deal.

If i remember correctly all CompTia tests are $150.00 to sit, pass or fail.

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The harshest insult ever given on the OCN forum:

DuckieHo

Are you sure about that? I believe the A+ certification rules changed only last year. Not sure if this affected the test themselves or not.

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To answer most of your questions: (1) a fridge cannot cool a PC (2) 64-bit OS for over 3GB or so (3) PCIe 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCIe 1.x (4) Resolution, not screen size (5) If you have a question, it is not news (6) Read TOS (7) Report, not respond to Spam (8) Uninstall nTune (9) Single/Non-Modular Rail PSUs are NOT better than Multi-Rail/Modular (10) Edward is the Law!

HatesFury

I'm not 100%, but i've been doing research on the A+ lately as i'm looking to recertify, and everything i've seen says that the test questions were updated last in 06. A change to the "rules" (not sure if that's the word you meant to use, or if thats how you read\saw\remember it) may not indicate a change to the actual subject matter of the test.

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The harshest insult ever given on the OCN forum:

DuckieHo

Thx, I was thinking about getting the cert myself. I took a review test and so many questions are so out of date now....

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To answer most of your questions: (1) a fridge cannot cool a PC (2) 64-bit OS for over 3GB or so (3) PCIe 2.0 is backwards compatible with PCIe 1.x (4) Resolution, not screen size (5) If you have a question, it is not news (6) Read TOS (7) Report, not respond to Spam (8) Uninstall nTune (9) Single/Non-Modular Rail PSUs are NOT better than Multi-Rail/Modular (10) Edward is the Law!

amd0freak

yeah all the printer questions are basically irrelevant. but i think A+ is not bad to have. i would just get a book, the class doesn't help much

Atlas101

My 2 cents:

The A+ cert is alot harder than most think. You do need to know your stuff. You should know your stuff. Alot of it is NOT outdated. Todays technology and 'wizards' mask the things your supposed to know or had to do in the past.

For example. A mouse communicates at what com port and whats its interrupt? Sounds old school and easy. Well, back when we had to manage our own config.sys and autoexec.bat, these were things you needed to know on a DOS level in order for them to work in Windows 3.1, 3.11, etc.

All of this is now managed by the Windows we have today.

Just some other old school tidbits some old timers might remember!:

1. BBS's! I used to love dialing in.
2. SIMMS not DIMMS.
3. SX= No cache, DX= Cache
4. No internal cache on the CPU, some took external, looked like AGP slot
5. 1 Meg RAM = $40

To get back to topic, if you feel like you should take it: take it. I personally did self studying as my approach as I tinkered alot on my own.

Hope this helps!

DarkNite

rofl me too. Aaaaand i live in montreal. :O

Anyways my dad sent me this email a few days ago:



Hi DARKNITE.. just checking into this Comp TIA A+ certification thing for you..

Here is the Comp TIA A+ certification info web page. Apparently you have to take two courses (Comp TIA A+ ‘Essentials’ as well as Comp TIA A+ 220-602) and pass the respective exams (thus 2 exams to write) to receive you’re A+ certification.

http://certification.comptia.org/a/default.aspx

You must go to this Comp TIA webstore to buy ‘vouchers’ and course manuals for the two courses:

https://store.comptia.org/shelf.aspx?shelf=2

Once purchased you have a limited time in which to take the tests.. which would be held at an authorized test center.. here is the website of a Canadian learning institution (Nexient) that is qualified as a Comp TIA test center and that holds A+ related tests:

http://www.nexientlearning.com/Nexie...ology/CompTIA/

Clicked on the ‘A+ certification’ link to get to this next webpage. It outlines the Comp TIA A+ ‘Essentials’ course they (Nexient) give (I think you could handle this course). It’s only 5 days but costs about $2300.00. The next one is to be held from June 23rd to 27th in Mississauga.. can’t seem to find anything else closer and at any other time.

http://www.nexientlearning.com/Nexie...rses/G1/0/G166

This next ‘Nexient’ link summarizes all Comp TIA courses that they offer. They don’t seem to offer the second ‘220-602’ course you’d need to take to qualify (as described by Comp TIA) and so I think we would need to contact Nexient before embarking on this to find out the real story as to what we’d need to do to get the A+ certification (maybe only the one course is necessary). Anyways.. worse case is we need to take 2 courses that are each $2500.00.. not worth it unless you only want to be an IT technician in life.. and you want to be an Engineer… we just want to give you a chance at getting a decent job pre-university and to have something to add to your resume (CV).. remember, at 18 you will be able to work at RIM over the summer as discussed. Note also that it might be sufficient for you to buy the two vouchers/course manuals ($400.00) and, without taking the courses simply write the exams.. we’d need to see the manuals to determine if it’d be easy enough that you wouldn’t need any class instruction… and we’d have to make sure that this way is allowed (we can download sample tests I believe).

http://www.nexientlearning.com/Nexie...2&showdates=no

When you’re up we can find out more.. I’ll call Nexient.. you may not be old enough for all this yet anyways.. but it’d be good to find out everything now in order to plan ahead.

Here is an example of a job at Future Shop that you could apply for if you were old enough and had you’re A+ certification (I bet you could do this now):

http://www.recruitingsite.com/csbsit...ategoryCode=-1

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HatesFury

The $2500.00 is for a bootcamp, which many IT professionals take to brush up before taking a cert, and normally their job pays for it. I'd strongly reccomend anyone who is NOT a employed IT professional to either take online classes, or local classes. 1) it's much cheaper than a boot-camp (it's only 2 semesters, which at a community college would normally run you less than $1000.00 after buying books) 2) A lot of the material that you learn is NOT material that you'd learn from tinkering with a home computer. If you're a working IT pro then you deal with these things and it's easier to remember, if you're just a home PC enthusiast trying to remember information that you never use, doesn't pertain to you is often more challenging.

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The harshest insult ever given on the OCN forum:

HatesFury

Really??? I had to change out the Defuser in our HP Laser Jet at work today.... printer info is only useless to a home PC user and you won't be tearing down and repairing $6000.00 printers. It's NOT useless in anyway if you work in the IT friend as a repair tech (which is what A+ was meant for). The stuff on the dot matrix pritners could really be cut out, but the A+ is in no way "useless" and it's foolish to pass it off as such.

In addition working in the IT field is not like working at McDonalds. Pay is almost ALWAYS based on qualifiction, experience, and education (not standard wages). The more certifications, education, and experience you have, the more money you can ask for when getting a job, so again, stop talking about A+ being useless.

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The Duke

Dependent on how you approach the A+, it may be applicable to college credits too

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