Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 4, 2007 Members Share Posted December 4, 2007 I`m looking to get into the IT field... starting at ground zero with A+ and then Network+, then eventually the MCSA and MCSE. Been doing some research online and making some phone calls to schools getting as much information as possible before I invest $$$ in online instruction. So far I have spoken to several companies but Quick Cert seems to be grooving the most to my tune... Anyone have any experience with them? If not, what would you recommend? Thanks,eB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dylan Walters Posted December 4, 2007 Members Share Posted December 4, 2007 I have not used Quick Cert, but I do have Comptia A+ and Network + certs and didn't use anything books for studying. They've revamped A+ since I took it and it's more up to date with customized options. I took both the A+ (2003) hardware and software tests, both of which were very easy and took less than an hour each. The Network + objectives change on a regular basis, so be sure to check Comptia's site for the most up to date information on what they test with. For example, the book I had stated that the only Mac OS information you needed to be aware of was up to OS 9 and the only protocol you needed to known on Mac OS was Appletalk. Wrong! There were several questions on OS X and OS X server! Needless to say I passed all three tests on the same try. Microsoft exams, OTOH, are very difficult. I have taken XP and Server 2003 exams and they've all taken at least 2-3 hours! I have more exam to take this month to complete my MCSA 2003, and then I have a few more for MCSE. I buy all of my training books from www.bookpool.com. The prices are great and you can review feedback on all of the books before buying them. For the MS exams I would highly recommend using VMWare Workstation on a system with a hefty amount of RAM. You can setup a virtual lab in very little time and run everything off of one system. Back to the Comptia exams....if you are fairly proficient with Windows OS's and basic hardware troubleshooting (and from I've seen on forums you seem to be), then self study should do the trick for these tests. It should take you a month tops for the A+ and possible two for Network +. I don't see a lot of value in investing too much cash in Comptia tests. Save the cash for the Microsoft exams . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members flatfinger Posted December 4, 2007 Members Share Posted December 4, 2007 :poke:Be advised that because of all the brain dumps and cheating that goes on the MS exams have become just as much of a english comprehension test as anything else . To prevent rote memorization of the questions , most are three paragraphs of BS with the question buried in there someplace !! just a heads up!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted December 4, 2007 Dylan, So you`re suggesting that instead of spending $850 for A+ and Network+, I should just get study from the books? I`m pretty new to all this stuff so I`m not sure which is the best way to go. Either way, I enjoy reading and I enjoy online classes but the books would be a lot cheaper! Eh? eB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dylan Walters Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Exactly! Just get the books, take the included sample tests, and you should be good to go! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deanmass Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 I have used books and transcender tests. Good luck so far, but I have not gotten any MS certs...If I sell my soul, it will be for music or a woman, not MS:) Going from Ground Zero to employed in IT may seem easy, but if you are certified, but can't do the work, you will wash out. My recommendation is to get a PT job somewhere doing IT WHILE studying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 ...If I sell my soul, it will be for music or a woman... That's the way, uh hu, uh hu, I like it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super 8 Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Aren't A+'s and MCSE's kind of a dime a dozen?I remember some years ago they were all the rage. I was getting set to get mine, and all I was hearing was high demand, and big paychecks. Then the Dotcom thing burst and it seemed like everything changed. Is that true? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dylan Walters Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Aren't A+'s and MCSE's kind of a dime a dozen?I remember some years ago they were all the rage. I was getting set to get mine, and all I was hearing was high demand, and big paychecks. Then the Dotcom thing burst and it seemed like everything changed. Is that true? Yes and no. If you want to work in high level admin positions you essentially have to have these certs in order to be considered for the job. Since MS updated MCSE to 2003, the tests have become much more difficult and include simulations and other types of questions that make it damn near impossible to be able to pass without possessing real world experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dahkter Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 This thread has great timing. I have built my own music pc's, and have a very basic understanding of computers.Well, this vague understanding has basically been enough for me to be appointed director of communications