70-680 how to learn

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Funny you should say that. I was reading on another forum a poster who said he couldn't pass the Boson exams but when it came to the real thing (I can't remember if it was a MS or Cisco cert) he scored in the low 900's.

This is what you need in a test suite.

 

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Yet again I disagree. If someone is scoring in the low 900s but cannot pass the test suite then the test suite is too difficult*.I want a test suite to give me a good indication of whether I am ready to take the exam, not take me in to uncharted territory and destroy my confidence.
Sure, a little bit more difficult is fine, I'd rather be over-prepared than under-prepared, but that seems far too big a gap.


*OK, I realise that this person could just have got lucky and got questions s/he was well versed on.

 

I agree with Soundian. For what i know, transcender came real close to the actual exam.

 

For what it's worth, we at Boson do not set out to intentionally make our exam harder than the real thing.

I would posit that the reason he/she got a low 900 is specifically because of a good test suite. Speaking from personal experience (as a normal user, not as an author), I've often found most practice exams seem to be harder than the real thing simply because I don't know as much when I'm taking the practice exams. By the time I get to the live exam, my knowledge has been sanded and sharpened so the exam naturally seems easier.

 

Perhaps. I'm planning on taking the exam soon so I'll know which suite of exams are well off-base, because it's obvious one of them is.
Without any studying at all, I got 58% (objective review) and 70% in the measure up exams provided with the MSPress books.
I attempted the Boson exams at the point where I though I was ready to go into my final exam prep and got 42% and 46%. Something is obviously wrong in one of those exam suites, I can't drop 20-30% after several weeks of study.

 

For what its worth, it took only a couple of hours to write 20 end-of-chapter questions and explanations for our 70-620 Sybex book. By contrast, it takes a magnitude of time more to craft questions for Boson's ExSim Max products. Know why? Because when I'm writing questions that are included in the book, I could ask about anything I've written in the book. Here's the key: my book questions are NOT meant to be a simulation of the exam. The ExSim Max product IS, so I take the time to craft questions that focus on exactly the concepts you need to know for the exam.

Not saying that the book is bad... but it's not a practice exam. It's just a different study tool. Always use the right tool for the right job.

No idea whether the MeasureUp stuff in the MSPress book is the same as what they sell on their Web site. But if I had to guess, I would guess that they're not, because why would they offer a $109 product for free in a $35 book?!? Just something to think about...

 

Other people seem to think the included exams are a bit weak so I reckon the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

 

Well I'll tell you now, maybe <5% of those questions from MSPress will be apply to this exam. They are ridiculously easy and certainly no use in indicating whether you are ready.

 

So, considering the 70-680 is on my hit list for this year I'm taking the concenus atm that the MSPress book should be approached with a large bag of salt and lots of extra reading....

Anybody want to chime in with other book recommendations that they've used?

 

Whilst I am not studying the 70-680 yet I did review the Boson Ex-Sim product and I can say that exams on it are quite hard but I would rather they be harder than the real thing because then I should have a greater knowledge and understanding of what to expect when I do the exam for real.

If the exam was eactly the same difficulty then wouldn't the margin for failure be greater? I think it would.

Anyhow if you have done or read anything on the 70-271 & 70-270 exams you should be able to apply that knowledge to this exam there's just the odd difference to take into account from what I can see.

Now whilst I only got 65%ish when I tried the Boson exam in exam mode I dont think thats too bad for someone who has never used windows 7 properly before.

 

I see good old prof messer is developing a 70-680 course. Perfect viewing while I'm laid up with the flu.

 

Ill likely be doing this exam soon, although ive not actually looked at the content yet...

If deployments involved might be worth looking at this http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd407791 we use MDT at work for our XP and are currently building a 7 deployment, so you will get used to DISM (which I would imagine is covered for adding patches/drivers/Features etc to a WIM file and unnatend.xml files using SIM (The WAIK install comes with SIM and Deployment tools command prompt).

This may be above what the exams asking for but may be handy