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certification without software

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by marym

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Is it possible to learn, study and pass the windows 2000 professional exam without using windows 2000 software? I am studying from MS Windows Pro Training Kit, which includes a trial version and a simulated interactive CD. I do not want to partitionmy hard drive to install another operating system. Your insight is appreciated.

10 replies

by packratt

...Which may hopefully answer yours.

Would you, if you were a technical manager, hire a candidate for a position that was responsible for managing software that your business depended on and when it went down you could lose thousands per minute when that candidate never used that software even in a test environment?

Now, if you were a candidate for a job and another candidate you were conversing with told you that he or she worked with this software before would you feel confident that you could beat that candidate out when you only read about that software?

Now... I am sure that it is quite possible to pass that exam without ever touching a computer or using that software. It has been done many times before and will continue for a long time to come. The question is, do you really believe that you will be confident using or managing this OS in a complex real world environment and would you be doing an employer a service or doing them harm by presenting yourself as an expert in Windows 2000 by going about getting a piece of paper via this route?

I don't mean to sound harsh... And believe me, this is a mild version of the treatment you might recieve if you do get into a position of responsibility in a business environment that depends on Windows 2000. If you blow it then you will get way worse from the end users and your manager and on up.

Do yourself and any potential employer a favor and make an effort to learn more than the minimum required to pass a test if you want to be in IT. Good Luck.

by marym

Thanks..maybe I'll partition my hard drive after all..any suggestions on the best way to go about it? I am presently running windows 98, with a non-partitioned 20gb hard drive.

by packratt

If you are mainly concerned with keeping the Win98 partition and data then there are products out there that will allow you to repartition on the fly without having to give up the data already on the original partition.

I believe Partition Magic is one... Anyway, Good luck and I hope everything works out well for you. Just be honest with yourself when thinking about things like that and I'm sure you'll come to the correct conclusions on your own.

by terrence l. gabriel

Get partition magic. It does not cost much and works beautifully. I used it to partition for my Linux install and there were no problems at all. It is very intuitive and easy to use.

To reinforce the comments you have already read: What has helped to weaken certification the most has been the overabundance of paper certs thanks to M$. It is apparent that they (M$) have seen the light and have made this cert more performance orineted. Also there is a move afoot by the major vendors to force aperformance portion to all cert exams in order to protect the validity of the products they certify. You owe it to the industry to be what your cert will claim you are.

by bpowell

I personally am pursuing self-study of NetWare and GroupWise [our in-house OS] with the intention of getting Cisco certification through a local community college.
What is desperately needed is for MS, the IT industry and possibly even the government to police and clean up these 'certification mills'.
Ben Powell
MCP, MCSE [4.0], MCP+I

by xxx123

Good Lord! You want the government to police the quality of MCSEs? Umm, aren't there a few more important things on the list that aren't getting done?

Employers know how easily some of these certs are achieved and the market has already allocated value to certifications accordingly.

I don't have anything against certs. Any type of study will provide returns commesurate with the effort expended. So you may actually derive more value from the learning experience than the market recognizes. But it's hardly worth the exorbitant cost of federal oversight to try to regulate certifications!

by b-rad

The employers are all the policing that it needs. The MCSE is a valuable cert. but if someone is just a paper MCSE then the employer will figure that out quick enough....if not before the job is even extended. Most of the technical interviews that Ive ever been to include some sort of brain picking session by several in-house engineers......what you know will show.

by lbmw

The VERY LAST THING we need are more paper MSCE'S! I spent a total of 14 mos of f-disking, reinstalling, configuring, crashing and sometimes burning, sometimes recovering before getting my Certs (MCP,MCSE,A+,Netwok+).And i've worked with a lot of paper MCSE's. If this person DID actually get a job in I.T, they'd be getting that "You should know that" look from their co-workers from the get-go. While I'm not saying it WILL take you that long to get your certs- i sure wouldn't want to work with someone who never even installed the OS they are supporting!

by vncoder

G'day,
If you really concern about the safety of your current partition (data and sofwares) then get a another small disk (8-10G) for practice partition/repartition/format/install/un-install/etc. For a small disk like that it costs less than $100. At the same time, try Linux (get Linux Cert if you really want), Win2K, WinXP, BeOS, etc.
This way, you don't care if M$ stuffed up your disk. Just format and start again.

G'luck

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