Hello Tony,
I’ve been studying for the Microsoft Certification exam 70-536 with the first edition of the MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536) book. I’ve noticed that there are many mistakes in this book and some chapters are a lot harder to process than others as they appear to be written by a different author to other chapters (e.g. Chapter 9 and 10).
I’m considering purchasing the second edition
I have also found that there are topics covered in the exam that aren’t in the text book – does the second edition cover all of the required exam topics?
Many thanks!
Hiya. The first edition really did have major problems. I did my best to resolve them all in the second edition–I wrote the entire book rather than dividing it between myself and another author, I triple-checked everything I wrote, and the editing team was much more thorough. Overall, reviews on Amazon seem to show that the effort was successful. Everyone really likes the book and people almost unanimously pass the test based on it.
Re: covering every topic on the exam–I thoroughly covered every objective on the public exam preparation guide:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-536#tab2
And I personally have taken and passed the 70-536 exam. With that said, Microsoft isn’t legally allowed to provide me the exam questions, and as a test-taker, I only saw a portion of the exam questions. Also, Microsoft regularly changes the content of their certification exams. So, it’s entirely possible that the exam writers would cover something that I didn’t think to cover in the book. However, as I mentioned, Amazon reviewers report passing the test based on the book, so while it might not be perfect coverage, it’s very good.
Hope that helps, and good luck!
Tony
