I was thinking about taking Essentials and Applications soon, and was wondering if anyone had taken it recently as I have some really general questions. Mostly I was curious about how old school the questions get? I took a practice exam which I passed, but I noticed it had a shit ton of older tech questions referring to Slot 1 CPUs, AGP 8x, PCMIA and floppy disks. I'd imagine it was simply a dated practice exam, but I wanted to know if I really should brush up on my older tech knowledge.

Thanks!

Most of what I got taught at uni was dated by at least 5 years, and I was in the best Computer Science uni in the country (I'm aware it's not the same as IT). The more up to date classes were either sponsored by big software companies trying to push their new tech (e.g. Microsoft) or taught by students.

That being said, I have no idea what they might expect from you (I don't know much about this A+ certification) but seriously, AGP questions in 2012? Sounds more like a history exam... Though I bet gmartinfan would ace it.

Took several Cisco courses. They have online tests that are super difficult. The terminology, wording, and diagrams change almost by the minute. My professors recommended to avoid A+ as it was dated. Saying that, Cisco still referred to previous hardware from time to time. My only suggestion is (just like with GRE, LSAT, SAT, ASVAB) to take as many practice tests as you can. Stay up to date as much as possible, but don't forget the history.

I still get nervous trying to sort out all the CIDR subnetting tables we had to do and actually implement with server boxes that we built with Ethernet cords we built as well. That shit for Cisco could get hairy.