A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Written by Mike Meyers, the industry leader in A+ certification training, this authoritative reference offers complete coverage of all material on the A+ Core Hardware and Operating System Technologies exams. You'll find exam objectives at the beginning of each chapter, helpful exam tips, end-of-chapter practice questions, and photographs and illustrations. The bonus CD-ROM contains a testing engine with questions found only on the CD. This comprehensive guide not only helps you pass this challenging exam, but will also serve as an invaluable on-the-job reference.

From the Back Cover

"The most comprehensive publication on the market." --Certification Magazine

"My students love this book... comprehensive yet approachable, a proven A+ prep tool." --Farbod Karimi, Instructor, Heald College

The #1 A+ Exam Guide

Prepare to pass CompTIA's A+ certification exams with help from the #1 best-selling exam guide. Fully revised and updated for the new exam releases--and reviewed and approved by CompTIA--this authoritative volume covers everything you need to know to pass both the Core Hardware and Operating System Technologies exams. Mike gives you helpful exam tips throughout, end-of-chapter practice questions, detailed coverage of the exam format, and hundreds of photographs and illustrations. This comprehensive guide not only helps you pass the A+ certification exams, but also teaches you how to be an expert hardware technician.

Get full details on all exam objectives, including how to:

• Configure CMOS and BIOS settings
• Identify expansion bus slots and install expansion cards
• Work with motherboards, CPUs, and RAM
• Provide proper power and cooling
• Install, partition, and format hard drives
• Install and upgrade Windows 9x/Me, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows XP
• Work with portable PCs, PDAs, and wireless technologies
• Install and troubleshoot floppy, CD, and DVD drives
• Create SCSI chains
• Install sound and video cards
• Manage printers and connect to networks

The CD-ROM features:

• Hundreds of all-original questions
• Six full practice exams covering the Operating Systems and Core Hardware requirements. Available in Practice or Final Mode.
• One hour of LearnKey video training featuring Michael Meyers teaching key A+ topics free with online registration
• Useful tools and utilities for PC technicians

About the Author:

Michael Meyers is the industry's leading authority on A+ certification. He is the president and founder of Total Seminars, LLC, a major provider of PC and network repair seminars for thousands of organizations throughout the world, and a member of CompTIA.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 1176 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 5 edition (October 31, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072229918
• ISBN-13: 978-0072229912
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.9 x 2.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (169 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #55,127 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

125 of 129 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book Works, September 29, 2005

By	J. Christofferson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ok. There have been some negative reviews about this book and I wanted to add my 2 cents to this. It is possible to pass the A+ Certification exams using little more than this book. I should know, as I personally did it. It wasn't easy, it took a lot of studying, and my scores weren't the greatest, but I did pass using little more than the book and practice exams that came on the CD with the book. I got a 574 on the Core and a 619 on the OS. Not impressive, but I'm not saying this book will make you incredible, I'm just saying you can pass using very little besides this book.

My strategy went as follows:

1) Read the book staight through for about 2 weeks, reading 150-300 pages a day while TAKING NOTES. Writing the information physically on a sheet of paper helps a lot.

2) Memorize the notes you took. Ingrain everything you think is important into your brain. And this isn't just necessarily facts. Its the concepts behind the facts. This book did a really good job with those and because of it, I was able to correctly guess a good number of the questions on the OS exam that would have otherwise stumped me.

3) Read the Objectives off CompTIA's website! This will help you catch anything that the book missed.

4) Take the practice exams with the book. I left one exam for Core and OS until I felt like I was done studying and just wanted a confidence boost. Don't underestimate this. Attitude can make a big difference. Also, don't underestimate the value of the practice exams. They are about as tough as the real thing. Some questions easier, some harder, but overall about the same difficulty.

5) Retake those practice exams until everything you missed is ingrained into your mind. There were at least 6 or 7 questions on each test I ONLY got right because I remembered getting them wrong on the practice exams.

6) Find any practice exams or questions online that you can. I opted to use some free ones, many of them only being about 10 questions or so, but they gave me other perspectives and ways to ask questions that I hadn't seen.

7) If you can, get some hands on experience. If the book is going over the Recovery Console, do it yourself. If you can picture doing things on the computer in your mind, it will help when it comes to test time.

8) Good luck! The more info you can get, the better, but with this book and your wits, you should at least be able to do better than I did. It took me about a month total of solid studying, and this is from someone who one year ago didn't even know how to build a PC, and had only made 3 before taking the test.

