Part 1: The Exam
Intro
This is the first article in a three-part series about Microsoft exam AZ-103. In this post, we’ll briefly go over the history of this exam, take a quick look at its requirements, and then go over the exam’s structure.
How to Become a Microsoft Certified Professional
3.5. How to Pass a Microsoft Exam – Part 2
This is Part 2 of the final blog post in this series. In Part 1 , we discussed a strategy for the exam-taking process. Now we’ll talk about a few snags that you might have to overcome during the exam. Each of the remaining sections presents a specific type of problem and provides recommendations on what you should do if you encounter it.
How to Become a Microsoft Certified Professional
3.3. Practice Exams 101 – Part 1
By Val Bakh
In the first two blog posts of this series, we discussed Microsoft certifications and touched upon a couple of study options. It turned out that Microsoft’s online technical libraries and product documentation are no longer suitable as primary exam preparation tools. In this blog post, we’ll explore practice exam products: what they are and how to find the ones that are worth your money and effort.
3.3.1. The Ancient Adage
“Read the manual first!” is an ancient adage that has been haunting humankind since the days when we invented printing. Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? And still, often times, we buy some new high-tech gizmo, bring it home, unpack it, and then immediately start pushing its buttons and playing with whatever other controls it might have. But somehow it always seems to happen that we can’t make the thing do at least some of what we expect it to do. We scratch our heads, we push more buttons, and only after exhausting our creative zeal, we recall having seen a small brochure that came with the thing: the instruction manual. We dig it out from the depths of the packaging garbage and … slap our foreheads in exasperation. It turns out it was so easy and we were pushing all the wrong buttons. It’s all right here, in black and white: press Button A and then press Button B. Next time, we swear, we will read the instructions first. But by the time we buy another toy, the promise is long forgotten and the new buttons look a lot more appealing to our itchy fingers than an unobtrusive booklet, almost lost somewhere at the bottom of the box.
By Michael Aldridge
When my wife became pregnant with our first child, we had no idea what to expect. So we prepared by reading pregnancy books, searching online, taking childbirth classes, and talking to friends who had already gone through the experience. Sure, there were a few things that we weren't prepared for, but we were ready for most of the situations we encountered along the way.
By Michael Aldridge
I've got three favorite quotes on preparation:
"Every battle is won before it is ever fought."
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."
- Abraham Lincoln
By Val Bakh
2.4.1 Drive Letters (part 1)
Disk drives are referred to by using alphabet letters. Drives A and B were commonly used for floppy disk drives, which are now ancient history; virtually no new computers have them anymore. Now drive C is usually the first drive on almost any computer. But what exactly is drive C?
By Amy Haigh
If you are planning to take a Microsoft certification exam in the near future, you may want to book your exam, or at least purchase an exam voucher, before the end of June. On July 1, 2011, the prices for many of Microsoft’s most popular certification exams will increase for the first time in nine years. Certifications to be affected include MCTS, MCITP, MCSA, MCSE, and MCDBA, and Boson offers ExSim-Max Practice Exams for each of these certifications. In the United States, the price for most exams will increase from $125 to $150 for regular examinees. For high school and college students, the price for most exams will increase from $60 to $83. Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) will receive a 50% discount on all exams. For Microsoft’s announcement and a FAQ about the new pricing structure, see the New Prices for Microsoft Certifications Exams Web page.
By Val Bakh
2.3.1 Deployment images
Compared to installing earlier versions of Windows, installing Windows 7 on your home computer is almost a breeze, especially if the computer is new and you don’t need to worry about preserving your data or the applications that you’ve been using with an older operating system. Just insert the Windows 7 installation DVD that you have purchased, click Install Now, answer a few simple prompts, and less than half an hour later, it’s ready to go. But if you are an IT pro and you need to deploy Windows 7 to dozens or, perhaps, even hundreds of computers, it becomes a bit more complicated. Even if all the installations were the same and all target computers were identical, their sheer number would make at-home-style, individual installations impractical. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could install and configure everything on just one computer and then clone the installation to the rest?