McDst 70-271 Exam Cram 2: Supporting Users & Troubleshooting a Windows XP Operating System

This book was very helpful in passing my Microsoft 70-271 exam. It provided much relevant material from a users standpoint that prepared me for my certification. It also is a good Book to keep around as a reference.

For those of us looking to fill in our varied real-life technical support experience with some actual honest-to-goodness certifications, this book is a useful cram. I was looking for more of the experience of the test, and I found the difficulty of the questions to be appropriately challenging. I'm pleased to find that they are actually geared towards a higher level exam, since that is my ultimate goal. I also skimmed the book a lot, and did not even try to read it chapter by chapter (I don't study for exams that way). I ended up absorbing a lot more information from this book than I thought I would have, and I must confess I'm extremely desensitized to spelling mistakes in computer software, and didn't notice them in this book. I certainly didn't come across anything that would have stopped me from picking up the sense of the information offered. I definitely picked up new things from this book that I didn't know before, and I appreciated that. Learning more about the innards of Windows XP is never a bad thing, and at least one piece of information I was able to immediately use at work.

I passed the test so I guess that means the book worked. It was actually supplemental material. My first choice is always Sybex. This is a decent book, it went too much into the Remote Installation for what I had on the test but the test may be different for you.

Overall it was a good book withs lots of relevant material. I actually learned some things about XP that I was not already aware of. I haven't taken the test yet, but with the included Cheat Sheet and CDROM, I think I will be well prepared.

This is the best guide there is to supporting and troubleshooting XP. It's got lots of new tools that you didn't know about and tons of real world examples. This is a lot more than a test prep guide; it's just a great book to help you get more out of XP and do a better job of supporting it.