A+ Exam - OS

[Mike2000]

Has anyone taken the OS part of the A+ Exam. If so, what do you recommend concentrating on when studying for it?

 

[Psalms34]

Has anyone taken the OS part of the A+ Exam. If so, what do you recommend concentrating on when studying for it?

Ohhh ya gotta study the whole thing as best ya can. If you take the exam, the computer testing system checks for questions you miss then focuses on questions from those categories that the questions came from. Sooo if you missed a few from networking at the beginning, expect to see quite a number of Networking questions as the test progresses. I took A+ at my College and it twas a blast!

 

[lucid42day]

Has anyone taken the OS part of the A+ Exam. If so, what do you recommend concentrating on when studying for it?

It's hard to say. Try to concentrate on a little bit of everything. When I took mine, it was heavily WinNT and Win2k centric. Remember the boot sequence for the OSes and all that. Remember all 7 layers of the OSI model. Try to forget how much easier the hardware portion of the test is. I had the HW section down in 20 questions, but the OS part dragged out to 26 or 27 questions. Seems like I saw a lot of printer-type stuff on there as well.

Mine was over 2.5 years ago so I don't really recall that much. Other than that the instructor was patently unqualified to be teaching the A+ course.

Good luck. You probably won't need it.

 

[SuperTech]

Has anyone taken the OS part of the A+ Exam. If so, what do you recommend concentrating on when studying for it?

Yes. I like the Scott Mueller books for this one, but it is an overkill for the exam. The newsgroup a-plus recommends the books by Mike Meyers for studying for the exam.

 

[Mike2000]

Yes. I like the Scott Mueller books for this one, but it is an overkill for the exam. The newsgroup a-plus recommends the books by Mike Meyers for studying for the exam.

I have never heard of these. I'll look for them.

Thanks.

 

[Mike2000]

Other than that the instructor was patently unqualified to be teaching the A+ course.

That's funny that you mention that. I felt the same way about my A+ teacher. He didn't really seem too qualified either. I think it's a combination of that and the fact that there is so much to learn that you couldn't possibly learn it all in one semester.

When I took the hardware part, I passed with flying colors. When I took the software part, I failed miserably. It seemed like most of the questions on it weren't even covered in my A+ class. Most of the questions seemed so alien that I do not even know where to find the answers for them.

 

[Psalms34]

I have a few books. Best one I like is the Course Technology, Thomson Learning. Comprehensive A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC. They use it as the text book at my college. My instructor was great, but he was also the network admin at the College so of course he had to know what he was doing. Lab was the best, nothing better than hands on in tune with the study.

 

[SuperTech]

I have never heard of these. I'll look for them.

Thanks.

Sorry, I should be more specific: "A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide". Amazon has it.

BTW, if you have any hands on PC Tech experience the exam is incredibly easy. I studied for a week and passed it with no problems. I had about 2 years professional PC experience prior to taking exam.

Good luck!

 

[Mike2000]

Besides reading my A+ book, I have oredered a copy of Transcender's practice exam. I heard that transcecder is pretty good for preparing someone for the exam.

Has anyone else tried the Transcender software?

 

[lucid42day]

That's funny that you mention that. I felt the same way about my A+ teacher. He didn't really seem too qualified either. I think it's a combination of that and the fact that there is so much to learn that you couldn't possibly learn it all in one semester.

When I took the hardware part, I passed with flying colors. When I took the software part, I failed miserably. It seemed like most of the questions on it weren't even covered in my A+ class. Most of the questions seemed so alien that I do not even know where to find the answers for them.

He told students that CD burners worked by using a laser to alter the magnetic properties of the CD.

He was not able to use the DOS command 'sys' to make a valid DOS boot floppy.

He was not able to understand that COMMAND.COM needs to be of a nonzero length for DOS to work.

He was upset when I was able to install DOS when he couldn't.

He was not able to install a 1 gb hard drive on a machine with a BIOS limit.

After I passed both parts of the test, I was advised that I was the only one to pass out of his class.

 

[SuperTech]

Besides reading my A+ book, I have ordered a copy of Transcender's practice exam. I heard that transcecder is pretty good for preparing someone for the exam.

Has anyone else tried the Transcender software?

Transcenders is awfully expensive and I don't think it is worth the money. 3 of the 4 times I took Transcenders for WinXP it told me I failed. However, I passed the real test with flying colors.

YMMV.

 

[WalksWithChrist]

Transcenders is awfully expensive and I don't think it is worth the money. 3 of the 4 times I took Transcenders for WinXP it told me I failed. However, I passed the real test with flying colors.

YMMV.

From my experience and what I've heard the Transcender will over-prepare you for the exam. That's actually not a bad thing! I was failing my practice exams and then said "screw it" and just sat for both Hardware and OS A+ exams and passed them both in one sitting! That was a good day. = ) This a good case for brute force and experience winning out over over-preparation from books, but I wouldn't recommend it. heh heh It really, really helped that I had about a year or so's worth of hands-on techie experience too. There's *no* substitute for that.