Subtitles of the Movie

One big question everybody has is, What exactly are they going to test me on? What, how do I need to prepare for this exam. Well, let's start off with the Essentials exam and go through this. Twenty-one percent of your questions will be on personal computer components. These are the, the hardware components that make up the computer. The next eleven percent will be on laptops and portables. Now you'll see in some of the other tests laptops and portables aren't covered at all in those, and so you can kind of look at some of these topics and figure out where you're strength is and maybe take exams to ah kind of help yourself out that way. Twenty-one percent of the questions on the Essentials exam is going to be on the operating system. Printers and scanners are going to make up nine percent of this exam, so ah, networks will make twelve percent, security is going to be covered on eleven percent of the questions, ten percent of the questions are going to be on environmental and safety issues, and then five percent on communication and professionalism. Now. For the most part every test covers these same basic categories, but you will see different percentages and different weights. Now, you have to take the Essentials exam. Now on every track, on any of the tracks you choose I should say, you have to take two exams. Essentials is the basic and you have to take it on any of the tracks. So you're going to have to be up to speed on all of these, okay. Notice what this is saying now, If you have 100 questions, 21 of them will be on personal computer components, eleven will be on laptops, 21 on operating systems and so forth. Now, another question you may have is what's the passing grade? Well, they don't necessarily publish that. It used to be around 65, 64 percent. I don't even think they publish that anymore. Don't worry about that. Just know you're subject matter going in. Now, if you know, for example, that you're weak on laptops and portables then you need to be studying up on the A Plus topics that are covered here and we'll talk about that as we go through the course. Now let's take a look at some of the other tests in the A Plus certification. The IT Technician, you'll notice, you've got the same basic layout here but they're just weighted differently. So on the IT Technician you'll notice 18 percent, that's down from 21, on personal computer components. Laptops and portables was eleven, now it's nine. Operating 20 - notice what's jumped up: printers and scanners jumped up from nine to 14 and some of these other things - security dropped down, networks dropped a little, and others, communication and professionalism went up a little bit. You can see that they're simply shifting kind of the weight on, on these various topics. Now for the Help Desk technician, you'll notice the components are down 15 percent, operating systems are up to 29 percent, because if you're going to call me and get help with your computer most of the time it's going to be an operating system type problem, and I need to really understand that operating system. Now notice laptops and portables went away here on the Help Desk technician. That's just a quirk of the exam. Don't worry about it. Don't try to make it mean anything, it's just understand that on the Help Desk technician you won't have portable or laptop questions. The big one here is, notice down here, 20 percent on communication and professionalism. One in five questions on this exam is going to be questions about how you deal with people and how you deal with, especially, with irritated, upset people, impatient people whose computers aren't working. Now, the Depot Technician - notice the weights on these. Now this is real interesting. On the Depot Technician they're looking for 45 percent, or you've got to get 45 percent of your questions on personal computer components because that's your job as a Depot Technician. Fix this thing and make it work. Laptops and portables are back, a full one in five questions, printers and scanners, and so forth. Notice professionalism ah is, is gone. Not that they don't want you to be professional, but you don't have that much contact with the end user. You're, you're in the back room and they're bringing PCs to you. Somebody else has dealt with the user and they're simply delivering the PCs for you to repair. So this is, has kind of been a general breakdown to let you know how you need to prepare and also if you have certain strengths or weaknesses you can kind of tailor which path in the A Plus test you're taking. It might make it a little bit easier on you. So now, let's go, let's talk a little bit later in, in the next video about ah other aspects of the A Plus test, and then we'll actually get in to, pretty soon now, ah, actually ah studying and learning the information you need.