Pushy A+ and N+ salesman

I just had a guy round from skillstrain because I enquired about doing an A+ and Network+ exam.

He wanted to charge me over £2000!!!!

I only want to do the exams, I've looked through course material and it's all really easy stuff I've known for years, e.g. what do you display information on? A)The monitor B) The keyboard C)the mouse

Stuff like that, so anyway, I said I was very sorry but can he please leave wihtout any fuss, which he did.

Has anyone else here done an A+ or N+ exam? Did you just book the exam and not bother with the course?

That's crazy. How dare they charge so much?

I mean, You can take a Master's degree for about £1000 more than that - a Master's Degree.

They charge that much because they say you can earn a lot of money when you finish it. So they quote all these high salary jobs making out your garenteed to get one, then say you can pay the course off over 3 years.

It really is a big con unless you're a complete IT noob. But my thing is that you probably shouldn't take up a job in IT if your interested enough in it to already know some stuff for yourself.

Personally for me the course was good for N+. Just because I sometimes have trouble with different class IP addresses, and subnetting. But it was free training provided by the USAF, so no money out of my pocket. Otherwise I would of just bought the book from Comptia (I believe thats who it was might be mistaken). A+ on the other hand is a bit easier depending on your hardware experience.

Please tell me you're joking. Anyone that has any amount of trouble with questions like that has no business being anywhere near a computer.

try and do a CCNA if you can, far more useful

Move to Scotland. Gordon Brown will pay the fees for you.

well, that exact question wasn't there, but the course is basically stuff like: What capacity is a 3.5 inch floppy disk? What would you put in an AGP slot? Would does USB stand for? etc...

these courses get advertised as


so you do get alot of tinker tailor solder spies applying for IT jobs with no works experience

"i see you were a lavatory attendant for 2 years"

Single side or Double side? Low density or High density...?

I hate those dubious questions... ;)

Lol. Is that even possible to get wrong?

Is D all the above a possibility?

Well, he would for me... dunno about the rest of you.

I think I'd fail.. A+B are both valid answers for the display question..
Damn, this hardware stuff is too hard, I think I'll stick with programming.

The right answers are A,B and C. (Google if you don't believe..)

You should have charged him for assessing that the course was fit for dummies... say £1,500 and then £500 for wasting your time. It would only have cost you £0.

IPete2.

OK, I was going to have to pay £700 for a years tutoring (wasted at that, I already knew everything) but in the end paid nothing because I was under 18.

The A+ was piss easy, really rediculous. and also totally unfair.

Anything I did learn that year I learnt from a guy who then failed the test. I passed. He knew WAY more than I did! Why? because the exams are randomly selected questions.

Not only that but now I am a "Certified A+ professional" with a nice, professional, plastic card (read: Crappy) I ended up in a pissing office job for £14k a year, having people ask me advice for why they can't print in Excel.

It was a complete waste of time. I would imagine even more so these days because of the sheer amount of people who have done it.

one time i had to leave the IT feild cos all hardware jobs were onsite and i didnt drive
i took a factory job baking cakes to save up some money for lessons
kinda liked the job ... it paid more than my last (long term) pc job (mind you that was building pc's for an indi so very low wage)
stayed with it for bout 3 years and thought of reskilling back in to IT

every advert even for basic data entry they wanted MCSE why would a keyboard monkey need an MCSE cert to do their job?
the more MCSE's they got the better they had of becoming an "official microsoft solutions provider" or some such bollocks
so again it was tinker tailor soldier spy (or in my case baker)

Be thankful that your not a pipe fitter (aka heating engineer) or plumber (aka sh*t house mechanic). First you have to do the training (4 years to become a craftsman. Not 4 day's as it says in some of the papers) at college and on site (this can cost if you are over 18 and your employer wont pay. Check out http://www.lcb.ac.uk/courses in options 2 select Services Crafts division for the costs)
Then once you have your papers and paid for your CORGI registration, you still have to go on courses every 3 to 5 years depending on the type of firm you work for.

If you are just a general plumber and doing nothing but domestic's (aka house bashing) thats fitting bathrooms and domestic hot water/heating systems, then you only need your CORGI and domestic gas (there are different sub catagories covering boilers etc and have to be re-take it every so many years) certificates.

But if you work in the comercial/industrial sectors then you need the above certificates +

Comercial/Industrial gas
Welding (pipe fitter) has to be re-taken evey 3 years
PASMA (pre-fabricated mobile tower scaffolding erection) again re-taken every so many years.
MEWP'S (Mobile Elevating Working Platform's) again taken every 5 Years.

AND THE BIGEST JOKE OF THEM ALL
CSCS (Construction Skills Certification Scheme) this little baby requires you to sit a Health and Safety exam (LOL rolling on the floor laughting. NOTE 77 people died last year on construction sites in the U.K.) and has to contain ALL your quilification (which if you send off your certificates you may or may not get back).

This is only a problem when you are self employed, not when you are "on the books" (the firm pays for it all unless you leave their employ within 1 year of taking the exams).

And when people find out what my day job is they ALWAYS think I'm earning £60,000 and driving a sport's car (I wish :-). The hourly rate for a craftsman is £10.73 - £11.69 and £11.69 - £13.13 for a Senior Craftsman. You do get a bit more (plus tax breaks) if you work for an agency but then your classed as self-employed.

And since I'm getting tired of getting out of bed at 05:30 every week-day, then traveling up to a hour and a half to get to work, doing 9.5 hours dirty back braking work then up to a 2 hour drive home. And since I have a knack with computers. I'm thinking of a career change got any tips :-).

Lies!

More Lies!

These certifications are largely useless. I mean do you really want a job were answering the most mundane questions is your only qualification?

Education is overrated... got my job totally without any diploma crap. No one is asking those.

Hehehe. Back in the day when I was looking at the A+ course stuff (*), the biggest issue I was running into was that there were a whole bunch of questions which were answered incorrectly in their answer key... So you don't just have to know the proper answer, but the answer they expect you to give or it would still be considered wrong.

One that stands out in my mind:

"What kind of device(s) can you hook up to a parallel port"?

Their approved answer: "only printers" Yet at the same time I had both a parallel port based scanner at home, and used a parallel-based external CD-ROM drive at the office.

(*) I never actually ended up taking the test, but did flip through the course book a few times

Of course they would say so.

They are in the business of getting you to sign up for their courses so they make money, after all.

Realistically, it in my experience it really doesn't make difference *in most places* whether or not you have those kind of certs. Especially in the case for something like A+, which is considered pretty much the most basic computer cert out there. A steady record of increasing work experience weighs much more than wether or not someone has a particular piece of paper.