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Extra practice exams will prep you for the wide range of questions you'll be exposed to on the day of the exam.My bottomline is, Myers book is great, but to pass the exam with confidence and ease, I recommend a second companion text plus more sample exam questions so that you get a good perspective of the required subject matters. I realized this when I looked at the other text book I purchased for my A+ studies.Also, go to Myer's web site and get more practice exams.
This book is great for people who have very little knowledge about computers. Having said that, to pass the A+ exam, which I believe is your ultimate goal, I strongly recommend getting a second text book besides Myer's and the reasons are two fold: one, it's good to read about a particular subject from another author to get a different point of view.
Myer's book is very good, and he makes it easy to understand the concepts. In fact, Myer's book was too deep on processor families / history and sockets, which was much more than required for the A+ exams, including the depot exam which I took (and passed).
The other reason is that a second book brings more sample test questions for you to train on which is essential getting familiar with the exams. Myer's book is strong (perhaps the best) on PC hardware, but not as good on PC support communications and IT security as the second book I purchased for my studies (Sybex, Docter & Dulaney).
I felt that being exposed to a multitude of questions on all A+ subject matters helped me alot as well as letting me know if I was ready or not. Good Luck.
The CD is also great. I love this book. It is full of real world examples, and Mike's writing is not dry like so many other A+ books I read. I watched the videos, and did all the tests on the CD. What I did not like about the book is the pictures are black and white.
It's not a textbook to be studied just for an exam -at least I didn't take it just as such. First, and most important: this book has photographs, pictures, and illustrations.I got my core knowledge of technical computing from this book when I started out as a newbie techie back in the day.I studied the very first edition back in the age of the dinosaurs. I read it also with a pure enjoyment of learning.I particularly enjoyed the second chapter, on processors. Back then it covered both Windows and DOS and even had chapters on Windows 3.1.It was -and still is -a huge book that looked like the compendium of all things known to man, and I consumed every bit it. It helped me to pass my A+ exam with flying colors. Sometimes I take the book from my book shelf and read over that chapter out of pure fascination.It starts thus: "in this chapter you will:1).Understand the concepts of buses, and the functions of the data bus and the address bus.2).Understand the clock, clock speed, the concept of clock doubling 3).Understand the relationship of RAM to the CPU and RAM caching.4).Inspect the different type of processors available in the past and today5).Learn how to install and upgrade processors."Even though my copy is from the age of the gnomes, the same basic information hasn't change. It only got more fascinating.
So far excellent product. Will not know for sure the results of the material until after taking the test from its study.
Meyer's presents the information in a way that is easier to retain and as a result I think more will be remembered when sitting at the testing station.I believe one can pass the A+ exams with this book, but a large library of practice exams presented in a similar format as CompTIA's is absolutely necessary. It seems many people I know who want to be techs are nothing more than moderately skilled users who think "it'd be fun" to work on computers for a living only to buy a book like this, plow through it, and fail the A+ miserably. But do I think this book alone will help somebody pass the A+ Essentials and/or 220-602, 220-603, or 220-604 exams.It really depends on the difficulty of the exams which does vary between tests, the real world experience of the tester, and whether the tester actually "reads" the book or simply skims it expecting a quick and easy pass. For the price, this is a great book, and if you don't think it has enough information, please read it again before flaming. Meyer's book accomplishes this. Learn/use keyboard shortcuts, memorize paths to system tools, use the command line when you could use explorer, do thing's outside of what you normally do and this will help you become a great tech and gain confidence for taking this and other exams.
The visible pc, microprocessors, memory, hard drive technologies, removable media, video, sound, printers, and communication and professionalism chapters were quite detailed. I have found upon re-inspection some things I thought were left out are in indeed actually there. I felt the networking chapter was adequate for the tests. Command line chapter was good although a handful of additional commands could have been mentioned. As a certified IT Technician I believe Mike Meyer's All-in-One CompTIA A+ exam guide is a well written, edited, and entertaining book that is well worth the modest price for its 1100+ pages. It is very important to know legacy devices and Meyer's discussion of earlier technology is crucial in passing the A+ exam.But most importantly, I believe this book will help you become a good tech. Knowing a moderate amount of a lot of thing's will get you much farther in my opinion than knowing every minute detail of a small amount of thing's.
I have found that we are not going to retain everything we read and when you're halfway through this book I can virtually guarantee some information from chapter 2 will be forgotten. That's the way it goes. The security chapter was a little light. Experience troubleshooting the pc's, printers, and networks of friends and family goes a long way in passing an exam like this along with a large library of accurate practice questions.Meyer's book is definately a great resource, but I think those who say it lacks detail only read the book once or twice. Meyer's questions won't cut it.
RAID could have gone into more detail. While one other reviewer deeply criticized this book for its focus on history being useless, I am going to respectfully disagree. Also, real world experience is required.
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