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Getting A+ Certified.....

S

silentsnake09

Gawd
Joined
Jul 14, 2003
Messages
517
I didn't know where this should go so mod can move it. OK quick history, I am 20 years old and graduated high school 2 years ago. After graduation I went to work for my fathers construction buisness. I like what I do but I love computers. I have a good amount of knowledge of PC, I never took a A+ exam and I took a practice and I got a 70%. I don't plan on stopping at A+ I wanna go as far as I can. I plan on doing shit trhough ntgdirect.com Does anyone have any suggestions or comments for me ? I really wanna better my life with a better job than working outside all winter when its -20 out :-(
 
A+ is a good start, but keep in mind that it's only a start. With the job market as saturated as it is, A+ really isnt going to do a whole lot to get you a computer job, but it cant hurt. If it's something you really want to do, decide on an area that you'd like to specialize in and plan on going to college for 4 years at least.

I ended up taking the A+ and Network+ before I went to a 4 year school for Computer Science - Networking. I consider the time studing for the exams as time well spent. I learned a good deal and had fun doing it. There's no need to take any classes in preparation for the exams, just pick up one of the good study guides that's out there and read it through at least twice, taking good notes. You'll learn a ton and pass the test(s) with ease.

I used the Mike Meyers books in case you were curious. I found them to be a bit easier to read than the others that were available at the time.
 
lol Yeah I am using the Michael Myers book right now on A+. So do I have to go to a 4 year college or can I just keep buying the books and takeing the exams ?
 
I would just get the book by Micheal Meyers. I felt pretty good about the exam before the bok. Now I am closing in on the end of the book and feel confident as hell, I am still going throught it one more time though. Just the test area not the historical stuff. I just wanna know if I can get a good job (i plan on getting more than a+ certified) with out any "formal" college?
 
I suppose you dont *need* college, but good luck without it :)

I took the military route - almost done my 4 years enlistment (I'm 22), with certs + clearance + hands-on experience. It leads to a nice niche in the IT industry (government contracts, clearance-required jobs). I did a year of college before joining up (comp sci), decided against programming though. In hindsight a good decision.
 
I am contemplating getting my certifications, than moving into NYC. On monster.com I see lots of jobs where if you have certs they will hire you and give you hands on. but 10-15 and hour wtih a MCSE,a+,n+, and more ? Seems low pay lol. Maybe its like internship.
 
Originally posted by Ritorix
I supposed you dont *need* college, but good luck without it :)

I took the military route - almost done my 4 years enlistment (I'm 22), with certs + clearance + hands-on experience. It leads to a nice niche in the IT industry (government contracts, clearance-required jobs). I did a year of college before joining up (comp sci), decided against programming though. In hindsight a good decision.
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I ALMOST took the military route. The Marine and Army recruiters were after me pretty heavy through my last two years of high school. Through listening to my parents, girlfriend, and friends that were already enlisted i decided against it. They have too much of a control over your life and their free to ship you overseas whenever they please, no matter what they promised you.

The best thing for someone to do if they are interested in computers is to just go and get started in a technical school that has a good specialization in computers.

I also started out my first year of college as a Computer Science major but i soon realized after just a week that wasn't for me. I transferred to another college to get the training i needed in Computer Networking and then go on to Computer Engineering.

Now adays just getting a certificate doesn't mean alot in an area where everyone wants to do computers and 80% aren't qualified. Everytime i go into local computer stores i dread having to talk with the techs that are working there and ask them about something they might have in stock and its specs. They always try and talk to me like i dont know anything and then i have to end up correcting them on half of what they tried to tell me.

The other day i was in one to look at LCD's cause i wanted to get an idea on sizes and i asked him what the response time was on a certain one and if it was like 25ms and he said well i dont know without going and looking up the specs, and he says "oh you mean the refresh rate?" And i was like yea something like that lol. And he proceeds to right clicks on the desktop and left clicks refresh a couple of times and says to me "Is that fast enough for you?" It was all i could do to keep a straight face lmao.
 
I would like to go back to school and do networking but I have already been out for 2 years, and there is no way I can afford to put myself through college. Plus I did shitty in high school (straight 60's and 70's) so I dunno if I could even get in :(
 
Originally posted by silentsnake09
I would like to go back to school and do networking but I have already been out for 2 years, and there is no way I can afford to put myself through college. Plus I did shitty in high school (straight 60's and 70's) so I dunno if I could even get in :(
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A technical school is quicker then going through a 4 year college because they dont make you take as many bull shit electives but you still have to take some. I'm in a 5 credit hour Bio Chemistry Lab and English Comp this semester and let me tell you its not much fun at all.
 
