Good to have you back, Foggy. I think that you are right that the number of Birfers has slightly increased since the press conference by Shurf Joe.

I did the test back in the late 90's, and have to say, the MCSE has always been a major pain in the butt to pass

And every couple of years you have new products that new tests can be written for.
an NT4 MCSE isn't worth much these days (even though I have one server running NT just for giggles).

Foogie!!

Welcome back, Foghorn!! You will be wonderful on the retake. U waz robbed! Robbed, I sayz!

Certification testing is almost pure profit. The more times they can get you to take the tests or buy the add on test materials, the more money for no effort they get.

And Microsoft's tests are a breeze compared to Cisco's cert testing.

Congrats Foggy.

Welcome back, Foggy!

Sorry the evil Microsoft screwed you (again!). I know you'll ace it next time, though.

Most of the questions I missed were about enterprise-level stuff.

Which, I understand, is necessary if you're going to be certified on Win7. There really are companies that have thousands of computers in a single building and other buildings like it around the world. I'm not bitching about that being part of the test. Also, they had some questions where they had like 10 possible actions you could take to fix a problem in the left column and you were supposed to choose only the ones you would actually do and move them into the right column -- in the proper order -- to fix the problem. You might only need to do two of the possible actions, or maybe all ten. You had to know which actions would be useful, which ones wouldn't help, AND put them in the right order. I was impressed by that. That really is a good test of whether you actually know enough to solve real problems in the real world. I wish there had been some hint in the book that they might ask questions in that fashion.

So there's a new technology for large companies with branch offices hundreds or thousands of miles apart, to help them all be able to use large documents without wasting a lot of time waiting for downloads from the other office. It's interesting. I learned all about it in the book, I thought. But there were about 15 questions on BranchCache, a large percentage (which makes sense since it's a new technology and there are two different ways to set it up) of the test, and it asked a number of questions about command-line administration of BranchCache which was definitely not in the book. I didn't have a chance on those.

But the question now is, should I spend the time learning BranchCache and all the other enterprise-level stuff (e.g., how to install Win7 on 400 machines using 'images' instead of using the Setup program 400 times)? Also, it's difficult to learn the enterprise-level stuff when you have only a home peer-to-peer network ... no domain, no server, no nuffin'.

I'm not going to be doing anything enterprise-level. Our plan is to deal with small companies, no more than 20 or 25 computers max. Should I spend a lot of time learning technology that I'll never get to use, just so I can say I have the ticket?

It's a

If you're going to do even small-level companies, having a handle on firing up an AD server and being able to manage it is pretty important. If nothing else, having an authentication server is critical given the way folks behave on the intarwebs at work. Off-loading major V-scan work from the clients to a server is pretty handy, too. Being able to run fpolicy is pretty handy.

I'm not a Windows proponent, but I am a fan of making my life easier (centralized account management, high-powered virus scanning, etc) and Winders 2008 server does make administering even that many machine a whole lot easier.

Then you need to take time and set some up servers using used computer parts and something like VM Ware etc to use different server set ups on one computer. You don't have to have the bleeding edge, just enough horse power to get it going (RAM and CPU). Also you might pick up and older managed switch (Cisco/HP) on Ebay to use to test/set up VPNs etc. I have 1 Win2k3 server, one old NT server, an HP 2524 managed switch along with several older computers that I have different operating systems (mostly stick to Windows as that is the big enterprise package in this area) installed with different hardware (SATA vs IDE vs SCSI etc). It may be older, but they help me keep up. It is all hooked up to one cable modem with 2 IP addresses (one for my wireless entertainment needs and one for the "home" network. I run the roku and other entertainment on a separate channel). SQL practice data base can be run on a laptop if need be.

There is one thing about Windows and that is most companies use one of the Windows operating systems for the computers. It is very common for a user to have the same OS on the work as well as the home computer. I still don't see too many Unix/Linux workstations except in highly specialized roles. Linux has a reputation for geekyness that many of the users in my computer users group are very uncomfortable with. Windows (regardless of security) is familiar. It is easier to use the same system at home as you do at work.