A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide

Author - Michael D. Meyers ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Osborne Publishing was reviewed on 11-Dec-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide by Osborne Publishing. This is a rather old book, but it does have a lot of niec and interesting content.¤

2) Hardcover Book A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide by Osborne Publishing. Before purchasing the book you should access www.totalsem.com/support/errata/aplus5.htm
This webpage show errors and give the corrections for errors in the Fifth Edition of the All In One A+ Certification Book.¤

3) Hardcover Book A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide by Osborne Publishing. CompTIA is updating the test the end of November. So in one month this book becomes obsolete. Keep an eye out for the updated edition that should be published shortly.

All of that aside this is a great book. Beginning with historical back ground then bringing the reader "up to date" helps make these ideas stick. After each chapter there are sample questions that insure you are truly getting it.

Add to that the bonus CD with practice tests and useful utilities that you, as an official CompTIA certified technician, might actually use in the field and you got a no brainer.

Five stars!¤

4) Hardcover Book A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide by Osborne Publishing. The version I have is the fourth edition copyright 2002. I have been working with/on PC´s since 1986.

Overall I found this a good preparatory book for the exams. I especially liked the historical perspective Michael Meyers gives at the beginning of many chapters. I did find an occasional mistake in these, but nothing major. I feel the explanations throughout the entire book are simplified enough that someone with little to no experience after studying the book could probably pass the two exams. I expect the sheer size of the book; 1137 pages, 2 1/2 inches thick may discourage some beginners.

I feel at times the author went overboard with his analogies, especially with the ones related to how a CPU works. He does this so much that I could not find a clear definition of the function of the external data bus, in the external data bus section. It was clouded by his analogy. Instead I found it in the questions at the end of the chapter.

I feel in some places the proofreader(s) for the 2002 edition left some things the way they were in previous editions, when they should have been updated for the current technology and prices. A few examples; p 245 "Document the position of the wires for the ...turbo switch, turbo light..." and p 377 "Buying floppy drives one at a time is expensive and a waste of time." (since 2000 I have been buying new floppy drives for $10-$15 individually. I don´t consider that expensive.) and lastly p826 "A CDR burner must be specifically designed to support the longer 80-minute CD-R format, something that currently only a minority of CD-R drives do." The author needs to be carefull of using the phrase "all versions of windows". NT does not have Device Manager or a Safe Mode, but "all versions of windows" on page 598 and 546 would leed you to believe so.

I think for the sake of beginners I would have preferred that all of the images of the Celeron SEP package show the side with the actual CPU chip on it. Many show the backside with the circuit traces.

This book did save me money. In the front it suggests to buy vouchers, vice paying the full cost for the exams. I bought vouchers, along with an enhanced version of the practice examinations and still paid less than the retail cost of the exams.

Dispite my criticism of this book I did like the book and I plan on keeping it for a long time to come as reference material. There is no way I could ever have written a book, this in depth, with as few errors as this book has. I passed the hardware exam easily (I took 6 minutes for the adaptive version) and expect to easily pass the operating system exam tomorrow. I only used my experience, this book and an enhanced version of the practice examinations that came with the book.

A new version of the A Plus exam is due fall or winter of 2003. Comptia has already published the new exam objectives, so I would expect a fifth edition of this book early 2004.¤

5) Hardcover Book A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide by Osborne Publishing. This All-In-One book has cartoonish pictures and explains basic computer techie stuff. I did extremely well on both exams. I do have a couple years of hands on experience, but I have a habit of buying books and not reading them. However, this book I read cover-to-cover. It may be a bit of overkill in terms of theory for the test. However, I´m a better tech because of doing the exercises. Especially, the ones in the lab manual. For daily reference, I use Upgrading and Reparing PCs.¤

6) Hardcover Book A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide by Osborne Publishing. A+ Certification Bestseller Rockets Your Career. Why wait for opportunity to knock when A+ Certification can open doors for you? Now in its Second Edition, Michael Meyhers´s bestselling A+ Certification Exam Guide has already shown over 60,000 career-minded professionals how to rocket ahead as a high-paid A+ Certified PC technician. Plus, this proven coaching tool not only prepares you to ace the exam´s Core and DOS/Windows modules, it serves as a dependable on-the-job advisor that can hone your technical skills in installing, configuring, maintaining and troubleshooting all major PC hardware, operating software, and peripherals. Complete with a step-by-step study plan, points to remember, trouble spots to avoid, insider tips for taking the exam and more, it makes it a snap to master correct troubleshooting and repair procedures for: *Microprocessors *Power supplies *RAM *Motherboards *Floppy and hard drives *Expansion buses *DOS and memory *Windows 95/98 *SCSI systems *Printers *Modems *Video devices *CMOS and BIOS setups *More¤

7) Hardcover Book A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide by Osborne Publishing. A standout from the usual mass of A+ guides, the A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide is an excellent book for preparation. It takes the welter of complex internal components that make up the modern PC and boils them all down into easily understood concepts.

Let me clarify for the non-English majors out there. Rather than cramming a dizzying list of computer parts down the reader´s throat like most A+ guides do, Meyers starts from ground zero and presents the reader with the same sets of problems that faced the original designers of the PC: You have just designed a chip that can handle thousands of calculations per second. Now how do you talk to it? How do you get other components to communicate with it? How do you know when it´s listening?

By explaining to you exactly how each part was designed to work with that central processing chip--and why--you not only understand how the PC works without months of rote memorization, but you have the additional advantage of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. In other words, you know where and why things tend to break down. Which is exactly what you want for the A+.

Meyers´s explanations are very good, each one building on the previous topics, and there are scads of generally crude but effective illustrations. Another strong point is that Meyers gives you extensive photographs of computer components, jacks, and motherboards for the novice--study this book carefully and you´ll never confuse an RJ-11 with an RJ-45 jack again.

If the book can be said to have a minor flaw, it´s that Meyers always errs on the side of giving too much information. Rather than having you study for the exam alone, he genuinely wants you to understand how computers work in the real world. (For example, he devotes an entire chapter to electrical concepts and measuring with multimeters simply because he believes that power supplies shouldn´t be just thrown away.) Generally this is an admirable approach, except for two notable instances:

• A beginner studying for the A+ exam might be overwhelmed. But relax--if you can get even 75 percent of this book down, chances are you´ll pass the exam without a hitch.
• There are times a conceptual take is much more confusing than a simple listing. The chapter on memory management--a complex and oft-overwhelming topic for those of you who weren´t trying to get Wizardry III to work on your PCjr in the old days--errs on the side of providing far too much information. Even with a personal background in troubleshooting memory problems for a living, the writing here was still bewildering. However, he does note that memory management isn´t a major part of the A+ exam, and that you don´t really need to know all of that to pass.

The majority of the book focuses on hardware, but the DOS and Windows chapters are fairly extensive and should be more than enough to help you pass. A minor kvetch here is that, in his efforts to be relentlessly thorough, he´ll frequently give you scads of switch options, listed alphabetically, for old programs like SMARTDRV--including many near-useless or currently useless ones. The important options should have been ranked for easier study.

The book has 10 questions at the end of every chapter--they´re not modeled after the A+ exam, but they are fairly tough questions nonetheless. There´s also a 75-page glossary, four free practice exams on the disk (and an additional 500 that can be unlocked for $79), and--joy!--samples of the many utility programs that Meyers recommends during the course of the book.

This text is highly recommended and an extremely good option for the A+ student--it definitely is an "All-in-One" stop. --William Steinmetz¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 8-Jan-2009, , 130-100-700-720-880-5IB-8

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