RE: SmartCertify CBT software for study

[Vijay Ramcharan]

Title: SmartCertify CBT software for study

I would strongly advise you to take the salesperson's words with few grains of salt.  I've purchased their old MCSE 4.0 cbt ($1000) with all the bells and whistles of hands on exercises.  I ended up setting the CBT aside and buying another for $150 from New Riders that helped me through the MS exams.  There is just not enough detail on the material that it's supposed to teach you.  I also bought the ACRC CBT from them last year (again with all the bells and whistles) and was sorely disappointed and even more upset that I had wasted another grand.  I thought that there would have been improvements in the CBT material.  Anyway, I've learned my lesson.  I use books only now.

Way too much clicking (I guess that's what they call it interactive) and very disappointing hands on (I shudder to put that term on their exercises)

Vijay Ramcharan
CCNP, CCDP, MCSE

-----Original Message-----
From: Taylor, Don [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 1:03 PM
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: SmartCertify CBT software for study

Does anyone out there have experience/opinions on SmartCertify's (www.smartcertify.com) CBT offerings? I'm looking at possibly purchasing their Cisco IMCR package, which, I'm told, leads one through all sorts of theory about routing/switching (to fill in any gaps your current education left), information about the routers themselves (how the backplane operates, etc.), and includes a section that simulates IOS configuration of everything from setting the hostname to configuring BGP and IOS upgrades. Not only that, but the salesman told me they guarantee that you'll be ready for and PASS your CCIE lab (not written - he was specific) once you can work your way through the whole CBT.

I was a bit skeptical, but he was insistent, so I'm interested in checking it out. But for such a magical product I was expecting the price to be on the order of $5 - $10K. Turns out it's only $1499. A guarantee like that for the price of a router is just too good to ignore, so I wanted to get some feedback from anyone that knows anything about these.

Thanks!

- Don