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Well, since I’ve taken the effort to move to wordpress I cant leave it without regular posts. Anyway I’m busy installing another xenapp server into my farm so that will give me a chance to fiddle with load balancing etc.

Also I am working on a tutorial blog post on Citrix Smart Auditor and Installation Manager. So hopefully things will be cool. Im also currently downloading server 2008 enterprise edition from my technet subscription so I can test out the differences etc between the 2 different Xenapp platforms. Anyway TTFN!

I’ve had a few moments to have a look at the transcender practice exam product that they have kindly let me play with.

Also transcender were kind enough to let me choose which product to review so I plumped for the 70-293 product which is not an exam that I have studied for yet so any test results will be woeful.

The Transcender website seems to have a promotion of one sort or another where the major practice exams are $99 so by rough estimate that makes that 60 great british gold coins at the moment (which is the same cost as the measureup products I have been using up until now).

Firstly I must say that the pratice exam comes in the normal way of test engine and exam pack, so very similar to the measureup products I’ve used in the past.

After installation and activation of the product you are greeted with a list of the test products you have purchased from transcender, so if you were studying for two or three exams at once you just go into the application and start the practice suite you want. Once your exam has been selected you are presented with a nice clear and well furnished menu.

Opening menu

The first practice exam options you have are Optimize Exam Experience, Preset Exam Experience and Transcenderflash.

Optimize Exam Experience allows you to modify the questions presented to you. You can choose to completely randomise your questions from all of the objectives. You can set the number of questions given to you in this option. I can see this being useful if you just want to try you luck at ten or twenty questions to give a rough gauge on what you need to brush up on. You can also enter the number of questions in each catagory that you would like to be tested on. Also in the randomise options you have the ability to limit the types of questions given to you (sim’s, multiple choice etc), there is also keyword search, a option that will give you questions you have answered incorrectly a number of times and ones that you have written notes for.

Preset Exam Experience allows you to choose four preset exams and one random exam. This is the closest you will get to the real exam from a practice vendor. The transcender product I am using gives you 47 questions in each of the preset exams.

Transcenderflash gives you an informal question and answer environment to test you on key concepts of the exam. This is very similar to getting your mate to take one of your books and randomly make up short questions on pages of the book or flashcards.

Whenever you end an exam you will be notified if you have passed or failed and in a similar manner to the real microsoft exams you are also given graphs on each category within the exam so you know what you need to work on.

The other major option on the front screen of the transcender package is exam preferences this page allows you to modify your required percentage for a pass on all practice exams. Also within the menu are settings for the exam optimizer which basically keeps track of all the questions you have answered correctly in previous practice exams which helps reduce the amount amount of questions that you may have seen more than once otherwise.

You also have an Exam History section, an About This Exam section and a Reference section which suggests extra reading material.

Now onto the actual questions, the feel of the questions matches very closely the actual exam experience. Also I feel that the difficulty and style actually mirror the actual exam alot better than the measureup products I’ve been using previously. The sims actually work and look alot more like the real OS that they are simulating. I have had issues in the past with measureup products nothing generally show stopping but I had the odd visual issue which ruins the experience somewhat.

Now just a little note on the use of practice exams, you need to ensure that you do not use the product too much as when you start seeing the same questions come round again then this will affect your results and make the product less and less useful each time. So I would recommend using the preset exams very sparingly maybe use one at the start of you study then one after you have read all of your study material and practiced in labs, then go over the bits you missed out on for the last 2.

All in all the transcender is a great purchase and aide to your study routine, and at the moment its competively priced. Although at $149 dollars normal price its nearly the cost of an MS exam attempt which may put off some people as you can have a stab at the actual exam and have a chance of passing it whilst if you failure you also get the paperwork showing what you need to work on. I would however buy transcender products without a doubt if they remained at the $99 price mark.

So to sum it up the Transcender 70-293 product I reviewed is excellent and I would highly recommend it for someone looking for an idea of whats instore for them.

LINK TO TRANSCENDER

HI all,

Here’s a quick post about the lovely people at transcender. They have offered me a 30 day trial of their online practice exam product to review. Well obviously I’m very keen on trying the product out and writing my experiences on the product. So thanks very much transcender.

Blatant Plug

Well today I’ve signed up with a wordpress account to,not to move my account you see but to use it as a backup method. I’ve never been too happy with all my content in one place. I’m sure that google isnt going to pull the plug on blogger without a good deal of notice but I was always rather uneasy that I didn’t have any backups.

So I now use wordpresses handy dandy import tool to automagically import all my posts here and poof you have a complete backup of your blog.

Lastly I’m working on a blog about the data collector service in Xenapp which is actually very interesting I find, so hopefully there will be alot more meat appearing in the blog shortly.

Hi all,

Well today I met my first confirmed braindumper. IT was sadly enough a consultant we had in at work to roll out a new service. We were wondering off down to lunch together and my boss happened to mention that I got my MCSA recently. The consultant said he had just taken the 2008 active directory exams, and then said he downloaded them test king (spit) questions. It was at that point my opinion of the chap took a nose dive! Naturally he said he did not get a question wrong. Dunno maybe he did not know what a BD is but still is rather galling that a consultant that is obviously on a damn sight more money than me either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that he is gaining he cert soup by illegitimate methods!