Synopsis
All-in-One A+ Certification Exam Guide is the best and most complete A+ study book available. The hardware information reflects modern equipment, and the Windows/DOS coverage includes Windows 95, which many A+ books neglect (of course it also covers DOS and Windows 3.x, which are still relevant). Meyers attacks the PC architecture one piece at a time, beginning with the CPU (coverage extends through Pentium II) and continuing through power supplies, RAM (including DIMMs and SO-DIMMs), motherboards (through ATX), and the peripheral bus (covering Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI). The author covers disk drives, including all versions of SCSI through the various implementations of SCSI 3. Video information isn't absolutely current, but is adequate for the exam. Meyers's coverage of networks includes 100BaseT LANs as well as older systems and TCP/IP. He even pays some attention to Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS), both important when configuring networks of Windows machines. Photos and cartoons back up Meyers's lucid prose adequately--even the cartoon bubbles emerging from pictures of hardware (showing how the CPU "talks to" the memory, for example) are informative. Some of the conceptual diagrams are a little confusing, but they're in the minority. One of the most helpful features of this book is a chart that allows you to figure out how much time you should devote to studying each exam component, based on your experience with the topic. Further, the CD-ROM that comes with this book allows you to take exams in "practice mode," where you're given hints and referred to specific chapters for further study. --David Wall
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