How Math Intense?

[rumble07]

I like to tinker with computer hardware and I'm gearing up to build a first system after having done several upgrades on my old one. I've often thought to take training with the goal of A+ Certification but one thing has kept me from taking the plunge...my math skills are pretty dismal. To those of you have gone through the process and taken the exams, what level of importance would you place on math abilites overall? Would a weakness in that area really be a serious obstacle to achieving certication? The courses are expensive and not offered close to where I live. There is also no refund if you can't complete the courses, so I'd really like to get a better idea of my chances of success before making a big committment. I've never had any problems academically apart from math.

[Stealth]

I just took my A+ Exams last month...on the 98 objectives. I didn't have any questions that required me to do any type of math. I can't speak for the new exams that are out now, however I wouldn't think that there would be any type of math caculating, but don't just take my word on that. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

[rumble07]

Hmmm..interesting. I've looked at a number of colleges and vocational training institutions, most of the ones in Canada have websites, and they usually give course outlines which include at least some math courses. Some also indicate that the type of candidates who generally do well have strong math skills. And yet you are not the first person whom I've heard say that math doesn't really play a big part in being a PC technician. I think there is a fairly prevalent belief that a strong coorelation exists between 'math heads' and aptitude around computers. I don't doubt that this may have some validity overall, but the degree to which it excludes the rest of us is perhaps something that has been exaggerated.
I do know this much: Five years ago my friend and I signed up for a little 25 hour evening course at the local adult ed. centre...'Intro to Win95'. Neither of us had had any previous experience with computers whatsoever...nothing! We went through school together and my friend always excelled at math while I foundered and barely got through. English was where I shone. It turns out that I breezed through the Win95 course with no problem at all while my friend couldn't relate to it at all and to this day remains basically clueless around computers. This guy is no dummy either, he's an excellent machinist with his own business. So while I realize there's a lot more to being a PC technician than doing well learning the basics of an operating system, I think this expample shows that the association between math ability and aptitude with computers is not as clear as it is often made out to be.

[steveo]

I took the A+ exams about 4 months ago. My exams were based on Comp TIA guidelines. I never had any questions dealing with math. My exam was broken up into two areas, hardware and dos/windows. A lot of my hardware questions dealt with basic hardware and printer troubleshooting. I also saw a few questions on SCSI, networking (topology's, routers, repeaters etc), both PC and networking cable identification/restrictions, mobo's and processors, hardware upgrading restrictions. As far as dos/windows goes, I saw questions dealing with dos commands, attributes, making batch files, config.sys and autoexec.bat, win.ini, sys.ini, command.com, windows registry, windows navigation, device drivers. There were also some troubleshooting questions dealing with dos/windows. That's about it. Hope this helps anyone deciding to jump into the exams.

[rumble07]

Stealth and steveo; thanks for the input. If you're still around I'd like to know a bit about your training. I see steveo is a fellow Canadian...did you take courses someplace? There are some distance education courses offered..don't know how those are. I think I'd prefer to attend a course in a class type setting with a qualified instructor since that way would offer more support if you encounter rough spots.

[k2arin]

I'm actually in my 3rd week of the A+ course right now, and haven't come across any type of math skills or questions, except for the very minor section on binary numbers. I've never done real well at math either, and I'm making it through just fine. For your info, I'm taking my course online and it's a lot more informative than I thought it would be. If you're worried about doing something like this and not being able to have questions answered if you're stuck, the particular course I'm taking has a 24-7 discussion board, along with a virtual classroom. You also have access to all other students email addresses, and everyone in my course is quite willing to help each other when there are problems. It might be worth looking into. Good luck! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

[rumble07]

k2arin; thanks for replying. I've looked at a number of online courses but apart from a few endorsements that may or may not have been unsolicited, it's very hard for me to judge which places are good or bad. A friend of mine in Ont. said he once took an ICS course in another subject and he wasn't impressed with it at all. He said that NRI is apparently a different story altogether, offering a thorough learning experience. I'm sure there are all kinds of good online courses but choosing one without solid references is tricky for me since my area is well off the beaten path, and I know of no one locally who has experience with any of the online schools. You don't mention which school you went with..perhaps you'd rather not say online. I can be reached at wamiller@hotmail.com if you'd agree to give me the name of the place you signed up with. That way I could check the details as far as pricing and course duration etc. Thanks.

