COMP TIA Certifications

I was thinking the tech sector of the forums would be the place to post this, if not I suppose a mod will relocate me.

http://www.comptia.org/

Does anyone here hold COMP TIA certifications?

I just started my path w/ A+, I have the essentials exam out of the way (passed it tonight) and have to pick my specialization next and take the corresponding exam before I'm A+ certified. Was a pretty tough test at times, a few "what's the Mbps of this type of connection" types of questions that had me thankful as hell that I studied as hard as I did.

Next semester, I'm going for Network+ - the book is actually thicker than the A+!

I have A+ Security+ and Network+ and was going to start on some Microsoft stuff when I left that whole field. I just barely passed each one of them. They sure ask some stupid questions eh?

Its not going to hurt even though the reputation of A+ has gone downhill since the late 90's and especially after the .com bust. Don't believe anyone who says they are worthless but this is the way this industry goes with one elitist fad after another where at the end of the cycle people start pointing out the legitimate flaws that were being ignored.

The MCSE virtually took over A+ market but that took a real beating with the .com bust after so many people were hired with it and they had only memorized the exanms - they didn't have a working knowledge of computers.

But again, its not not valuable. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

A rule of thumb in certifications is they are good for about 5 years, whereas a degree you will have for a lifetime. (I finally got my Bachelor's in Comp Sci after 19 years. Yay!)

Its sort of ironic as certifications tend to be more relevant at the time they are more popular.

Another valuable cert I heard (back in 2000) was the Cisco. At the time people with it had an average salary of $10k more than the next guy without it.

I have my MCP and A+ certificates. I passed 4 out of the 6 tests for MCSE before I left for Asia but this was almost a decade ago so they're pretty much worthless now.

Good luck to you Sammy. If you decide to try to get an MCSE too, my only advice would be to wait until after they change the tests to Windows7. I took mine in the middle of the transition between 98/NT and 2000. So I had to hurry and take all 6 if I wanted it to be on the windows 98/NT format. Never did pass all 6 before I left the states, but it didn't really matter anyways since I didn't go into that field.

I'm taking the second part of the A+ exam next week, and yeah, they ask some pretty wild stuff. I'll be cruising along answering stuff about registry keys and such, and while at times challenging, it's technical knowledge that if you study and use it enough youll know. Then they hit me w/ a question like the one below, this was literally a question from my last exam:

"youre working on a fellow employee's computer, when you come upon a text file w/ several other employee passwords. What do you do?"
A - Report nothing, its none of your business
B - Email your supervisor the file immediately.
C - Print the file, and take it to your supervisor immediately.
D - Confront the user yourself.

Um.....? So a choice between email and printing? What am i worried about, conserving paper or not leaving a trace here? What if i have enough snap to delete the 'sent' mail?

On one hand, they throw you a couple ridiculous answers you know it isnt, but at the same time chuck two almost exactly the same at your feet that it very well could be, and the only thing that stands between you and being right is knowing their rationale. I realize that's part of what multiple choice is, but there's no hard, factual anwer that you can know to these type of questions. That's why I'm going full on "bench technician" as my choice of next exam, I dont want to have to deal w/ these bullshit social questions if i can avoid them.

Yeah, I forgot CompTIA started adding questions like that at the end of the last "Customer Service" management fad in the late 90's.

Its hard to say what the answer is here because, as a you say, a text file would be open to whatever service it hopped through and some dork could walk by the office printer. Its a choice between two bad answers. I've had dumb questions like that at placement agency tests as well.

So what does it cost to actually take the exam now? They left the tests way out of date up until the turn of them millenium IIRC then they started updating it constantly.

Know of any good links to take an up to date practice exam? It never hurts to pad your resume after all.

xSamhainx said:

Um.....? So a choice between email and printing? What am i worried about, conserving paper or not leaving a trace here? What if i have enough snap to delete the 'sent' mail?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't really know what the correct answer to the original question is (I'd guess the one with printing sounds reasonable enough) but having enough snap to delete the sent mail is definitely not good enough. An Exchange server (or probably any mail server for that matter) can easily be configured to send a copy of every sent mail to a certain e-mail address (usually the administrator's). That's one of the reasons why you should never ever send any private or confidential e-mail via any company's network that you are not the admin of. You never know who else but the recipient is getting a copy of your mail.
If you absolutely have to send private or confidential stuff from work then it's better to log into Hotmail or any other free web mail service of your choice (if you happen to have Internet access at work) and do it that way. It's still not 100% safe since web traffic can get logged by your company's IT department but it's a lot safer than sending stuff on the network mail system.

I'm not looking at the question as dealing w/ someone who legally has access to that type of administrative network priveleges tho. This is just a regular user, and you for whatever reason are working on their pc in a tech support role when you happen upon the digital contraband. If it was an administrator, they may have a list of passwords for legitimate purposes yet theoretically he or she wouldnt even really need a list of passwords anyway, as they could just log on as an admin and go from there.

As for the cost, both exams run 150 bucks apiece, but I was able to get a voucher since I'm a student and got 'em for 95 each.

Passed the final part, so I'm now an A+ certified computer technician. Cool = ]

This semester I'm taking Network+, I hope it goes as welll..

Bought a crimping tool that was on sale, i want to do my own RJ-45 crimping this week.