Originally posted by burningrave101

The other day i was in one to look at LCD's cause i wanted to get an idea on sizes and i asked him what the response time was on a certain one and if it was like 25ms and he said well i dont know without going and looking up the specs, and he says "oh you mean the refresh rate?" And i was like yea something like that lol. And he proceeds to right clicks on the desktop and left clicks refresh a couple of times and says to me "Is that fast enough for you?" It was all i could do to keep a straight face lmao.
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haha!! what the hell. what kind of computer store was it?
 
proabley best buys lol. I love showing there employees up. oh and guys. Super Mario brothering media coming soon. Want to know what it is and how insane and fucked up it is Join my board. First 10 members from [H] to join get a free 20 posts on their post count !
 
Originally posted by daveisconfused
haha!! what the hell. what kind of computer store was it?
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It was one of the primary office supply and computer repair stores in my area.

oh and guys. Super Mario brothering media coming soon. Want to know what it is and how insane and fucked up it is Join my board. First 10 members from [H] to join get a free 20 posts on their post count !
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WTF lol. And wheres your board at?
 
www.pe-bridge.com

www.pe-bridge.com/board

I am gonna post on the board tonight or tomorrow night what super mario brothering is. And it is insane. I am working on the media and story now :)

I would go to a community college but anything that will prevent me from my full time job would destroy me. I need at least a steady $400 a week just to get bye.
 
Originally posted by silentsnake09
I would go to a community college but anything that will prevent me from my full time job would destroy me. I need at least a steady $400 a week just to get bye.
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I opted to live at home with my parents until after i got through college. There are like three technical school's within a 30-80 minute driving distance where i live. I have the entire open basement to myself and all my money goes towards computer hardware and pimping my room and vehicle :).
 
it was odd, the other day at a best buy the tech guy was suprised that the store carried ide controllers, no one ever asked him that before. and then he told me about his dual xeon setup and how he runs linux and compiles his own drivers.... i was like omg he knows what he's talking about. and then we started talking about raptors and athlon 64s. sadly this was when i was when i was out of town.
 
lol I remember one time I was returning a videocard at Best Buy and the IT person there told me I wasn't allowed to return software and get my money back. I asked him to call his manager and asked him to explain the diffrence between hardware and software to his expert IT employee.
 
Originally posted by silentsnake09
I am contemplating getting my certifications, than moving into NYC. On monster.com I see lots of jobs where if you have certs they will hire you and give you hands on. but 10-15 and hour wtih a MCSE,a+,n+, and more ? Seems low pay lol. Maybe its like internship.
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i see that ur from ny but i guess u neva been to nyc b4. u aint gonna walk up and get a job like that here. its the 4th biggest city in the world and trust me there probably close to a million certified professionals trying to get jobs. and unless u gotta place to live u know housing is crazy expensive right? unless u gotta serious contact i dont think u should pack up and come here.
 
Actually I got to the city very often man lol. I know about housing and all that shit. I got connections at IBM also I am gonna to ask him what he suggests. you live in NYC ?
 
I started at a community college as a student worker. After a year, I was hired full time. I'm getting almost $20 an hour now, and the benefits are quite nice. I can take all the classes I want for no cost (I do pay lab fees, no more than $20 for a class and most don't have fees), full medical (awesome, no co-pay, I pay $3 for any prescriptions I get.) dental, vision. I don't pay into SS, but pay into the state educator's retirement fund. The school also pays for MS software licenses for all its employees and their home PC's, so I have legit OSes and Office discs and keys.

When hiring, I highly advise against hiring anyone with only certifications. One of the people in our software department disabled her mouse cursor. She didn't know how to get it back using keyboard commands... she just couldn't navigate... she just stood there with a confused look on her face. She's MCSE, has a 4 year degree, and teaches Web programming part time! LoL

One of our hardware guys can't even install a PCI card... A+, MCSE, and has a college degree as well... *sigh*
 
Originally posted by Ashtaka
When hiring, I highly advise against hiring anyone with only certifications. One of the people in our software department disabled her mouse cursor. She didn't know how to get it back using keyboard commands... she just couldn't navigate... she just stood there with a confused look on her face. She's MCSE, has a 4 year degree, and teaches Web programming part time! LoL

One of our hardware guys can't even install a PCI card... A+, MCSE, and has a college degree as well... *sigh*
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Damn, they should of spent more time on Hard Forums lol. The best education you can get on computers is being part of a forum community. The actual teaching in classrooms and certifications just dont keep up to date enough and cover everything.

