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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a very impressive effort, January 5, 2000
On the plus side, there are 1,052 questions in the text. They're also harder then the actual A+ exam questions, in that they use the 'choose all that apply' multiple choice format. You really need to know your stuff to do well on these questions.On the minus side, the answers are often plain flat Wrong! And this is compounded by explanations that have obviously been dreamt up on the spot by the authors, who apparently would prefer to resort to BS and bafflegab then pause to look up the correct answer. An example: the questions insist that the location of an IDE drive on the cable is crucial to determining whether or not a drive is a slave or master, while the master/slave/carrier select pins are not important. In fact, the M/S/CS pins are all important, and the location of the hard drive on an IDE cable has no bearing on whether its a master or slave. (Only floppies are arranged in this manner). Another example: the book insists that SRAM (static ram) uses less power then DRAM (dynamic ram), because SRAM contains 6 capacitors which need to be charged much less frequently. In fact, SRAM contains 6 transistors, and NO capacitors. Although horribly expensive, it is unbelievably fast, which is why SRAM is used in L1 and L2 caching. That is the primary advantage of SRAM. Yet, the book would have you believe that the primary use for SRAM is in low power applications. These were only two examples, drawn from the first 72. I expect that there are many more. Nonetheless, you CAN profit from this book. The way to do it is answer all the questions. When the book agrees with you, you're right; when you don't know the answer to a question, well, you've targetted an area you need to study more thoroughly; and when the book disagrees with you, check your sources, make sure you're right, and curse those authors and publishers who allow such misleading material to reach the trusting public. Under NO circumstances should you use this book as a study guide; under NO circumstances should you trust these answers. For a spectacular study guide to PCs in general, check out Muellers' "Guide to PC maintenance and repair", 11th edition. This 1600+ page book is staggeringly great, and a solid testament to the fact that it is possible to write a really, really good book on computers. Had the authors of"A+ Certification Test Yourself Practice Exams" read the Mueller text, their own book would have been vastly improved. Charlie Worton, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE
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by Michael Meyers
