My brain hurts!

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Hi guys

I joined the community a while back and introduced myself in the new member forum.

Well I finally started my A+ last Monday, along with two other guys. I shall be pointing them in this direction.

The course is being run through a company called Class Training. We rattled through the 220-601 last week and are sitting the exam next Friday. That's two weeks!

We then do our elective the following week and sit the final exam on the fourth.

It's a phenomenal amount of information to get through in a short space of time. I managed to get a 66% score in a practice exam yesterday and I'm sure some of them were guesses.

I found questions on the different types of processors and caches difficult, as I'm not overly familiar with the countless processors over the years. I'm not sure how relevant they will be to the final exam, but there were a couple of questions on them in the practice exam.

Any useful resources on anything related to the A+ anyone could suggest would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys

 

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that is too little time for the A+ ,unless you are talking about 40 hours class time each week?,more than likely you won't get any cache questions at all,you might get one processor question in the first exam.
Your score isn't that great,by exam standards, 66% is a fail i think,i just passed,and out of 100 questions i got 16 wrong,if i got 17 wrong i'd have failed.
I felt i could have done better on the day,but those are my figures as a guide to how many you need to get correct.

 

Hi Del

I completely agree with you about the time. Yes we are doing a full week, but in my opinion there is little value in rushing something you are trying to learn. I've always been of the opinion that it's worth taking your time to learn something, especially technical stuff.

However the course is being run through the Jobcentre and that's how it's being done.

80% is the pass, but even then, you need to know 100% of this stuff if one is to become proficient in this field.

Thanks

 

I'm getting between 60 and 70% whenever I do the practice tests and there is no way I feel even the slightest bit confident in getting a pass let alone feeling competent in telling people I'm a computer tech.

My advice would be to take your time with the studying and to get as much practical experience as possible even if it includes buying a computer just to take it apart and learn how it works/is built and how to repair it. But my advice is really no more than my experience and yours may be different.

 

Thanks Postman.

Unfortunately we are not given a lot of time.

 

how many hours do you have in total for 601 class room time?
and how many for the 602?

i haven't heard of this fast track jobcentre course where you are finished in a 4 week period.
Do you think this means there will be a huge amount of people throughout the uk A+ qualified every month?
Almost like a conveyor belt system where plenty have the qualification with differing levels of experience and interest in computing.

 

That would be a scary thought wouldn't it!

I can only comment from my experience and can't speak on a national basis. Originally when I was told about the course I was told that the entry level was high. Fast track is usually reserved for people that have been unemployed over a certain length of time, In my case I asked to be on it. The Jobcentre made inquiries and was told by the training centre that they had stopped doing the course, due to a substandard level of entrants.

I was a bit miffed by this, seeing as I had just come out of caring for 12 years and the only thing I had maintained an interest in was Computing and IT. So I took a proactive approach and started rattling a few cages. Eventually it paid off. I was given an interview by the training centre where I was assessed on basic PC hardware knowledge and I was asked to give my previous experience in this field.

There are only three of us doing this course and I can say without hesitation that both of the other two guys are exceptionally bright individuals. One comes from a web based programming background and I believe the other used to repair PC's in a shop (I'm not certain of that though).

I worked out we did just over 25 hours of training last week, Monday to Friday. Not enough in my opinion! I it will be the same for the 602.

There's another guy on the forum doing the same course through the Jobcentre in a different area. According to him he did his 601 in 4 weeks, which to me sounds about right. I'm trying to get hold of him to find out. I may be rattling some more cages again soon!

 

Hey,

I pm'ed you about that. Reading this it does sound a very short time, I am not being pushed through that fast by the job center.

I actually completed my course material in a week (Essentials), but the 3 weeks of revision and going over it really helped. As I said in the PM I had a fair bit of previous knowledge which helped.

Do remember the exam is marked out of 90 correct answers. Ten questions are not marked and you are not told what questions these are. I guess you can spot these by not having a single clue what the answer is haha, I really don't know lol.
The best score is 900, and the passing score is 675.

From experiences posted on the ProProfs website, CPU's, IRQ's, DMA's, and Post error codes have not popped up on the exam for a long time so there is a good chance you wont get tested on them. I didn't have any on mine. But don't skip it just in case lol!

I would also recommended proprofs for revision, with their quiz school, flash cards and practice tests. Really good stuff. Oh and cram sheets!

If I recall correctly Operating systems and System components count for the bigger percentage of the exam. Best thing to do is get a copy of the exam objectives on the CompTIA website

 

CPU's have! I remember someone saying they had a cache question related to a particulate CPU a few weeks ago.