A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide

Author: Michael D. Meyers List Price: $59.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0072126795 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media (23 February, 2001) Edition: Hardcover Sales Rank: 82,964 Average Customer Rating: 4.27 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

All of that aside this is a great book. Beginning with historical back ground then bringing the reader "up to date" helps make these ideas stick. After each chapter there are sample questions that insure you are truly getting it.

Add to that the bonus CD with practice tests and useful utilities that you, as an official CompTIA certified technician, might actually use in the field and you got a no brainer.

Five stars!

Overall I found this a good preparatory book for the exams. I especially liked the historical perspective Michael Meyers gives at the beginning of many chapters. I did find an occasional mistake in these, but nothing major. I feel the explanations throughout the entire book are simplified enough that someone with little to no experience after studying the book could probably pass the two exams. I expect the sheer size of the book; 1137 pages, 2 1/2 inches thick may discourage some beginners.

I feel at times the author went overboard with his analogies, especially with the ones related to how a CPU works. He does this so much that I could not find a clear definition of the function of the external data bus, in the external data bus section. It was clouded by his analogy. Instead I found it in the questions at the end of the chapter.

I feel in some places the proofreader(s) for the 2002 edition left some things the way they were in previous editions, when they should have been updated for the current technology and prices. A few examples; p 245 "Document the position of the wires for the ...turbo switch, turbo light..." and p 377 "Buying floppy drives one at a time is expensive and a waste of time." (since 2000 I have been buying new floppy drives for $10-$15 individually. I don't consider that expensive.) and lastly p826 "A CDR burner must be specifically designed to support the longer 80-minute CD-R format, something that currently only a minority of CD-R drives do." The author needs to be carefull of using the phrase "all versions of windows". NT does not have Device Manager or a Safe Mode, but "all versions of windows" on page 598 and 546 would leed you to believe so.

I think for the sake of beginners I would have preferred that all of the images of the Celeron SEP package show the side with the actual CPU chip on it. Many show the backside with the circuit traces.

This book did save me money. In the front it suggests to buy vouchers, vice paying the full cost for the exams. I bought vouchers, along with an enhanced version of the practice examinations and still paid less than the retail cost of the exams.

Dispite my criticism of this book I did like the book and I plan on keeping it for a long time to come as reference material. There is no way I could ever have written a book, this in depth, with as few errors as this book has. I passed the hardware exam easily (I took 6 minutes for the adaptive version) and expect to easily pass the operating system exam tomorrow. I only used my experience, this book and an enhanced version of the practice examinations that came with the book.

A new version of the A Plus exam is due fall or winter of 2003. Comptia has already published the new exam objectives, so I would expect a fifth edition of this book early 2004.

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