What Are You Doing Right Now
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@scottalanmiller I am. I probably ought to have played with more, but this seems to fit our needs.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
If your running a PC repair shop (which is a dying market in and of itself), then I can somewhat understand the importance of A+ cert, especially for the tech doing the repairs of said pc. Other than that, its a gateway cert, and a poor one at that.
What usefulness is it to a repair shop? And I don't agree that it is a gateway cert, it's truly a barrier cert. It directly makes it harder to get into the first IT job.
Its meant to just fix computers and that is it. Its value to a repair shop is to prove that you know how to take a test in regards to repairing computers.
It absolutely didn't have anything like that when I took it. Nothing. Nada. Actually taught you useless and wrong info that would make you less useful in that role, beyond wasting your time and money.
Well it has been 20 years since you've taken it, and 12 years since I've taken it. Has anyone taken it in the last couple years on here that can give us some up to date info on what the test is about now?
Maybe it's not the same test you've taken.
I know that when I had taken the test, it covered installing the current versions of operating systems and some minor config. It also covered hardware components, what they are, what they do, how to set them up or match things for best performance. Some troubleshooting, hardware and software.
So I do think it's a decent bench tech cert. It's one that I would want a bench tech to have to at least show some competency of basic computer hardware and operating system knowledge before I were to hire him/her.
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But again, as NerdyDad pointed out... how many places now a days have someone just standing at a bench fixing PCs all day?
It's either scrap it if it doesn't work, or reimage it... LOL
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@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Well it has been 20 years since you've taken it, and 12 years since I've taken it. Has anyone taken it in the last couple years on here that can give us some up to date info on what the test is about now?
@Dominica took it around 2005 and it was useless then, too. But I guess that that was 12 years ago!
The issue was always that it was SO out of date. And, of course, even if it is current today (ha ha, not realistically possible) they've burned that bridge because hiring managers' experience with it is from the old ones.
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@scottalanmiller Yeah, that's a good point.
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@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But again, as NerdyDad pointed out... how many places now a days have someone just standing at a bench fixing PCs all day?
It's either scrap it if it doesn't work, or reimage it... LOL
SAM's Revised One Question A+
Question: A customer comes to you with a laptop, they say that things are not working and they need it fixed.
Do you:
A ) Run a diagnostic script on it to determine what is wrong?
B ) Interrogate the user to figure out what "it is not working" means?
C ) Sacrifice a goat to the bench gods for guidance?
D ) Rapidly re-image the machine to ensure that it is clear, working and malware free? -
@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
If your running a PC repair shop (which is a dying market in and of itself), then I can somewhat understand the importance of A+ cert, especially for the tech doing the repairs of said pc. Other than that, its a gateway cert, and a poor one at that.
What usefulness is it to a repair shop? And I don't agree that it is a gateway cert, it's truly a barrier cert. It directly makes it harder to get into the first IT job.
Its meant to just fix computers and that is it. Its value to a repair shop is to prove that you know how to take a test in regards to repairing computers.
It absolutely didn't have anything like that when I took it. Nothing. Nada. Actually taught you useless and wrong info that would make you less useful in that role, beyond wasting your time and money.
Well it has been 20 years since you've taken it, and 12 years since I've taken it. Has anyone taken it in the last couple years on here that can give us some up to date info on what the test is about now?
Maybe it's not the same test you've taken.
I know that when I had taken the test, it covered installing the current versions of operating systems and some minor config. It also covered hardware components, what they are, what they do, how to set them up or match things for best performance. Some troubleshooting, hardware and software.
So I do think it's a decent bench tech cert. It's one that I would want a bench tech to have to at least show some competency of basic computer hardware and operating system knowledge before I were to hire him/her.
I took it and tested in Jan of 2016.
It covered modern Windows OSs from XP to now, hardware (what each component does and how it fits into the mix along with types of components), the history of hardware, how to install the OS, how to calculate binary, how to connect it to a network, a little bit on cyber security as to what virus is, what malware is, and it touched on virtualization. But the virtualization portion was completely wrong and should not be placed within A+.
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@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
It covered modern Windows OSs from XP to now...
So by "now", you mean Windows 10? Did it cover iOS or Android? Linux desktops or Mac? And why would XP be on there, even Vista is a ridiculous thing to have been testing on. And I'd not be happy with it having anything older than 8.1 on a current exam. The best modern bench tech easily will never see XP in his entire career today.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But again, as NerdyDad pointed out... how many places now a days have someone just standing at a bench fixing PCs all day?
It's either scrap it if it doesn't work, or reimage it... LOL
SAM's Revised One Question A+
Question: A customer comes to you with a laptop, they say that things are not working and they need it fixed.
Do you:
A ) Run a diagnostic script on it to determine what is wrong?
B ) Interrogate the user to figure out what "it is not working" means?
C ) Sacrifice a goat to the bench gods for guidance?
D ) Rapidly re-image the machine to ensure that it is clear, working and malware free?The tech side says A) to get to the problem or possibly recover data before going to D). If D fails, I would go to C.
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@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But the virtualization portion was completely wrong and should not be placed within A+.
As in the info was actually wrong?
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@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But again, as NerdyDad pointed out... how many places now a days have someone just standing at a bench fixing PCs all day?