[steveo]

rumbleo7...I took my training at a franchised school in central alta at the cost of $2000. This price included all comptia text's and the two exams. I believe there are four cities in alta that offer the course right now.

In hardware, we covered everything from pc basics to customer service, including electrical systems, all hardware, SCSI, raid, printers, rom, ram, bios, post, cmos, system diagnostics etc. We had to know the relationship between hardware/software and how it all works together. We had to cover 286-586 systems and the differences/limitations between them including the cpu's/mobo's. Know modern bus architecture/speeds and general laptop hardware. My laptop questions were to define hotswapping and if a modem was type I,II or III, including card thickness. In my hardware exam I had a few cabling questions including printers, SCSI and networking.

It's my understanding that dos is either being dropped from the course or already has been. If it hasn't then you need to know a lot about dos to handle the exam. A good understanding of how dos works, the commands (including switches), the core files, attributes etc is needed. Also, dos memory management (including tsr's)was something I saw on my exam. You have to know the entire dos boot sequence and what config.sys/autoexec.bat (including msdos device drivers)do. You may be asked on how to create a system disk from dos, what the command is.

For windows things were pretty basic. A good working knowledge of navigating through the o/s, loading drivers, installing printers, setting up a peer to peer network will cover a lot of area on the exam. The biggest challenge I had was the windows registry. You'll need to know the h-keys and what they do. Don't forget the boot sequence for windows and what the files do.

The sample tests I used was comptia, measure up and A+4dummies. Between these three I had about 850 questions to draw from. From these sample exams I saw questions that we didn't cover in class, like bootstrapping. The tests I took were 20 questions per exam, randomly drawn from a pool of 1000. They're adaptive which means the more questions you get right, the tougher the questions get. Again I hope this helps and good luck to all who decide to take the course!

[rumble07]

Well it looks like I have a lot to learn. Did you feel that you were pretty well prepared to pass the certification after you completed your course? I wonder what the success rate is for first attempts.

[k2arin]

I don't have a problem with letting you know what school I'm at right now, just not sure of exactly how these discussion forums work in terms of things like that (I'm a newbie to these things). I will email the name of the school to you along with prices, etc. In terms of course quality though, I'm very satisfied with it so far. Cost includes all necessary text (6 of them all together), along with an interactive cd. You can personally email the instructor at any time, and he is quite timely with his responses. All topics that Steveo mentioned are covered, except DOS has been dropped, so you don't need to know much about that. It is touched on occasionally, but just in reference to 'older' models, etc. I would recommend the online course if you've got a busy life, as you do have access to all of the material 24-7/

[steveo]

Rumbleo7...success rate

During my classes, we had a number of people come in to challenge the on-line exams. I would say about 65% passed on the first time around. These were people that didn't take the A+ course but took simular courses in college etc. Those who failed knew how to assemble or fix a pc but had no PC/dos theory to draw from. As far as our school went, my instructor told me the pass rate of his students was about 95%. K2arin relates dos is dropped from her course so this probably the case in all courses now. Speaking from my meager experience, in the tech lab we navigate through dos quite a bit so the type/more/copy/move/rem/attrib commands, along with wildcards/switches are used. Most of our diagnostic programs are run in dos and our head tech creates his own programs, again using dos batch files. Of course we like solving problems using windows but knowing basic dos helps. We do get the odd pc in which dos is the o/s with win3.1 as the gui so it's good to know how to deal with this configuration when the situation arises.

[rumble07]

Well thanks to both of you for the input, it's been very enlightening. Certain things I had heard or read sort of led me to believe that few people were ready to pass the A+ certification exams coming right out a course. I had a vague idea that you mostly had to work in the field a couple of years or more and really gain experience...and then maybe flunk a couple of times before finally being successful. Whoever it was that planted that notion must have been cut out for a different line of work I guess. LOL. I'm sure it is challenging and would demand lots of study time and hard work, but it looks like it isn't as insurmountable as I had imagined.

[steveo]

rumbleo7.....

I'm not sure what it's like in the rest of the world but here in alta, if your not A+ certified then it's very hard to find work, unless you know someone that will let it slide. I take it most people get certified in order to get thier foot in the door then go from there with additional courses. I know people that run thier own labs and they're not certified. It doesn't matter to them because they only have to answer to themselves. Should they go out and apply for work in a lab they would be turned away because all shops here, anyway, use the A+ certification as a selling point to thier customers. The lab I work in will not hire any uncertified people...period. So if tech employment is your goal get certified, it looks really good on the resume'

[Paleo Pete]

DOS/win3.x have been dropped from the test, so they have also been dropped from the courses. I'm not so sure this is a good idea, with so many thousands of win98 computers strill out there to be dealt with, but since the newer OSes don't use DOS it's been abandoned.