at my day job, I'm now in charge of IT Management for our US offices.I need help to get a better understanding of how things work, the lingo used, etc. Certification would be a nice perk. Dylan, you mentioned bookpool.com, are there any specific books you can recommend that would be useful for a newbie such as myself? Thanks,Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 5, 2007 Author Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Jason,Just from the small amount of reading I have done about the IT industry, it seems A+ Certification is the start point. EB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dahkter Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 Cool,Thanks Ernest.I definitely feel a need to get a better grip on this subject matter, trial by fire right now LOLHave a good one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members chugheshc2 Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 certifications are good, but the best thing is to be able to say you have actually done something: If I had ti to do over gain, I'd set up a large vmware test lab on my own and experiment with everything, so I could say I had actually done it, not just memorized the correct answer..... +10 on the get some kind of job in IT to start with, nothing trains like actually doing it.That being said, I'm not an MS guy, and I learned it all on the job, fairly senior now, and have no certifications.Feel free to disregard!cheersC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super 8 Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 This is an interesting topic. There are several people here who have computer related jobs. If you were going to get into it again, what area would you enter and how would you go about it? I've been thinking for some time, as a father, about the benefits of working from a home office. Flexible hours would be a boon to many parents giving them more time to care for their kids, and handle appointments and pick-up/drop-offs to school. And no need for day care either (I think I spent pretty close to 10k on daycare last here. I pulled them out about 6 months ago, and life is better without it). I currently have a 10-minute commute to work from home, and work two long shifts a week (26 hour and 19 hour) which permits me a lot of time for my kids, but if it were feasible to simply cut that out altogether and do computer related work from home I would jump all over it. Although, being disciplined enough to actually work and not spend too much time surfing here, Wikipedia, and Youtube would probably be a challenge. I know Lee and Blue2blue have computer related home office jobs. Anyone else?What's out there? What are the possibilities? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members deanmass Posted December 5, 2007 Members Share Posted December 5, 2007 I am the tech coordinator at a K-12 school district. I recently lost out on a new job because I did not have a B/A, so my starting point would be to knock out your B/A or B/S/ when you are younger. This missed job cost me 20K a year. I am currently working on mine, but I still have a year to go. In IT, I would learn SQL/PHP/CSS/RUBY. Any of those are way easier to do from home. If I had to do it over again, that is where I would focus in IT. A+ is the first cert to get if you want field repair.Net+ is next which covers basic networking skills Both of these certs have way too much stuff in them that is totally obsolete, but they will get your foot in the door. MCP is the beginning MS cert. Pretty easy to get. get Xp...Vista can be had later IF they do not kill it.MCSE is the MS cert that is most popular. Dime a dozen The MS cert to get is the Active Directory one. Those are in scarce supply now.A Cisco CCNA is also a good entry level cert, but heavy networking, nothing to do with computer hardware or OS. There are tons of options and paths, but those are the basics. Try to get in somewhere doing service, and you will learn what you like or dislike. Much of working on computers is soft skills ( i.e. liking people and having them like you back). If you can't do this, stick to programming and router/network stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 6, 2007 Author Members Share Posted December 6, 2007 Being that I`m as green as its gets with IT... I have to take A+. I`m also going to take Network+ and then I`ll consider some other paths. Right now, my focus is on Networking because my brother in law owns his own company and that would be an easy way for me to get a job/hands on experience. I also spoke to him about the CCNA which I was surprised he did not have, nor anyone else that worked in his company. However, that may be a path I follow but right now, I`m taking it slow. Purchasing the books today and initiating myself slowly in the process. Thanks to you guys on this thread who have been where I am going, I have decided to NOT take these online courses and save that $$$ for the more weighty stuff that comes down the line like the Microsoft stuff. Glad I started this thread, I`m learning a lot! eB PS- Went to Barnes and Nobles last night to purchase some books but the price was $59.99 for each: A+ and Network+. Would have ran me up $120.00! Then I remembered the price I saw on Amazon and bookpool.com for the same two books. I`m saving about $50.00 thanks to Dylan. Thanks for the link! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted December 6, 2007 Members Share Posted December 6, 2007 This is an interesting topic. There are several people here who have computer related jobs. If you were going to get into it again, what area would you enter and how would you go about it?I've been thinking for some time, as a father, about the benefits of working from a home office. Flexible hours would be a boon to many parents giving them more time to care for their kids, and handle appointments and pick-up/drop-offs to school. And no need for day care either (I think I spent pretty close to 10k on daycare last here. I pulled them out about 6 months ago, and life is better without it). I currently have a 10-minute commute to work from home, and work two long shifts a week (26 hour and 19 hour) which permits me a lot of time for my kids, but if it were feasible to simply cut that out altogether and do computer related work from home I would jump all over it. Although, being disciplined enough to actually work and not spend too much time surfing here, Wikipedia, and Youtube would probably be a challenge.I know Lee and Blue2blue have computer related home office jobs. Anyone else?What's out there? What are the possibilities? wow, that is a can of worms there. i have been doing it for over ten years now... GOD I NEED AN OFFICE!!! kids are BACK in daycare now. it is a bit freaky though to think of having an "office" that isnt on my property since my work is so erratic. nice thing is i have VPN tunnels set up to clients offices and can admin a lot of stuff in my pajamas, other times i have to physically go in. depends. there are a lot of things that suck about working from home with a family. biggest thing that sucks is the family. i dont know if all wives are like this, but mine [at least to my viewpoint] puts less "credit" into me working saying i am just simply staring at my computer again. yesterday she snapped at me and i was teching HER NEW MACHINE for her new business!!! can you believe that {censored}!?! she isnt even paying me. then all sick days with kids falls upon me for care, despite having a huge workload and deadlines i have to meet. im also expected to prepare dinner as well, but thats kind of a given cause my wife only knows how to microwave and we do need to eat something good. and then somehow because im at HOME... cleaning the house somehow is expected even though again, workload and deadlines. its kind of a mixed bag. hours are flexible, extremely so, but i do work in the wee hours of the night as well, and still have to get up in the morning to get the kid to daycare and start it all over again. as for cert, depends on what you are going after. if you want a corp IT job, its worth getting as many as you can... some are extremely simple like A+/Network+/Security+ and are easy questions... most [if not all] i learned on my own by doing. real world experience however is the /best biggest teacher and will make testing so much easier because you deal with it on a constant basis. but certs/training get more and more important the larger scale the network becomes. to be honest, i think in the near future, a lot of the wealthier people will have fully networked homes complete with home servers and could be a profitable thing to do as a niche biz that isnt corporate work and flexible. the one thing about doing IT is you are everybody's hero when you rescue them/network/files/machines/whatever... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Super 8 Posted December 6, 2007 Members Share Posted December 6, 2007 i have been doing it for over ten years now... GOD I NEED AN OFFICE!!! kids are BACK in daycare now. it is a bit freaky though to think of having an "office" that isnt on my property since my work is so erratic. nice thing is i have VPN tunnels set up to clients offices and can admin a lot of stuff in my pajamas, other times i have to physically go in. depends. What do you do, and how did you get started doing it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Inazone Posted December 6, 2007 Members Share Posted December 6, 2007 I've been in IT at the same company for almost 11 years now, and got in when the job market was wide open. Although we've hired some good people in that time, there have been a few "paper tigers" who had all the certifications to make them perfect employees, but they either lacked practical experience or were not good in a service-oriented field. Of course, it's hard to get experience without having the hardware and software you're trying to pick up on. If you have a PC at home that you can set up with dual-boot, or a "beater" that you don't mind reformatting a few times, it certainly helps having access to a guinea pig platform of some kind. The cost of a server OS will surpass that of a cheap used PC to act as the server itself, but would be worth the expense if you want to get some hands-on home training. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ed A. Posted December 6, 2007 Members Share Posted December 6, 2007 In IT, I would learn SQL/PHP/CSS/RUBY. Any of those are way easier to do from home. If I had to do it over again, that is where I would focus in IT. I was a web developer from 1995 to about 2002 and PHP/MySQL was my specialty. They usually lump this into LAMP or MAMP (Linux (or Macintosh), Apache web server, MySQL, PHP (or Perl)). I unfortunately got out of the field for the most part, and became a certified residential real estate appraiser, which is starting to get old really quick. I will probably get back into programming with PHP/MySQL again, and maybe Flash development with ActionScript this time. I studied Java programming for a while, but I came to the conclusion that Java has too many subsections (J2SE, J2EE, JSP, Servlets, JDBC, Swing, etc, etc) that a developer needs to be proficient at to be worth becoming a Java expert. And I wouldn't touch the M$ programming technologies with a ten foot pole . Do a search on Dice.com to see how much of a demand there is for the technology you're interested in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted December 6, 2007 Members Share Posted December 6, 2007 What do you do, and how did you get started doing it? "'I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it." - Pablo Picasso i do a little bit of everything i guess... and i really just did it. i dunno, its a lifelong education i suppose combined with a lot of bull{censored}ting. i think i popped all my cherry's with pure BS. "A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. " -Mark Twain you need a video? sure i can do that [go quickly learn FCP, later premiere but all NLEs are basically the same]. you need compositing done? sure! [go quickly learn AE] you need to record your band? i can do that! [get a bunch of gear together really quick] and so on... learned a lot from trial by fire. "What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing" -Aristotle other things [like networking here, or computer admin] i learned by YEARS of doing this myself for myself running multiple computers, teching them all, setting up networks, running servers. i even do cable install [so easy to do that]. i build all my clients desktops so i know what goes into them and they are far more robust than the majors machines. i started doing web work back in the mid-90's before WYSIWYG editors so i had an advantage for a while. a client needed animation so i learned Flash. i just kept picking up more and more information and can do more and more.... learning mobile networking [and design cause most mobile sites suck ass] now. thats a load of fun. but being the age i am, print was still the big thing for designers so i did that before web work... a lot of times a web designer wont know {censored} about print idiosyncrasies or jargon so i have an advantage there. much like i can track, mix, master, design the artwork for a bands album, i can shoot, edit, author their video and develop a website for them complete with e-commerce. i can do similar with a company and get a network up and running from machines i build [and order laptops], get their server, internet, vpn, wap's, email all going while i design their logo, stationary, web and other things [stickers, window decals, truck decals, etc]. "Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."- Franklin D Roosevelt this past month, i did a shrinkwrap for 6pack bottles, "wrapped" a delivery van with custom printed vinyl, teched networks, installed 2 servers, resetup an office that had gotten flooded, connected a vpn between their branch offices, did 3 logos, 2 websites, stationary, several print ads, a brochure... set up a company [and mine] with mobile pocket PC's, have another website with e-commerce next week with flash, video, etc. ______________________________oh and fwiw regarding learning the software... MS sells ALL their software for a single user and a super cheap price [ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 7, 2007 Author Members Share Posted December 7, 2007 this past month, i did a shrinkwrap for 6pack bottles, "wrapped" a delivery van with custom printed vinyl, teched networks, installed 2 servers, resetup an office that had gotten flooded, connected a vpn between their branch offices, did 3 logos, 2 websites, stationary, several print ads, a brochure... set up a company [and mine] with mobile pocket PC's, have another website with e-commerce next week with flash, video, etc. Thats it. Sounds like you`re just sitting around... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted December 7, 2007 Members Share Posted December 7, 2007 i find working with networks to be extremely fun. there is really no sarcasm in that. sometimes it can be frustrating but the more frustrating it is the better the feeling getting it all worked out. some stuff is mundane... but its all good. pays really well too. most importantly because its stuff most people DONT want to learn and dont care to learn. they just want it fixed. the only time it sucks is when you have the gears so nicely greased you dont get calls on it, and i suppose thats a good thing for the client but bad for work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ed A. Posted December 7, 2007 Members Share Posted December 7, 2007 i suppose combined with a lot of bull{censored}ting. i think i popped all my cherry's with pure BS. Bull{censored}ting is definitely a helpful method. If it wasn't for me BSing my way into projects for clients, I probably wouldn't have gotten as far as I did. Just make sure that you can learn the stuff you say you know quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted December 8, 2007 Members Share Posted December 8, 2007 Just make sure that you can learn the stuff you say you know quickly. that is my greatest skill... fortunately i have always been good about learning software backed up by fascination of learning new things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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