It's either scrap it if it doesn't work, or reimage it... LOL
SAM's Revised One Question A+
Question: A customer comes to you with a laptop, they say that things are not working and they need it fixed.
Do you:
A ) Run a diagnostic script on it to determine what is wrong?
B ) Interrogate the user to figure out what "it is not working" means?
C ) Sacrifice a goat to the bench gods for guidance?
D ) Rapidly re-image the machine to ensure that it is clear, working and malware free?The tech side says A) to get to the problem or possibly recover data before going to D). If D fails, I would go to C.
E) Chastise customer for not purchasing an extended warranty.
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@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But again, as NerdyDad pointed out... how many places now a days have someone just standing at a bench fixing PCs all day?
It's either scrap it if it doesn't work, or reimage it... LOL
SAM's Revised One Question A+
Question: A customer comes to you with a laptop, they say that things are not working and they need it fixed.
Do you:
A ) Run a diagnostic script on it to determine what is wrong?
B ) Interrogate the user to figure out what "it is not working" means?
C ) Sacrifice a goat to the bench gods for guidance?
D ) Rapidly re-image the machine to ensure that it is clear, working and malware free?The tech side says A) to get to the problem or possibly recover data before going to D). If D fails, I would go to C.
A is not a tech decision, that's an unscrupulous business decision to fleece customers of money for expensive diagnostics. That's the one lesson I'd want the A+ to teach, don't waste time fixing things that are not designed to be fixed. Once in a while it will make sense, but so rarely that it's widely considered unethical to promote doing it.
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@EddieJennings said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But again, as NerdyDad pointed out... how many places now a days have someone just standing at a bench fixing PCs all day?
It's either scrap it if it doesn't work, or reimage it... LOL
SAM's Revised One Question A+
Question: A customer comes to you with a laptop, they say that things are not working and they need it fixed.
Do you:
A ) Run a diagnostic script on it to determine what is wrong?
B ) Interrogate the user to figure out what "it is not working" means?
C ) Sacrifice a goat to the bench gods for guidance?
D ) Rapidly re-image the machine to ensure that it is clear, working and malware free?The tech side says A) to get to the problem or possibly recover data before going to D). If D fails, I would go to C.
E) Chastise customer for not purchasing an extended warranty.
F ) Beat customer.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
It covered modern Windows OSs from XP to now...
So by "now", you mean Windows 10? Did it cover iOS or Android? Linux desktops or Mac? And why would XP be on there, even Vista is a ridiculous thing to have been testing on. And I'd not be happy with it having anything older than 8.1 on a current exam. The best modern bench tech easily will never see XP in his entire career today.
It mentioned Mac and Linux in brief but did not go into how to set an IP address or to check network configs in either one as they say that there are too many different ways to go about it in each version and they didn't have the time nor want to confuse people about how to set it.
No mention of Windows 10.
As far as virtualization, they didn't mention how it worked but just how to use it within a single PC.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
But again, as NerdyDad pointed out... how many places now a days have someone just standing at a bench fixing PCs all day?
It's either scrap it if it doesn't work, or reimage it... LOL
SAM's Revised One Question A+
Question: A customer comes to you with a laptop, they say that things are not working and they need it fixed.
Do you:
A ) Run a diagnostic script on it to determine what is wrong?
B ) Interrogate the user to figure out what "it is not working" means?
C ) Sacrifice a goat to the bench gods for guidance?
D ) Rapidly re-image the machine to ensure that it is clear, working and malware free?The tech side says A) to get to the problem or possibly recover data before going to D). If D fails, I would go to C.
A is not a tech decision, that's an unscrupulous business decision to fleece customers of money for expensive diagnostics. That's the one lesson I'd want the A+ to teach, don't waste time fixing things that are not designed to be fixed. Once in a while it will make sense, but so rarely that it's widely considered unethical to promote doing it.
The only thing that I would do before reimaging is to extract needed data and scan extracted data for malicious software before bringing the data into the reimaged computer. Otherwise, reimage and don't even worry about finding the root cause. More than likely you won't find it.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
It covered modern Windows OSs from XP to now...
The best modern bench tech easily will never see XP in his entire career today.
Well, ideally... you would hope so anyways.
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@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
It covered modern Windows OSs from XP to now...
The best modern bench tech easily will never see XP in his entire career today.
Well, ideally... you would hope so anyways.
"Ideally" is the key word here. In Scott's perfect vision of "modern" bench techery, one would not likely see XP, but put that tech in anytown, USA, and they will be up to their ears in XP, Vista, and other horrifyingly ancient technologies. Fact.
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@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
It mentioned Mac and Linux...
No mention of Windows 10.So not exactly Windows XP to now, but Windows XP to "relatively current?" A cert like the A+ should listing operating system and training on them as soon as they are in beta, looking forward, not backward. Windows 10 was the middle of 2015 for production release and so should have been the focus on the A+ in a 2014 revision for sure and likely in a 2013 one. XP should have been dropped around 20010, realistically.
So even if you feel it has improved a lot, and it sounds like it did since XP would have been the newest thing mentioned when I took it rather than the oldest, it's still not sounding very practical.
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@Tim_G said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
It covered modern Windows OSs from XP to now...
The best modern bench tech easily will never see XP in his entire career today.
Well, ideally... you would hope so anyways.
Not saying ideally, just saying "commonly."
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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.