My advice would be to make sure you pick up some good DOS books and build an older system to tinker with alongside the course, it will come in very handy when you get into the actual day to day dealings with computer repairs. I have a couple of very good DOS related sites posted on my website, and the best DOS books I've found are by Que press. Van Wolverton has also authored some pretty good DOS books, but not as good as the Que books. DOS/win3.x books are getting to be pretty common in resale shops and used bookstores, check around and you should be able to find some good ones pretty cheap. It might be gone from the test, but will be around in the repair shop for a while to come.

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[Beeker]

Hey, just wanted to say that I took the exams about one month ago. Some comments: First, I purchased a study prep course that consisted of books (very good) and some software (not so good). The problem I had was that compTIA had changed the test structure around. The material was the same, but the way in which the tests were run was very different. As already mentioned, they are now adaptive, which is much different than what I studied for. It threw me a bit, though I did pass. You don't have to score very high to actually pass the tests, though it's certainly nice to be able to do so. I would heed the advice given by the admin and study/build some older DOS machines. I work as a techie and I can tell you that I still get calls about old machines. Not everyone uses a win98 system. There is no substitute for experience in this field.

BTW- my tests had no math questions on them.

[Ken Thomas]

I took the old exams in March, I believe that math will not be a problem for you with either of the areas examined. Most of the books I used to study from more than adequately covered any math you might need. And there are good sites on line that cover binary and hexidecimal really well. The only math I'd worry much about would be conversion of the small binary numbers, again, that area is covered very well in most of the books I've seen.

The big thing, I think now, is don't stress over it, you can do it. There are many good books out there, and with a home computer to rip apart and play with, you'll do fine. There are many post here in the guide regarding books available. "A+ All-In-One Certification Exam Guide 3rd Edition" by Michael Myers now covers the new materials, and "Enhanced A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Third Edition Comprehensive"
by Jean Andrews also covers the new materials. These are available at most of the online book sites. I used Myers and Andrews books before they were revised for the new tests, but I know both writers are excellent. I would also strongly suggest having them both. I read through Myers, and then started back through it, and used Andrews book to provide more detail. Andrew's for me was too detailed at first, but after Myers, the two books supplemented one another excellently.

One last thought, be sure to use the online test sites. The one I like best was Aplus Omega, and they now have the new exams covered. When you are scoring consistently between 90 and 100%, your ready, or at least that was when I was ready.

Sorry about being so long winded, just hope it helps you. Remember, you can do this, so don't stress, just prepare well. Best wishes.


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"If you don't stretch and grow, your 'status quo'."

[rumble07]

The reponse to my original post has been overwhelmingly positive and I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to elaborate on your experiences. Based on what I've seen, reading through the comments, many of my self-doubts have been quieted and I feel as though this is a career direction that might be worth pursuing. At 45 I'm no kid, so the idea of embarking on a new career is rather intimidating. But just from having made computers a serious hobby over the past three years I already know more about them than about 99% of the people I know, so if poor math skills are not a big obstacle I might be able to pull it off. The words of encouragement are much appreciated.

Bill

[steveo]

Rumble07...

email me and I'll send you a hardware sample test.

kingmob@rttinc.com

[Ass3mbler]

In my humble opinion the A+ cert is NOT as prestigous as it once was. Of course people may disagree and that is their right. But if it were me this is what I would do to get into the work force today. Save the $256 it cost for an A+ certification and use that towards getting Cisco and Linux certifications. Linux for the smiple reason that in my personal opinion I see alot of Linux based servers going up in the very near future, making them a close 2nd to the old stand by AS/400, btw noone seems to discuss the AS/400 anymore why is that? Like I said just my opinion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Originally posted by steveo:
Rumble07...

email me and I'll send you a hardware sample test.

kingmob@rttinc.com





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Assembler,

Bow before me for I am r00t

[kenja]

My $00.02: I never did consider the A+ to be "prestigious", but I think it is a good "first step". I'm not saying the cost of the exams is necessarily a good investment, but I found the subject matter worthwhile (well, most of it; I took the "old" exams).