MCDST Exams (Exams 70-271 and 70-272)

Rating:
Summary: Solid exam preparation book
Review: One of the many Microsoft certification exams the Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician (MCDST) certifies a technician to support the workstation or home user's system. The certification consists of one exam on Operating Systems and one on Applications. The purpose of this book is to prepare the test taker to pass the exams. As such, the book covers the exam objectives, installation, configuration, troubleshooting operating systems and applications, hardware devices and drivers, user environments, customization, and application security. It even comes with a CD-ROM with practice tests.

The book does a good job of covering the various ways to install a Windows operating system as well as how to update a Windows system. Throughout the book are questions and answers to help the reader test their knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, while it does provide the answers it does not provide an explanation of why it is the correct one. Presumably you would have to look it up in the text to understand why it is the correct one and the other answers incorrect.

While the subject can be very technical it is written in an easy to follow narrative style. One of the problems of most certification exams is that real life often varies considerably from a pristine laboratory environment assumed in most exam situations. This may be an excellent book to prepare for the exam if that is your goal but it may not the best to learn actual installation and troubleshooting. For example, the problems that arise when upgrading an operating system can be quite difficult to troubleshoot and the book does not deal with this real life situation to any significant extent. For the purpose of passing the certification exam MCDST Exams is a recommended purchase and since acquiring the certification is the purpose of the book, it scores a direct hit.

Rating:
Summary: Good prep book
Review: This book provides a good way of preparing someone for the MCDST exam. Most of the questions that I had when I took the MCDST has very similar "situations" as the questions and answers in the book. I was concerned at first with getting a book that covered both tests instead of getting one book for each exam. This book doesn't disappoint, in my opinion.

Unless I got a later edition, the book does provide reasons why the answers to the questions are correct and why the incorrect answers are incorrect. The only issue I had was that there are some questions that list incorrect answers. Those errata are shown on the publisher's website, and the correct answer is explained in the book. I think there were only 5 questions out of the entire batch that has incorrect answers listed.

Overall, it was an excellent book.