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Home
Certification Newsletter
150th Edition :: December 1st, 2006

Over 41,399 Subscribers
In This Issue:
:: What's New @ MC MCSE
:: New Vista, Exchange, and Office Tracks Coming
:: CEA-CompTIA DHTI+
:: Thomson Learning Selling Prometric
:: Article: The CCSP Bootcamp Experience
:: Training Directory Update
:: At The Forums

:: Sponsor ::


:: What's New @ MC MCSE ::

Milestone:
This newsletter is our 150th!!! I have personally been authoring this newsletter for over 7 years now. During that time, I have watched our site and this newsletter become among the most popular certification resources in the world. Amazingly, I don't have Carpal Tunnel yet, so here's to 150 more...

New CCNA Tutorials:
We have added the following 4 tutorials for Cisco's CCNA exam:

The Config Register and Password Recovery
Case Study: Frame Relay, Pings, and Routing
Passwords and Network Security
Telnet Passwords and Privilege Levels

Spam Prevention:
I am sure that you have all noticed that there has been a ton of spam posts in the forums lately. You probably have also noticed what a great job our mods do in getting rid of the spam posts.

Most of these posts were being entered by bots that are able to circumvent the confirmation requirement of the registration process. I have just installed a modification to the forums that requires new members to answer a random question during registration that will keep the spam bots out of here. So far, it appears to be working very well.

:: New Vista, Exchange, and Office Tracks Coming ::

According to a news story published by CertCities.com, Microsoft has released information about their upcoming certification tracks for Vista, Exchange Server, and Microsoft Office. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we are going to forward you to the news story on CertCities.com which includes a link to LiveMeeting events that will be hosted by Microsoft.

Full story

:: CEA-CompTIA DHTI+ ::

CompTIA and CEA (Consumer Electronic Association) have partnered in the development of a new certification called Digital Home Technology Integrator+, or DHTI+.

As the name implies, this certification is geared toward the integrating of home computers and consumer electronics. As of November 16th, this exam is in beta under exam code HT1-201.

Read the full press release here.

:: Thomson Learning Selling Prometric ::

Recently, Prometric's parent company, Thomson Corporation, announced that it is planning to divest the Thomson Learning division, of which Prometric is a part. In addition, it was determined that Prometric's business model is sufficiently different from the rest of Thomson Learning and that Prometric and its clients would be better served if it were sold independently of the rest of the Thomson Learning business, and become an independent stand-alone business.

Read the full press release.

:: Article: The CCSP Bootcamp Experience ::

One of the most frequently asked questions on certification message boards is �Is a bootcamp worth it?� Until recently, I had no real experience with bootcamps, but I did have some experience with in-class training. Now that I have seen both types of training, I thought it might be a good idea to pass along some modest advice.

The Class
In October of 2005, I attended a 2 week CCSP bootcamp at a well known VUE testing center in San Jose. The class was taught by an instructor that was CCSI and CCIE (R&S) certified. He was also going to take his CCIE in Security as well. The classroom had 6 students; all of us had at least a CCNA, two had a CCIE (R&S), and one worked as a project manager at Cisco in San Jose. Needless to say, the class wasn�t filled with newcomers to the network scene, which was extremely fortunate (more on that later.)

The class went for 2 weeks. The first week went Monday through Saturday from 8am to 9pm, with an hour break for lunch and various breaks throughout (usually the break coincided with a lab�get it done early and then take a break.) The second week was Monday through Friday from 8am to 9pm, but Friday we finished up at 5pm so people could fly home that evening. We took the SECUR exam on Thursday, the PIX/ASA exam on Monday, the VPN exam on Wednesday, and the IDS exam on Friday. We were given a voucher for a free retake of any exam that was failed the first time, and a voucher for the SAFE exam that we would have to take after we got home.

The cost was just under 10K USD for the class, plus expenses such as airfare, hotel, rental car, and food.

Read the full article here

:: Training Directory Update ::

Below are the latest member reviews submitted to our Training Directory.

Per the request of one of our members, we have added a CompTIA Project+ book category to our Books and Training section of the site. You can find these books here.

No reviews were submitted by our members during this period. Please review the books and products you have used in our training directory. It only takes a couple minutes of your time and greatly helps others.

:: At the Boards ::

Our forums currently have 90,698 members and 63,528 posts. Here are some of the most popular posts since our last newsletter.

Popular Posts
Topic Title Replies Views Start Date
Almost exam time. 7 64 November 30, 2006
Switching - A real headache 16 124 November 30, 2006
Boot Sector Virus... 7 71 November 29, 2006
Passed 291 next up, 293 11 264 November 22, 2006
Do girls take these exams? 8 247 November 20, 2006
The 515 pass mark on A+ Core 7 195 November 19, 2006
ISO Files 15 443 November 18, 2006
Setting up a VPN 21 418 November 17, 2006
Unable to share files after joining a Domain ??? 10 379 November 17, 2006
Mnemonic Trick to remember Win Requirements 7 271 November 17, 2006
Newby Question NVRAM = CMOS? 14 476 November 17, 2006
Unexpected output 18 578 November 16, 2006
Logon Script 10 320 November 15, 2006
Booked 291 11 392 November 15, 2006

Unanswered Posts - be the first to answer.
Topic Title Replies Views Start Date
prepare exam 70-298 0 55 November 23, 2006
Dude this isn't easy 0 34 November 29, 2006
Clustering Question 0 20 November 29, 2006

Good luck with your studies!