Helpful but not comprehensive

I will be honest - I've got about 3 years on the job experience in tech support and I was required to pass A+ as a condition of my current employment. So, I got this book because it had the same goal: pass the test and be done with it. It does it make it quite clear that the authors do not expect this will be your only resource for taking the test. For me, it's all I used (in addition to my hands-on experience). I passed my tests last Friday by a decent margin, and I have to admit that a lot of the questions I saw were practically lifted from the book. My understanding is that those who wrote it have all taken the test and are familiar with the questions asked.

There were several times when I wanted to throw the book down and scream - at CompTIA, not the authors. The book is very honest about the fact that the test is deceptive and almost designed to make you fail, by giving you misleading information and sometimes asking questions where none of the answers (or all!) are right, but you have to pick the most likely one. Fortunately, on the test no question was THAT bad, so in that regard it was a useful preparation, as I was ready for pretty much anything.

No book will replace personal experience, so I recommend you to have opened some computers, maybe even built one or two, and done a lot of tinkering with them before sitting down for this. There was still a lot of technical information I've never learned in this book, though, so it has its merits.

Pros:
*Good price
*Attempts to cover a lot of information even if it's not all thorough
*Lots of practice questions
*If you have worked with computers a lot, you really don't need another book, even if some of the concepts are new.
*I liked the humor sprinkled throughout; it makes drudging through 800 pages of computer information a little easier on the ol' noggin.

Cons:
*Discount program for the exam ended October 1. I bought this book partly because of the $90 savings on the test, and I bought it at the end of October, having no idea it wasn't even valid anymore. That they would discontinue it while the book was on the shelf bothers me a lot, and writing to the publisher regarding this never received a response.
*Some questions I saw on the test had zero mention in the book, so it is not comprehensive.
*The practice exams in the book are OK; the questions on the CD are really just for review, because to do a proper test it seems like you have to buy an upgraded version. Still, 210 questions per test was useful (just on the CD).

Basically, if you have some experience with computers, and can make educated guesses on some questions, you should be OK with this book. A passing score really isn't that high, so you don't need to feel like you should know everything there is to know. If you are going for A+ without field experience, do not use this book by itself, and definitely do some work with computers so you are not scratching your head while reading this.

Other Reviews

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