At 05:01 PM 12/30/1999 , Charlie Bennett wrote:
>Has anyone taken the Advanced troubleshooting, maintaining & upgrading
>PCs course?  It is put on by CompuMaster and MS certified.  I got the
>flyer in the mail today.  It looks interesting except for the $900!


The price tag on this course is rather high and you did not mention the
real certification for our industry, the A+, (A plus), certification.  This is
the entry level certification for anyone wishing to be acknowledged as
an expert in the field of PC hardware.  It is a certification from the
Computing Technology Industry Association.
      http://www.comptia.org/
This is far more important than Microsoft Certification.

I would be concerned about how much real information you can actually
consume in a seminar given over a few days or even a couple of weeks.

Understand, anyone can sit for the A+ certification, with at least six months
experience in the PC industry.  This is not an easy test and as of Nov 1999
there are just over 150,000 people in the world with an A+ certification.
If you do a little research, most communities have educational courses
available in PC hardware that should be a great deal less money.

You can also purchase at home study courses, such as the one offered
by Specialized Solutions for $550, with a great deal of course material:
    http://www.specializedsolutions.com/a-plus.htm
I am not recommending them over any others, only noting that they are
recommended by the Computing Technology Industry Association.

If this is still more than you expect to invest, I recommend Upgrading
and Repairing PCs (10th Ed)  by Scott Mueller.
     http://nospin.com/pc/books.html
Scott Mueller is one of the acknowledged super geeks in our industry and this
book is excellent.  You can also invest time reading through our web site,
(currently we have nearly 280 pages of information online:
    http://nospin.com
You can read through PCBUILD's archives with over 24,000 messages
currently in the archives: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/pcbuild.html
Our archives only go back to February 1998, due to a loss of data during
our move to Maelstrom from Boise State, (we lost four years of archives in
the move and still regret it).

I hope this gives you some alternate options and balance to gauge against
the seminar mentioned.

      Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

                Curious about the people moderating your
                   messages? Visit our staff web site:
                     http://nospin.com/pc/staff.html