Get the college degree like me but spend alot of time doing hands on work with computers and become part of a computer forum that functions around what you do for a living.

If it wasn't true then i wouldn't be able to walk into a computer store nearly anywhere and make alot of them look like idiots even though they've finished their degrees and certifications and i'm only getting started.
 
Originally posted by Ashtaka


When hiring, I highly advise against hiring anyone with only certifications. One of the people in our software department disabled her mouse cursor. She didn't know how to get it back using keyboard commands... she just couldn't navigate... she just stood there with a confused look on her face. She's MCSE, has a 4 year degree, and teaches Web programming part time! LoL

One of our hardware guys can't even install a PCI card... A+, MCSE, and has a college degree as well... *sigh*
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WOW :eek:
How sad is that? They have college degrees and certified, but cannot figure that out? No wonder the certs are going down the drain and are not worth what they use to be.
I am a MCP in Win2k and working on my MCSE, A+, and Network+ and I can easly do what you just mentioned.
They must of bought their degrees and certs. :D morons!
 
Originally posted by burningrave101
Damn, they should of spent more time on Hard Forums lol. The best education you can get on computers is being part of a forum community. The actual teaching in classrooms and certifications just dont keep up to date enough and cover everything.

Get the college degree like me but spend alot of time doing hands on work with computers and become part of a computer forum that functions around what you do for a living.

If it wasn't true then i wouldn't be able to walk into a computer store nearly anywhere and make alot of them look like idiots even though they've finished their degrees and certifications and i'm only getting started.
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Sad thing is, there are some people who don't take me seriously. These people happen to be the worst guys in the department. To them, I'm "the crazy experimenter who fries CPU's"

And that only happened once with one of our student aides who brought her PC in. We were putting on Thermalright heatsink and it was a hair off.

The guys don't want to learn anything new either. Most of them still run P2's at home and are happy with it. They'll click "yes" on anything that pops up, and freak out when pop ups fly all over their screen, blatently accusing me of pulling a prank on them because I'm snickering in my office. :p
 
Originally posted by Ritorix
............................ decided against programming though. In hindsight a good decision.
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Amen brother!

:( I'm a programmer, but need to get the hell out of it. :(
 
Originally posted by Scero

I used the Mike Meyers books in case you were curious. I found them to be a bit easier to read than the others that were available at the time.
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I just got the A+ 2003 book in the mail yesterday (BOOKPOOL.COM). From what I have heard it is the best reference out there!
 
Originally posted by Badger_sly
Amen brother!

:( I'm a programmer, but need to get the hell out of it. :(
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I started out with Computer Science cause i wasn't sure yet what i wanted to do and i thought i'd like to get into maybe developing PC Game software or something like that since im a hardcore gamer but once that first day of class started and he introduced us to Java, i was like WTF i'm not doing this my whole life lol.

It wasn't but a week after that that i realized my true love was hardware and have been enfatuated with it sence.

BTW, Power Line Broadband is coming to a city near you! I can't wait till it goes nationwide. Its been all over the news lately. AT&T is even getting hooked up with it. They've been testing it in my state and i think its going move from the middle of the country where im at and go east to west within the next year or two. I greatly welcome it since im on dial up in a rural area and long for a connection thats faster then cable or DSL ither one :).
 
Screw certificates. Anyone can memorize a book and get certified.

Get some real world experience, that will help you more than anything.
 
Originally posted by burningrave101
I started out with Computer Science cause i wasn't sure yet what i wanted to do and i thought i'd like to get into maybe developing PC Game software or something like that since im a hardcore gamer but once that first day of class started and he introduced us to Java, i was like WTF i'm not doing this my whole life lol.

It wasn't but a week after that that i realized my true love was hardware and have been enfatuated with it sence.

BTW, Power Line Broadband is coming to a city near you! I can't wait till it goes nationwide. Its been all over the news lately. AT&T is even getting hooked up with it. They've been testing it in my state and i think its going move from the middle of the country where im at and go east to west within the next year or two. I greatly welcome it since im on dial up in a rural area and long for a connection thats faster then cable or DSL ither one :).
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I went with a CIS bachelors, which gave me all the different parts of IT, since I was unsure which route I wanted to go. I excelled in programming in college, and while it was a lot of homework/time, found it interesting. In the real world, I took my current job with a state government doing programming. Quickly I learned it's not the interesting programming I did in college, but monotonous and boring, with having to work with overweight / socially-challenged coworkers. Now I'm stuck, make good money and have excellent benefits, but hate programming more and more every day.

