Wow, it was harder than I thought it would be (with many more questions), and it sucked up the better part of 3 hours. I did well in every area except one (not sure if I can say which one -- that Microsoft agreement I signed had a bunch of gobbledygook, and I might be required to give up my firstborn son). That one section seriously threatened my score.

I would like thank Professor Messer, though. His YouTube videos were really well done, and helped out in several areas to help flesh out my understanding. And I hope he doesn't mind, but I took some of the videos and ran them through a YouTube-to-MP3 converter so I could listen to them while I walked on some hiking trails near my home.

On the other hand, I would like to boo the "official" 70-680 book by Ian McLean and Orin Thomas. Even putting aside the dozens of pages of errata, it was incredibly boring -- I like working with computers and I really enjoy reading, but even I could take only small doses of this book before starting to nod off. I am getting the Darril Gibson book for the 70-685 and 70-686 instead of the Microsoft Press version because the 70-680 experience, but any recommendations for other paper books, audio books, or videos for the 70-685 and 70-686 would be very welcome.

Didn't want to let the month go by without offering a hearty shout out for your acheivement.

I am suprised you were not roundly congratulated on the acheivement. Good work on passing 70-680.

I'm not an MS employee so I'm only talking from observation. I did read the synompsis for the certification exams, how they are score. the impression I got is much as you mention. You are more likely to pass, with a consistant score in all the catagories - rather than a series of extremely high score and a few mediocure scores. Even though the average may be the same numerically or on the graphs - as we all know, they do not provide score breakdowns per individual section.

So your eperience that all sections were equally thorough adds to my impression. I can't guess at whether there is a set range which kicks in to determine a pass/fail - but from the reports... it seems that may account for some of complaints. Overall excellence, in a work environment, is prety valuable - being a specialist may be OK in a team setup, but cross training makes you more valuable in the long run, your next job might be totally different, call on a whole new set of skills. None of us would want to be the one to perpetuate the "Paper Tiger" myth. afther taking the test - you know better.

Ya done good! Atta- boy! none of the techs get enough pats on the back any more ... we just get yelled at.

Thanks for the kind words. I had a bit of a problem because my place of work still uses XP (!), which makes it a bit hard to run the scenarios given in study books! In addition, the nearest testing location to where I live is a two hour drive away (I was able to turn a vacation in the Dallas area into a vacation/testing side trip).

Fortunately, there is a plan being put together to transition several hundred computers at our various facilities to Windows 7 in the next few months (one of the reasons I worked on the 70-680 certification, plus it gave me an excuse to install Ultimate on my home computer). So the 70-680 material should be quite useful.

The next test I am looking forward to take is the 70-685. I've already ordered a couple of books, and hope to use what I learned previously for the 70-680 as a foundation. Not only will it help in my job, it will look nice when my boss and I go over my job review in October. Plus, work reimburses me for training and testing, so I should take them up on the offer.

Congrats on the pass mate, i'm going for my resit next week, i agree with you on the books, i struggle to pick it up and read it as a result

Ambitious! ... history rewards the bold.

Having the XP certification under your belt is benefit for using the Upgrade exam to move right up the ladder to MCITP: Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Support Technician

Congrats!