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Help Choosing A+ Reference Book

R

reicherb

Platinum Member
I'm the network admin for a small school district. About 725 PC and about 2500 users. I'm sick of spending my days troubleshooting PCs. Currently each buildings librarian is the first line of defense and they are doing a pretty good considering that they have no tech training. I figure maybe if I buy them all A+ books and we get together once a week or so and tear apart PCs, maybe they will become more knowledgeable and perhaps they can even become certified.

Has anybody seen any of the A+ books? I'm looking at A+ Certification Success Bonus Pack but hoped to hear some opinions of people that have actually used some of these. I need something that is going to explian what a com port is, not just say you need to know Com1 and Com3 use IRQ2 (I think that's right, heck It will probably be a good refresher for me).
 
I appreciate your help. They are a little above what I would call your average librarian. They have been doing tech support things for over a year now, but basically software support. Hardware is a whole need world.
 
I'd say get at least a couple of different ones. Unfortunately some of the study guides are designed just to get you through an exam, and ALL study guides that I've gotten so far, for various topics, aren't completely accurate in everything. Even the Cisco Press CCNA guide. For some, it's as small as an occasional typo in an illustration, in others, blatantly incorrect statements. ALL seem to have problems with major typos, in the text and illustrations, and not just misspelled words (which aren't that common); it's more often that they put a number in which was part of some other item and got mixed up, so it's difficult then to figure out, if you're not already knowledgeable, what they'd intended to put in the statement.

The Exam Cram guide, although I got an older version, didn't seem to be very good and I quit reading it partway through, but it could be good in combination with something else. This is the one that I ended up using. I went into it as someone with a good 7 years or more of experience with computers (just wanted to brush up on things that nobody's used for 5 years or more), but I thought it was good enough that it would be useful for anyone else.

One possibility might be to get both one of the seriously heavy books such as WTT0001 suggested, along with one of the simpler ones. I'd say for your needs, though, even one of the simple books would be a help.

By the way, COM1 and COM3 use IRQ 4, COM2 and COM4 use IRQ 3. 🙂
 
Originally posted by: TechBoyJK
I got the A+ book by Mike Meyers and it is great, very in depth and easy to read. Can get at borders
Click to expand...

Yeah, just about finished reading that one for a class of mine. I thought he did a pretty good job on a lot of things in there.

Though his video tapes can be pretty boring!!!!!!!!!
 
Just try to buy something that has CompTIA's stamp of approval; they are, after all, the ones who write the test.
 
I'm actually considerably more worried about them learning than passing the test. I could care less about a piece of paper that says you can do a job. I just want to see you do it.
 
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