MCDST to MCITP: Enterprise Support Technician

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

MCDST to MCITP: Enterprise Support Technician

Microsoft has introduced a new structure of certifications to better reflect both technology and job-role skills. Aligned with the release of Windows Vista, these new IT professional certifications will be available in early 2007:

• Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Windows Vista, Configuration

• Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP): Consumer Support Technician

• MCITP: Enterprise Support Technician



Although progressive organizations will adopt Windows Vista immediately, Windows XP will continue to be a driving force in IT for years to come. If you have taken only exam 70-271 or 70-272, we recommend that you complete your MCDST in early 2007 to validate your skills on Windows XP and position yourself to take advantage of a one-exam upgrade path—and limited-time 40 percent savings on the exam—to Windows Vista certifications when they become available. With both MCDST and MCITP: Enterprise Support Technician, you can offer an employer, a client, or a project team confidence on any platform.

More here

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Guess what Simon's planning for himself in February 2007?

 

LOLOL

Really? Does anyone know of anywhere that has any plans to roll out Vista at all? Someone at work raised it in a meeting the other day and was laughed out of the room. Admittedly we only migrated desktops to XP two years ago and are still migrating from NT to AD 'in the back room' but we're a relatively progressive organisation IT-wise (certainly the most progressive of the UK's police forces) and we won't be looking at it for at least another three years.

I know there are doom and gloom mongers out there whenever M$ rolls out another OS, but I really can't see the value in organisations moving from XP to Vista, especially with no server version of the OS available for the forseeable future.

 

I have to agree with Zeb. In the past people have seen a good reason to upgrade - bear in mind that most so-called legacy client operating systems (Win95, 98 ME) were as unstable as a drunk tart with big knockers. NT4 was the only stable client OS out there and it wasn't as widely deployed as it should have been, mainly because of it's lack of backward compatibility with applications. So, when the wonderful Windows 2000 was launched, shortly followed by the eye candy version XP, there was a *reason* to upgrade. Prior to these OSs looking after a multitude of Win9x boxes was a nightmare Hence it made sense, lets upgrade to a more stable OS so that we don't get so many support calls from users experiencing lock ups and crashes.

Now why would people want to upgrade to vista? What advantages does it really have over 2K/XP? What can I do on it that I can't do now?

To be honest I can't think of a viable reason to recommend that a company upgrades to Vista, when all that most people want is stable access to their apps. Okay Vista has Aero - but so what

 

Exactly. In fact, Aero is going to be a pain in the arse for most organisations, simply because if they want to run it, it will mean a hardware upgrade for most places with desktops more than three years old.

And the old chestnut about being able to run Vista in a 'low-graphic' (i.e. non-Aero) mode is patnetly shite, as you can guarandamntee that some idiot manager in every organisation will turn round to the IT department (when they finally cave in and say 'OK, OK, you win, we'll upgrade to the OS that you bought on the piece of shite you got from PC World for your kids last xmas so that you feel 'comfortable' with it, despite it not having any security or stability improvements over corporate XP) and say 'why doesn't it have the pretty desktop I've got at home'.

The poor saps getting their MCDST (or whatever M$ is calling it this month) with Vista as the client OS are going to be in for a serious shock as they walk out the training centre with their useless piece of paper in their hands and no company outside the square mile bothering to upgrade from XP until about 2009...

 

I would include the companies that operate *inside* the square mile too

 

Naaaah - M$ will make it pay handsomely for them to upgrade, just so they can con a few more places into doing it because 'Fortune 500' companies are upgrading...

...OOOOHHH!!!! LOOOK!!!! Merrill Lynch are upgrading to Vista! Maybe our shitty five desktop solicitor's office better do it too!!!

 

Interesting you mention Merrill Lynch, they used to be one of our customers, before I died and went to heaven.

 

i read that National Australia Bank are bringing out Vista for they're workforce.

who knows maybe they might putting some money back into my bank account? ;)

 

when i was still working in cyprus i was install win 2000 for coporate customers cause their hardware couldnt handle win xp so they wont be seeing vista anytime soon!

 

We will begin rolling it out with the purchase of new Vista PCs, but probably not for a year or so. For now, we will continue to purchase XP boxen. We certainly won't do any upgrades of existing PCs to Vista.

 

There are actually quite a few advantages, especially to administrators. Off the top of my head, there are two advantages that will (someday) make my techs' lives a *lot* easier... User Account Control, and the ability to create a single, hardware-independent image. There's a lot more, but those are the two I'm really digging.

 

I guess you the right man to ask - when is it right for me to upgrade?

 

Well that's interesting - maybe the idea will grow on me. It took me quite a while to start to like XP rather than W2K but that was after the SP2 enhancements.

A hardware independant image sounds like a great idea! What exactly are the benefits of User Account Control?

 

Several:

- The ability for users to perform relatively harmless tasks without granting additional rights, like install printers. This functionality was previously only available to admins.
- If a user attempts to do something that requires admin privileges, they are prompted for a user name and password. This takes away a huge administrative burden where, on XP, we'd have to log the user out, log in as an admin, do the admin task, log out, go find the user (because they're too busy to wait for you to finish), have them log back in, and test.
- All admin users except Administrator itself run as standard user accounts. If an admin user attempts to do something that requires admin privileges, they are prompted to hit Continue or Cancel. If they hit Continue, they will be allowed admin rights for that process only.
- The Administrator account is disabled by default. With the excellent way they've got admin accounts set up (in my previous bullet point), there should be no reason to use Administrator.

Yeah, UAC can sometimes pester you to death with prompting you to press Continue for every admin action... but to be honest, I did not find it to be too cumbersome while testing. And something like that might just prevent a rogue, malicious thread from doing things you don't want it to do.

Of course... it's just a matter of time before a virus can sneak behind UAC... but hey, it's a start. I likes it.

 

Whenever your heart desires. There's no wrong or right time... it's all based on personal opinion. Personally, I tend to wait from 6 to 18 months (depending on my immediate needs, and the relative "bugginess" of the new OS). When I decide to make the switch, I perform a clean install... no upgrades for me, thanks. I tend to reinstall from scratch every 18-24 months anyway.