601 & 602 exams - I have a few questions

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Hi everyone

I was thinking about taking the CompTIA A+ exams 220-601 & 220-602 in the near future and have found a local testing centre (“Blue Chip” in Southampton) which they tell me has both Pearson VUE and Prometric testing facilities. I asked which is better to book the exams with and they said if I wanted to carry on with a Microsoft qualification at a later date then Prometric is better as they are the “soul provider of this client”, so I’ll take their word for it that prometric is a good choice (I like their easy website booking that I looked at too).

I still have some more revising to do and have been using “Mike Meyers Certification Passport CompTIA A+ 3rd Edition” (mainly for the practice exams) and I have been reading the “Mike Meyers All-in-One CompTIA A+ Certification Exam Guide 6th Edition” which is very handy. Also I use the practice exams and info on proprofs.com & certiguide.com plus some others.

There are just a few things I’m not sure of yet, which are:

1) Can I book just the 220-601 Essentials exam first and then if I pass it, then book the 220-602 to try a little bit later?

2) Also how quickly after booking an exam can you take it, are they held a few times a week at most testing centres or do you sometimes have to wait several weeks/months to get tested?

3) The prometric site says its £114 (net price) so I guess that with VAT its £133.95 (I had to google “VAT calculator” for that braincruncher). Am I right that there are no extra costs and is my maths right? (to do both the 601 & 602 exams will cost me a total of £267.90 right?)

4) On the prometric booking site it says the 601 & 602 exams are “2007 Edition”, and my main study resource is the Mike Meyers 6th edition book. Is this book still up to date enough with the 2007 editions of exams? (and when do they next update the exams roughly?)

5) If the tests are done on a computer screen, can you skip questions you find hard and come back to them when you have answered some of the easier ones first or do you have to answer the question you are on before going to the next one?

If anyone can answer or confirm any of these things it would be much appreciated.
These certforums are really handy with lots of useful info floating about and has been really helpful.

 

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You can take the exams in any order & whenever you want, bear in mind the exams may be updated at some point in 2009

It depends on how many places are available at your test centre

Yep £267 is about right, however you can buy 2 discount vouchers from www.gracetechsolutions.com which reduce the price of the exams to £214 with no VAT to pay. You have to buy international vouchers, which are emailed to you in the form of a numbered code. You use this code to pay for the exams on the pearsonvue website (gracetech only do them for vue test centres). Also it does not matter if you use a pearsonvue centre then switch to a prometric centre.

Yes the Mike meyers AIO 6th edition is up to date.

You can mark questions for review and go back to them later on if you so wish aslong as you are in the time limit you could skip to question 100 then go back to question 2 and go from there.

Done

 

Got a link? There's been no evidence of this yet... not even a call for SMEs, which typically occurs before new questions are written.

 

I thought it was mentioned on here a while ago or am I getting that mixed up with the N+?

 

Hi there and welcome to CF, looks like GBL got all your questions there

 

Possibly. The Network+ should update in early '09. While the A+ might update in late 2009 at the earliest, if I were a betting man, I'd guess 2010.

 

Your probably right, do you know when the N+ is updating? as I doubt I am going to get any time of work until the new year and I'd hate to have to get an updated book incase there are extra topics for me to learn

 

January 2009.

 

**** looks like I might have to get a new book then.

 

There'll be a few months grace period... if you start studying NOW, you can likely knock it out before it retires.

 

I am already studying, it's just getting my head around the 7 layers and getting the time to take it, havent had a holiday of work since January and I haven't got any near by test centres that open on a Saturday.

 

Make sacrifices, man! Or... get a new book and delay.

 

probably a delay is going to be in order, it's just waiting for the new guy to be able to be left on his own. Although he is doing well he is finding it dificult to remember all of the configurations we setup on the servers for production process, and I don't fancy being called into work on my way to an exam because he's caused a BSOD

 

its funny how I am not in an IT job and my IT dept just expects me to do stuff, I don't get paid or acknowledged to failover servers and switch all the active processes onto a backup server get things up and running in 20 minutes.

 

It would be nice though to be reconised as an IT guy and given and IT job title, instead of image processing technican (which makes me sound like I work at boots processing photos).

 

as soon as I get some time of the N+ will be be getting pwned

 

When you say “it does not matter if you use a pearsonvue centre then switch to a prometric centre” do you mean I should do the two CompTIA exams through pearson-vue and if I wanted to go on to Microsoft exams then switch to prometric?

If so then hopefully I can use the www.gracetechsolutions.com voucher from site you recommended (thanks!) and get an international voucher for pearson vue centers which they price at £110 each (would normally cost me £133.95-ish to book this) saving me around £24 per exam.

I will ask blue-chip before buying vouchers that they really do accept them and ask if I it is possible to use pearsonvue for these two exams then if I want do MS exams in future just do it through prometric (without any drawbacks).

Thanks for answering the other questions, I’m glad to know they allow you to skip questions to come back to them if you have time left.

Has anyone here used one of these international vouchers from this website for comptia in the UK?

Hopefully I can book the 601 exam some time next month & give the voucher a go (hoping that there are places available for exam at the time).

Thanks for the help guys ^_^