Subj : Windows 2000 MCSE Upgrade Exam
To   : Steve Quarrella
From : Lawrence Garvin
Date : Wed Mar 28 2001 11:57 am

Steve Quarrella said in a message to Lawrence Garvin:

 SQ> I have loaned my IP book to a friend.  I want to say it's New
 SQ> Riders's book, but that is THE book for me.

I got a special deal on the New Riders TCP/IP book so I bought it... well after 
I passed the test.. I've not actually opened the cover on that book.

I'll take a look at it and see what I think.

 SQ> But the million dollar question is:

 SQ> Did the book help you to pass the exam?

Truthfully... I've got to say that of the four MCSE exams I took, after all was 
said and done, the books probably didn't mean diddly squat to my exam 
performance.

But.. I should also qualify this with some additional details.

1. I never cracked a book for Networking Essentials and TCP/IP. Took both tests 
relying 100% on actual experience. By the time I took those tests I had about 5 
years of actual experience in TCP/IP networking, both LAN and WAN.

2. I took the Windows 95 exam...with about 2 years of actual experience. Don't 
even own a Windows 95 book (though I did buy the McGraw Hill Win98 Study Guide 
and I have a Win98 Resource Kit on my shelf).

3. The NT Server (Core Technologies) exam.. which I also had about 2 years of 
experience on several implementations.. and studied extensively the following 
books:

      Mark Minasi's "Mastering Windows NT Server 4"
      New Riders Publishing's "Windows NT Server Professional"
      Sam's "Windows NT Server Unleashed"

and made reference to another half dozen that were in my possession at one time 
or another.

and.. for THIS exam... I scored the absolute minimum possible to pass the test.

My perspective is that I'm very comfortable performing duties in an NT Server 
environment.. but none of the books prepared me adequately for the EXAM. To 
that end, I fault the EXAM for failing to adequately represent real life 
deployments of the operating system.

Perhaps (though I won't hold my breath), Microsoft's newfound committment to 
including 'work performance/experience' in their examination methodologies will 
help to make the exams more reflective of what we actually see on production 
systems and less of what was 'theory' on the original NT4 exams.

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 * Origin: lawrence@fido.eforest.net | The Enchanted Forest (1:106/6018)

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