# Recommended CompTIA A+ 220-801 220-802 study material



## Kathiresan

Hi can any one suggest me a good study martial for comptia a+ 220-801 220-802 exams
Thanks


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## greenbrucelee

Mike Meyers is the leading authority on the books. So you would be looking for compTIA A+ all in one exam guide 8th edition by Mike Meyers although I am not sure if it is released yet.

For practice exams you would not go wrong with purchasing the A+ exams from Cisco Network Simulator | IT Practice Exams | IT Training | Boson.com


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## BosonMichael

Yep, 8th edition has indeed been released. However, there aren't many other study materials that have been created for 220-801 and 220-802. If I were starting over with my A+ certification today, I'd probably do 701 and 702; after all, they will be available until August 2013. In about 3 months, when more study materials and practice exams for 801 and 802 are available, I'd recommend doing the new exams.


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## deamon32

Wanted to throw my two cents in after passing my 220-802 exam today, and the 220-801 last week.

I used the Exam Cram A+ 220-801/802 book exclusively, it was between that and the Mike Meyers book mentioned above. I chose the Exam Cram based on a specific Amazon review that I felt suited my needs perfectly. I am however using the Mike Meyers book for my Network+ study and so far like it a lot (two chapters in).

I will make this post a little bit more detailed since the exams are fairly new, and I am sure plenty of people will have similar questions and hopefully this post will provide some insight and answer some questions people have about the test.


First thing first, some quick background and information about myself and info on the actual tests:
I have never taken any sort of certification test before taking the 220-801 and 220-802 exams. 
I am currently 26 and have been involved in fixing and troubleshooting computers since I was 12 after watching someone replace a broken motherboard in my Mothers computer. I have been professionally working in the IT industry since the age of 18 and would consider myself a jack of all trades with very high troubleshooting skills. (network admin, system admin, database admin, reverse engineering, tech support, customer support, etc.)

My biggest fear prior to taking these test, and why I have not taken any tests until now, was about having to memorize a lot of useless information such as the pin count of every memory module made in the last 10 years, maximum cable length of every variant of firewire, etc. Not only am I really bad at having to memorize information like this, I don't really see the need for it when almost everyone has Google and the Internet right in their pocket as reference, as long as the core information is understood.
Luckily the tests are not nearly as bad as I imagined them to be, and I feel much more confident while studying for future certificate tests.
The Exam Cram book also displays most of this type of information in a table making it very easy to bookmark for review later on.

All of the questions on the exams were very straight forward and none of the questions felt like they were trying to trick me, or anything of that sort. I would say that I could eliminate two answers right off the bat for every multiple choice questions (almost all of them have 4 choices) giving you a 50/50 chance worst case scenario but there was never a case where I absolutely had no idea which answer was the correct one.
Apart from the multiple choice questions there were the performance based questions which I understand are new for the 800 series tests.
I encountered two specific types of performance based questions, the first type was only found on the 801 test and the second only on the 802.

*[Moderator: removed specific examples, as it is a violation of CompTIA's testing policies]* 

The 220-801 test is primarily composed of questions that require you to recall specific information with a few direct real-world troubleshooting questions which outline a scenario and ask you about the most probably cause, or what the best next step would be.
As mentioned above, the multiple choice based questions were straight forward and you can pretty much always eliminate two out of the four answers. There were a handful of questions that I feared which had you recall very specific information about cable length, or the exact radio frequency of IR/BLuetooth, etc. But most of the questions were more practical than pure memorization of information.

The 220-802 exam was composed almost primarily of direct real world troubleshooting questions which outline a scenario and ask you about the most probably cause, or what the best next step would be.
Just like before you can eliminate two out of the four answers almost right away on the multiple choice questions, and there was never a question where I felt like two answers could be correct and I could not choose.

One thing I noticed on both exams, there was a multiple choice question on each test asked twice, VERY slightly reworded with pretty much the same exact multiple choice answers on the same exam...






On to a quick review of the Exam Cram book.
I think this book is excellent for people who have plenty of real world experience and have/are working in the IT industry. The book gets straight to the core of the information without wasting much time on "fluff". The author does an excellent job explaining concepts and using real world examples. Almost all of the information that needs to be memorized such as pin count of recent memory technology, ethernet cable standards/speeds, etc. is given to you in tables throughout the chapters making it very easy to identify such information and it lets you quickly study/review as needed.
The layout of the chapters are very logical and straight forward, most of the chapters rely in part on some of the information given to you in previous chapters, so reading the book from start to end is recommended. There are a few chapters you can probably skip, which is what I did while studying for the 801 test, and then you can go back to read those chapters for the 802 test. I am primarily talking about the chapters related to Windows and Mobile devices since those topics are only found on the 802 test. 
The rest of the chapters all have information that is found on the 801 and 802 test, most of the chapters have a similar layout where the core information for the 801 test is explained at the beginning of the chapter and then the procedural and troubleshooting information which is required for the 802 test is towards the end of the chapter once the main informational has been explained. But I would highly recommend reading those chapters through even if you are only studying for the 801 tests since there were a few questions related to troubleshooting concepts that you should know for the exam.

My one and only complaint throughout the book was that the author never really made it clear that while talking about motherboard buses, memory, cables etc. that at the very core they are simply transferring 1's and 0's through the use of electricity/light/whatever else. The author very quickly touched on this concept when talking about Hard Drives/Optical Media, and went into a slightly more detailed explanation when talking about monitors, which I thought was a very weird place to convey this concept.

Reading Mike Meyers Network+ book he explains the 1/0 concept perfectly 20 pages into the book, and subtly reminds people throughout the chapters that that is all that is happening at the core, which I think is an important principle for people to have in the back of their minds at all times.


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## Johnn.Epps

I actually have a question related to this as well. I am about to finish my cert with 220-702. I used *removed* question and answer pdf for 220-701 but they don't make the pdf version anymore. So I have been looking for another guide i.e *removed* or *removed*. The only issue is I don't know which is actually a good guide so please advise if possible thanks.

John Epps
Info Systems Specialist 1
BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport

[Moderator note: This is the second time you've mentioned these braindumps. I have removed them in this post; please do not mention them again. Thanks.]


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## joeten

Hi I 'am reliably informed those are brain dumps and should not be used if caught you would lose certification I also found out a lot are out of date if you have Mike Myers there used to be a practice disc involved so revision and study are your best option this thread will now be closed


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## BosonMichael

I thought I'd address why I edited Deamon32's post above - it contained specific examples of what he saw on the live exam. Before you take a CompTIA exam, you are asked to agree to their terms and conditions, among which is a condition whereby you agree to not disclose what you saw on the exam. To prevent Deamon32 (and TechSupportForum) from getting into trouble with CompTIA, I have removed the information.

Thanks for understanding.


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