What Are You Doing Right Now
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Imagine if you took the A+ today and it covered XP. Then imagine it takes six months to find work, that's the start of 2018, basically, one and a half decades after XP released. Now imagine your first job isn't Best Buy, hopefully it is not, but instead working on the bench in a mid-sized company. Let's say a grocery store chain (I've seen this exact job so choosing it specifically.) Even if that chain runs old stuff, there is a really good chance that Windows 7 is the oldest thing you will ever need to work on during that time, and even that might be rare. The chances that XP are left in production AND need supported by the bench team is pretty much zero, even today. Can happen, but "can happen" isn't a good thing to base your certification process around. Also, being versed on Windows 7 makes you decently useful on XP. So not like you can't work on it anyway, especially since you can Google most answers. Essentially zero value to teaching old interfaces.
Add to that that even if 10% of all repairs or work coming in is XP, there is a very high chance that there is someone working in that shop that has had years of XP experience that you will never compete with and likely they will keep working, doing the XP work until long after the XP machines are no more.
There are many factors to this, but bottom line is that teaching ancient tech, even if we expect 50% of certified "grads" to see it at some point in their career, makes little to no sense - especially when you consider that all education has to come at the expense of something else . So in this case, they learned XP instead of Windows 10!
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
If its not supported, then it shouldn't be covered. Vista is about to be unsupported, therefore, it should fall out of the curriculum here soon.
I'm not sure that Microsoft's own support decisions should be the basis for this type of cert. The goals might end up lining up, but might not.
I get that there is a desire to expose people to ancient stuff. But only a certain percentage of people will ever be affected by that in the real world of work. Especially if they don't get a bench job immediately following the cert process.
I don't see a point in anything prior to Win7. You don't need to learn XP or Vista to learn about Win7, 8.x, or 10. If anything, you should learn Win10 first, so you can understand why Win10 should be used instead of anything prior. You should also have exposure (through the A+) to OSX, ios, Android, ChromeOS, Win10s, CentOS, and Ubuntu equally... just as you would in the Windows versions it covers.
I also don't see a point in learning about a PentiumII processor. You don't have to know anything about those to learn about an i7... same with all PC components. Learn about the new...
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It's like when I took my A+... they taught Windows 3.11. Because I went into IT, not into bench (as CompTIA promoted the cert was for - I did what I was supposed to do) and because I worked for actual businesses that took IT seriously not only did I never see Windows 3.1 or 3.11 or DOS or Windows 95 or even Windows 98 or ME. None of those ever existed to me in the post-A+ work place (or even at home.) The business world was running Windows NT 4, Linux, OS/2 and Solaris everywhere that I went for years to come. Big firms, small ones didn't matter. Two person shops to Fortune 100, very saw anything from the A+.
It's not that those things never existed, they did. But the focus was not on IT but consumer home use. And on consumer home use from a different era altogether. And even at home, I didn't see those things. Not at my home or most of my friends. A few had Windows 98 and one had ME, but I never worked on them. That was just gaming machines.
Between the extreme age of the material, and the focus on non-business use cases, it meant that without even trying, no one that I knew taking the A+ ever saw the stuff from it in the real world. And had we had this conversation in 1998, people would have pointed out that Windows 3.11 was only five years old (not 15 like XP) and that computers coming in for repair at the corner shop would see 3.1, 3.11 and 95 all the time, and they would have been right. But I never saw one of those shops hire anyone that took the A+. Those shops were already stocked with old timers that had worked on those things for years. Those of us getting certified were heading into IT careers and working with emerging technology that we had just as much exposure to as the old timers, as it was new.
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@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I also don't see a point in learning about a PentiumII processor. You don't have to know anything about those to learn about an i7... same with all PC components. Learn about the new...
OMG, I forgot the insane amount of stuff that I had to memorize on 386, 486 and original Pentium processors! Not a single one have I seen yet in use since that exam!
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A full HALF of that exam was memorizing things like serial port settings. Things I've never once used. Even at a conceptual level, nearly everything from the A+ was useless. Nearly everything from the one that I took was totally focused on the DOS specific implementation of settings, nothing that was generally applicable to the field. So none of it was valuable for me to apply elsewhere. All just wasted.
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No question that the A+ has its problems (maybe nothing else.) So more constructive might be... what should the A+ have on it?
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@StrongBad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
No question that the A+ has its problems (maybe nothing else.) So more constructive might be... what should the A+ have on it?
I think they should retire the A+ and come up with something new... like: CompTIA Tech+ or something.
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@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@StrongBad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
No question that the A+ has its problems (maybe nothing else.) So more constructive might be... what should the A+ have on it?
I think they should retire the A+ and come up with something new... like: CompTIA Tech+ or something.
I would agree with that. Make an annual bench exam called the CompTIA Bench+. It would, of course, be called the B+ by everyone from day one because, duh.
But let's be honest, even the NAME A+ is ridiculous and hearkens to a comparison to a auto shop mechanic certification or something. It's a totally useless name that should warn people of what the exam must be.
What would a Tech+ exam be like? Is IT entry level cert really a useful thing? Why not just make the Net+ be seen as the proper exam for that?
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@StrongBad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
No question that the A+ has its problems (maybe nothing else.) So more constructive might be... what should the A+ have on it?
Maybe there should be the "Helpdesk+".
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Doing some work with MailChimp. First time working with them.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Doing some work with MailChimp. First time working with them.
HATE Mailchimp I dumped them and moved to active campaign instead.
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@Minion-Queen said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Doing some work with MailChimp. First time working with them.
HATE Mailchimp I dumped them and moved to active campaign instead.
But it has a cute little monkey!
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Blew the guts out of some test equipment lastnight, now considering how to build a far more skookum version myself
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Minion-Queen said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Doing some work with MailChimp. First time working with them.
HATE Mailchimp I dumped them and moved to active campaign instead.
But it has a cute little monkey!
They did just added their Automation tool even for the free level accounts. But it still sucks
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@Minion-Queen said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Minion-Queen said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Doing some work with MailChimp. First time working with them.
HATE Mailchimp I dumped them and moved to active campaign instead.
But it has a cute little monkey!
They did just added their Automation tool even for the free level accounts. But it still sucks
Has API integration for some tools that I need to work with.
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@MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Blew the guts out of some test equipment lastnight, now considering how to build a far more skookum version myself
Maybe you should create a superior mass mailing service... "Skookumail! We can gooder up your email campaigns, bud! We chooch 'em oot a few at a time, so nobody gets blacklisted!"
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@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Blew the guts out of some test equipment lastnight, now considering how to build a far more skookum version myself
Maybe you should create a superior mass mailing service... "Skookumail! We can gooder up your email campaigns, bud! We chooch 'em oot a few at a time, so nobody gets blacklisted!"
Oh frig bud, right on eh
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Some systems, specifically stuff with embedded controls, will continue to run XP or older for some time. A great example is a CNC station, or an MRI station. In 2011, I was working with a client that had CNC stations still running '98.
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@Grey said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Some systems, specifically stuff with embedded controls, will continue to run XP or older for some time. A great example is a CNC station, or an MRI station. In 2011, I was working with a client that had CNC stations still running '98.
Sure, but are A+ cert newbies going to be supporting those? Not likely.
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@Grey said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Some systems, specifically stuff with embedded controls, will continue to run XP or older for some time. A great example is a CNC station, or an MRI station. In 2011, I was working with a client that had CNC stations still running '98.
You shouldn't have to test on things that are no longer supported imo, even if it's likely that companies aren't investing how they should. Screw em
