Brain dumps

Many of the certification tests might be considered to be a form of Technical Trivial Pursuit. If you are lucky enough to have worked with ALL aspects of a topic on a fairly frequent basis and you have a very good memory, you could probably pass the tests.

In practice you probably don't touch on a lot of the topics very often so you might not remember the technical details. What you don't use, you lose.

I've found that working with books that teach you the topic AND have simulated exams are much better than a brain dump because you learn the topic behind the questions. And if you can add hands on work to the studying, you learn even more.

Memorizing canned answers to canned questions doesn't do a very good job of helping you with questions that aren't in the brain dumps. And it doesn't help you on the job when you encounter things that you would have known if you had studied the topic instead of just the answers to a test.

in the spirit of doing everything you can to prepare yourself to succeed on the test, you might as well read everything available. Bear in mind that the braindumps dont' always contain accurate info. some people post false questions or other b.s. to screw with the heads of the one-day wonders who try to cheat by memorizing aanswers the day before the test.

Using only braindumps - it's a very silly thing if you ask me. Why? Because you learn something like a poem, and in 10 days after you forget everything. The best way to prepare (I did that way too) is to get books and study, to really work with the programs or services, to go to "classes" if you can. I, for myself, I payed for my courses on Microsoft Windows 2000 - 2152, 2153, 2154 in 2001 - and my first exam as MCP I took it in 2002. Why? Because I wanted to know and understand exactly every part. I am MCSA now, (210,215,216,218) but still there are more to study about. My advice: work as much as you can with the product, try to really understand why and how the services works, and then, as a test, you can use braindumps, to see if you are ready for an exam.

I signed up for a certification course to get my MCSE. It was expensive, but I would rather go into an interview knowing that even though it took me two months, (and counting), to pass 70-216 for example, I will have actually learned the stuff that goes with it, so when the employer starts asking me questions about DNS and DHCP and Certificate Authorities, I will be able to give him competent answers. Rather than sitting there sweating trying to recall what info actually went with "The answer is B".