Best books for Certs?

[berderder]

Hi everybody,

 

I'm trying to amass a good list of books to buy/rent/etc for technology certifications. I know Mike Meyers is a popular author for CompTIA. I own a couple of books that Cisco put out for it's CCNA Routers and Switches cert. 

 

Maybe there's a review website out there for this sort of thing. One thing to rely on is Amazon ratings, but maybe something even more comprehensive or IT focused. 

 

Thanks for any help you can give.  

[Condor]

I'm no expert by any means, but in my limited experience for Cisco and Microsoft certifications the latest of the books that they each publish are plenty comprehensive for their respective tests. I'm not sure of a cert-oriented place to buy/rent books like that, but you can definitely find slightly older editions for much cheaper that will have about 90% of the info you'll need (in Cisco's case anyway) as long as they're not more than a couple years old. Just my $0.02

[Lurick]

How deep or broad are you wanting to cover? I can recommend books that will take you down the rabbit hole and then some for just a single topic or books that cover a lot of different topics but only touch on the basics.

[berderder]

5 minutes ago, Condor said:

I'm no expert by any means, but in my limited experience for Cisco and Microsoft certifications the latest of the books that they each publish are plenty comprehensive for their respective tests. I'm not sure of a cert-oriented place to buy/rent books like that, but you can definitely find slightly older editions for much cheaper that will have about 90% of the info you'll need (in Cisco's case anyway) as long as they're not more than a couple years old. Just my $0.02

I didn't realize Microsoft had it's own cert books. I mean, I don't see why they wouldn't, but they didn't jump out at me on Amazon. I ended up buying a cert book from a third party for their MCSA Server Infrastructure. I would much rather buy a book straight from the certifying institution. 

[berderder]

3 minutes ago, Lurick said:

How deep or broad are you wanting to cover? I can recommend books that will take you down the rabbit hole and then some for just a single topic or books that cover a lot of different topics but only touch on the basics.

Well, really my goal is the certs. So I would need books that would be specific preparation for things like CompTIA, MCSA, CCNA, etc...

[Condor]

3 minutes ago, berderder said:

I didn't realize Microsoft had it's own cert books. I mean, I don't see why they wouldn't, but they didn't jump out at me on Amazon. I ended up buying a cert book from a third party for their MCSA Server Infrastructure. I would much rather buy a book straight from the certifying institution. 

Yep, offered through their MOAC program: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-302904.html

[berderder]

5 minutes ago, Condor said:

Yep, offered through their MOAC program: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-302904.html

I think I see them on Amazon now actually but they were actually lower rated than the 3rd party one. Doesn't mean they're worse - you can't necessarily always trust the Amazon ratings. Also, the Microsoft published ones are broken up into 3 separate books instead of one big book by the 3rd party publisher.