Now I understand why so many people were warning me about being a programmer. :eek:

The IT market is so flooded now, I'm contemplating going back to school for something non-IT. I have about $36,000 sitting on my GI Bill waiting for me to use it.
 
Originally posted by silentsnake09
what is power line broadband ?
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Broadband that travels across your normal power lines that everyone already has or so i would hope. Google it and you'll find plenty of information :).
 
Originally posted by PlaneCrazy
Screw certificates. Anyone can memorize a book and get certified.

Get some real world experience, that will help you more than anything.
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and just how do you get experience without certs/degree...

you don't.

i got my current job because of my certs, but i also had to take a knowledge quiz at the interview (got them all right too) i might not make an extreme amount of money, but i make enough to live on my own, out of my parents house, and i'm happy with it for now.
 
Originally posted by SlickJesus
and just how do you get experience without certs/degree...

you don't.
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It's a catch 22 :)

It's not impossible. I have no certs, but I've been playin with computers since I was 11 (25 now). I got a break and got into a dot-com company coding HTML, then went on to their system access dpt, now I am in charge of network security at the biggest health care company in the US. No certs. I've seen plenty of people come in an out of the company that had a frickin alphabet behind their name, but didn't know stupid basic stuff. Most IT hiring managers know that certs for the most part don't mean much.

Just relaying personal findings.

Yes, I know it's hard to get jobs with no experience or certs, but it can happen. Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time.
 
Originally posted by PlaneCrazy
Screw certificates. Anyone can memorize a book and get certified.

Get some real world experience, that will help you more than anything.
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Try getting a Cisco CCIE certification by just memorizing books, I'd like to see it... :D
 
i took the hardware part of the a+ in dec. scored like a 630 so pretty decent. did little to no studying ran through transcendor twice the night before. now i need to take the software part how is it? i consider myself pretty proffiecent in windows does etc is that all i need? any practice tests around?

as for msce im working on that too prolly gonna start by taking the isa server exam at the end of this sememster pass it, and get out of taking the final seems fair to me :) gonna do win2k cause all the chooling ive had deals with win2k. oh yeah whats a microsoft test cost anyway ??
 
the A+ OS test goes a little deeper than just being proficient at windows. u gotta know useless crap like UMB, HMA, error beep series codes, IRQ's, etc. Aint the hardest test in the world, but dont take it tooooo lightly. they updated the test recently, so im not sure what new topics they added
 
Originally posted by Ashtaka
One of our hardware guys can't even install a PCI card... A+, MCSE, and has a college degree as well... *sigh*
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im having a really hard time believing that
 
Originally posted by ne0-reloaded
im having a really hard time believing that
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I have no problems with it.

I work with people who have all the certs and degrees and are half worthless. I think people get the crib sheets from the internet and get the certification knowing they will become ubersuper millionaires. and are hired by HR departments that don't know any better. And compounds the problem with more half worthless people getting certs that don't know anything.

Nothing beats good hands on experience. Just because you read Penthouse every month won't make you a good lover.

Here is another story:

I got a call from Australia. This guy had a hard drive die and needed the data. Coporate IT said it was impossible. I said I'd give it a shot. Windows wouldn't mount the drive. Not a problem. Knoppix did. Knoppix didn't like my burner, but I was able to find a spare 80 gig I could format to FAT32. So I copied the data over, booted into XP and burned the data on to a disk and mailed it back.

This raised some eyebrows. They were very impressed that I could recover the data. Warranting a call from a Vice Information Officer(or some shit) in IT. He asked how I did it. So I told him.

What is a Knoppix?

A One of the many Linux varients

Linux?

Yup. A Unix varient. Very popular for servers, nerds and people that just hate Microsoft.

Unix?

I have some highly specialized data recovery software at my disposal. I really can't share because they are trade secrets. I'll be happy to bill you for any further hard drives you send my way.


My advice, read the books. Mike Myers has a good book. So is the Upgrading and Repair PCs book. The big one on the 20th printing or something. By Mueller I think. Then, use the knowledge. Experiment, make the knowledge stick and own the knowledge. Don't just read and move on.
 
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