Is anyone here Comptia A+ Certified?  I am going to take the two tests this Friday and wondering if anyone has some hints and tips.   I have been taking practice tests like crazy and I usually pass the Essentials test pretty easily, but the Practical Application test is hit or miss.

I got certified in 2002...so I don't think I can help much today in 2012.

I remember that it wasn't hard if you know your hardware components and terminology...

Thanks.  I am actually pretty good on hardware stuff.  The part that gives me trouble is all of the command prompt commands and tools because I never really use it other than for ipconfig.

Yeah I used DOS from 1989 to like 1996 almost exclusively so that wasn't a problem for me. But hardware stuff was little more challenging.

Good luck otherwise. It really didn't help me too much in my job search at the time but I guess it could have contributed to me getting in to an IT field as a network admin assistant which lead me to what I do now...which is completely unrelated to IT. :)

Yea, what do you do now?  I am going to school for Electrical Engineering but thought that this might be a good certification to put on my resume.  I want to get into the hardware development side of things so I figured I could do some computer technician work to finish out my last year or so of school to build a decent starting ground for my career.

I do online marketing and  advertising now.

A+ is a good thing to pad your resume with or use to get a start in a computer shop or even something like Best Buy geek squad. Plus it isn't too expensive to get. Back in my day it was all about MCSE certification if you wanted the big bucks. A+ was good but more for your $15/hour tech jobs. I got 2 of the 7 MCSE certificates and called it a day...IT just wasn't my thing. 

Dunno if MCSE still matters as much as it did back then, or if Apples genious bar certification is the way to go now. :P

Yea, the MCSE certifications are still pretty big.  The A+ exam counts towards credits for certain ones now because you need a certain amount of work hours to be certified.

I didn't go into the test studying at all, mainly because I felt like I would lose information that I know to be correct.
It depends on what you want to do with the certification. For alot of government (especially defense) and contracting jobs, A+ was the standard requirement for a long while but was changed to security+ about a year ago.
For small tech shops and places like law firms, an A+ will do but they want you to be specialized in something else.