Friday, August 7, 2009

A close look at uCertify M70-315 Prep Course

Microsoft has gone above and beyond to make sure that the Web Development and Programming Environment that its Developer base use is as flexible, robust and easy to use and troubleshoot as possible. That is exactly why having a Microsoft Certification goes a long way with Employers. Let’s face it, in these tough economic times we cannot afford to overlook anything that would give us an edge over the next guy who is trying to grab the same job as you.

That’s where certification training resources like uCertify come in. If you are like most of us, you probably don’t have $2000 to $3000 dollars to pay for a Microsoft Certification Training Class. For a few hundred dollars you can essentially accomplish the same thing and in a fraction of the time.

Being a web developer, I have been thinking about taking the “M70-315 for Web Applications with C# .NET”, and uCertify has a prep course on exactly that topic (along with a couple of hundred other certification preps which I am not going to go into detail for. Which is why I downloaded and tried out this Prep Kit to see how much I know already and what I need to brush up on for the exam.

The thing that I loved about the Prep Application was how easy to use and common sense the interface was. Let’s face it, none of us would want to learn a whole new complicated application just to prepare for certification, which I am willing to bet is exactly what the uCertify people had in mind when they created this Prep Application. The Application is divided into two main sections: “Study and Learn” and “Practice Test”.

The “Study and Learn” section is a simple flash card type interface with a list of highlighted and important topics presented to the user. While going through them, it helped me remember a lot of the detailed troubleshooting information that I had used at some point in the past but had forgotten about since. It makes for a great review of existing knowledge for programmers. What it does not do however is to teach someone how to program from scratch! And no one should really expect that from a Prep Course, since the assumption is that you have been programming for a while now and you are trying to get ready for the exam.

The “Practice Test” Section of it is a set of multiple choice tests that target specific test related topics you should know about before the exam. What I liked about this section the most was the fact that it has a Learning mode, where it will let you take a test and once you have put in your answer it will explain to you what you got wrong. The most impressive part of the Learn Mode was the amount of detailed explanation that is given on questions that you get wrong. It basically walks you through the whole thought process of coming up with the right answer, not just give you the answer, and that has helped me come up with a troubleshooting strategy that can be applied to any website related issue, not just the ones in the practice tests.

Overall I find this Prep Course to be a truly impressive Package and would recommend it to anyone preparing to take a Certification Exam. And for reading this blog, I am happy to share a discount coupon code with you. The discount code which entitles you to a 10% discount is "UPG033". You can download the Prep Kit from http://www.ucertify.com/download/70-315.html

Happy Testing!
Pete Soheil
DigiOz Multimedia
http://www.digioz.com/

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