So overall, I think this book is worth it. I can't say anything about the competition because I haven't used it, but for about 50 bucks, this book is well written and easy to read, tells you at least MOST of what you know while being a little entertaining at the same time, and will come in handy as a great reference book. I've given it 5 stars not because its the most amazing thing written, but that it did what it was supposed to: get me to pass the A+ Exam.

I hope this review is helpful to those of you considering getting your certification!

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good if you put into it what you want out of it, September 26, 2005

By	J. Seidell (Tulsa, Ok) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I find alot of the previous reviews extremely negative towards this book, and I have to disagree with them. I will admit there were a couple of questions that I had no clue how to anwser, but I would state that at least 90% of what I saw on the A+ test could be answered straight from the book.

I studied the book throughly, then began taking the practice exams, once I completed them I went to the author's homepage [...] and purchased test vouchers/practice exams. Basically you get 1100 more A+ Cert. questions and both of your vouchers to take your exams for less than the list price of the exams.

Now before I started taking the additional test questions I thought I was a week away from taking the test. However I found myself blown away the questions, but as I would study out the questions after I completed the test I found all the correct answers in the book, but those just didn't stick to my brain or weren't as highlighted as they probably should be. However once I was aceing the tests I signed up and passed both A+ exams the first time with 750+ scores.

I didn't study any other materials for the test. However I do get to do some PC repair with my job (but it isn't my main duty).
BOTTOM LINE:
1) BUY THE VOUCHERS/TEST QUESTIONS FROM [...] - most the questions on the extra test questions are more difficult than what you will see on the real test. And when you finish the test go back through it question by question see what you got right and find out why others were wrong (reference back to the chapter and re-read the page or two about that specfic topic)
2) GET SOME HANDS ON TIME - if you don't get to repair PC's for a living then go out and pick up some junk garage sale PC, you can usually find them for less than $25 (it's ok if it's outdated and you never plan to use it) walk through some of the book's examples, tear the thing down and build it back up. Most of the A+ material covered older or extremely generic PC components anyways.

I believe if you do what I stated anyone should be able to pass the A+.

303 of 354 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This book *might* help you pass the A+, don't count on it., September 25, 2004

By	Melvin Scott Chu (Carrollton, TX (Dallas)) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have heard rave reviews about the Michael Meyers All In One A+ Certification Exam Guide. Everyone (most people had used the 3rd or 4th editions though) told me it was the only thing they needed to pass the A+ with flying colors. Obviously, none of them had passed the 2003 Objectives with the 5th Edition though.

I've spent the past 2 months studying and taking notes from the book and eagerly signed up to take the test as soon as I finished. I felt fairly confident that the book had prepared me, and after taking the exams in the back of the book, I also felt fairly prepared.

I went ahead and downloaded a few PDF files from the site where I bought my voucher from, but they only went over the 2001 Objectives. Needless to say, there was a *LOT* of information missing from the 5th Edition book that was covered in those PDFs. Specific command line diagnostic tools and switches, modem diagnostic codes, a lot more in detailed stuff, etc.

Mainly, the book in general was too broad. It covered and hit all the topics, but nothing in-depth detail, except for maybe SCSI, the history of CPUs, and network types. Granted, if you're trying to become A+ certified, you should obviously at least be somewhat decent with computers and know some of the information.

However, the A+ is all about testing you on a wide variety of different scenarios, with scenarios being the key word here. Meyers claims the A+ is for a tech with less than 6 months of experience. I'll throw the book at any tech with less than 6 months of experience, and can guarantee 85% will not pass. The A+ consists of "John Doe has a problem with component X, what's wrong with it?" along that sort of lines. The book only really prepares you for the conceptual information. The conceptual in turn does help you with those scenario questions, but much more emphasis could have been placed onto that than just concepts.

A very good way to describe this book is as follows: imagine picking up a book to become a mechanic. If this Meyers book was a book about cars, it would teach you the history of cars - the big block high HP days of the '60s and early '70s, the need for fuel efficiency in the late '70s, the SUV/truck boom in the '90s, and the return of high HP/high performance cars in today's world. It would teach you what a tire does. It would teach you what springs and shocks do, and what aftermarket coilovers do. It would teach you how to work the radio, and how to identify the coolant reservoir, the radiator, the AC compressor, the engine, the engine mounts, the rear sway bar, the driveshaft, headers, etc.

You read the book, you take the test, and your heart drops in your throat when the questions are about how to diagnose the car not starting up, what the clicking sound is coming from the right front wheel well when you turn, why the car drips water when you turn it off on a hot day, etc. You're unprepared because the book decided to focus more on the basics than the bread and butter. The book covers the basic troubleshooting, but the number of pages devoted to it a 1100 page book is probably less than 75. That is exactly what the Meyers book does in terms of computers and the A+. It is NOT to say that every troubleshooting question you have no idea about. Obviously, through practical and real world experience, you will know how to do a lot of troubleshooting, or else you wouldn't be trying for your A+. Some of the more in-depth ones or ones you don't deal with on an everyday basis, or ones with a particular solution you'd only know about if you read about it, are the ones I am speaking of.

To give a fair assessment of how much in particular the book applied to the test: my breakdown is:

2003 OS Core Objectives: 30%
2003 Hardware Core Objectives: 50%

That is my honest assessment of what the book covers and/or is useful to the exam. It's a nice reference tool and taught me a lot (historically speaking) about computers that I wasn't aware of, and even taught me a few things I should have known but didn't. But the book is seemingly useless to the exam. The passing scores were a 505 and a 515 on the OS and Hardware, respectively. I received a 652 on the OS and a 696 on the Hardware. I can honestly say - I would *NOT* have passed if I had not done outside studying. I spent this entire week cramming and learning so much from the few other sources I had access to. I would have taken the test later; unfortunately, the vouchers I bought were set to expire in less than 2 weeks after purchase, so I couldn't put off taking the test because Mr. Meyer's book ill-prepared me for the test.

I crammed for the test as much as I could using other resources. Given time, with those other resources/other books, I would have done a lot better. The OS portion - my score was expected, but not the hardware. I only had to stop and think about maybe 7 of the questions on the hardware. Maybe I just rushed through the test too fast because I had a false sense of security. It would be completely unfair to blame my scores solely on the Meyers book, but it is one reason why I didn't do as well as I had hoped. (If you pass the test, you have to wait a minimum of 1 year before retaking it again for a higher score)

In summary, the book only prepares you for the conceptual parts of the test, and a little bit of the troubleshooting. (Percentages listed above) The majority of the A+ is about troubleshooting. Meyer's book only devotes a very small percentage to the end of every chapter to troubleshooting. Maybe 10% of the chapter is devoted towards it. That's it. 10% doesn't cut it when probably 75% of each test is about troubleshooting. I believe the previous editions were a lot more indepth in terms of the information it covered, which is why so many people raved about the 4th Edition. (2001 Objectives) Meyers took a step back with the publication of the 5th Edition. This book was released as a poor effort to cash in on someone studying for the A+ 2003 Objectives.

I can't say what other books available are better than this one, or which one would guarantee/help you pass the test better, but this is not the one to get. If you read all the other reviews of this book - the ones that gave it a positive "yea it's great" - the majority of them haven't even taken the test. They seem to offer little more than "oh it's a thick book so it must be good!" The ones that did "pass" the A+ noticeably didn't list their score. The scores I had were average - I expected at least in the 700s/800s. Sure you can make the point that I passed with 150+ points over the passing grade, but that was in addition to the cramming from a few other sources before the test. My experiences in IT have been probably 8+ years, including building/fixing computers for family/friends, admining and being the sole tech support guy for a Win2K Domain (2 servers) + WinXP client computers, and working in the IT department of a fiber optic drafting branch of Verizon. I would consider myself fairly knowledgeable, and am also currently studying for my MCSA/MCSE.

This book is nice to have for a general overview or a "I never knew that about computers". To pass the A+, if you do insist on using this book to study for it, being that you ignored everything I wrote in my review, do yourself a favor and find at least one other source to review/study. The tests are $91 a piece using a voucher, and $58 for a retake. You can buy this book only, but be prepared to shell out that $58 for the retake voucher. Or, you can buy a totally different book, pass it on the first try by a sizeable margin, and be proud of your accomplishment. Shame on you Meyers, for trying to pass off this book as (in your own words): "...a proven strategy for preparing to take and pass the A+ exams. Try it. It works." Sorry Mike, you failed your readers. You should take your 5th Edition back to the drawing board, actually sit down and look at the A+ w/ 2003 Objectives, and then come back with a 6th Edition that lives up to the "supposedly" legendary status your books have when it comes to the A+.