This book has major critical errors in it. It says maximum file length is 256 characters (it's 255), says that RegEdt32 is used on windows XP to edit the registry, it is in reality regedit. These are questions on the actual A+, and you will get them wrong reading this book. This is also the case for other books by Charles J Brooks, and his practice test cd on Exam Cram 2 (1000 questions, at least several with wrong answers). If it were not for these errors, he is an excellent author. However, you can not trust what he writes, as it may lead to a failed A+ Test. :(

This book is well organized, easy to read, and helpful in every way. Has extra details, information, and example scenarios to give you a "feel" of what you are working with. Comes with a CD that contains very helpful videos that further educate the reader about computer hardware and about being a computer technician.

I found the OS portion of the A+ exam to be more challenging, and so I wished that the CD contained videos on OS troubleshooting as well. Nevertheless, I still give this book a five star

Before I took the test, I thought this book was ok, but after taking the A+ hardware exam last week and only barely passing, I have to say that a lot of the material on the exam were MISSING from this book.

I have two books.

A+ Training Guide, Fifth Edition by Charles J. Brooks (this book)
A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide by Michael Meyers, Scott Jernigan.

I love both of them. I recommend that you get these books.

I purchased this book to use for a+ exam prep (2003 objectives) after conducting a lot of research on Amazon.

My background: 8+ years of application development, technical troubleshooting, production support and PC/server maintenance experience.
My story: I am working on filling out my resume with more hardware and networking training. Before my a+ studying I was very weak at hardware related topics but somewhat proficient in Microsoft Windows OS topics. Now I am stronger in both areas.

I used two books for a+ test preparation.
A+ Training Guide, Fifth Edition by Charles J. Brooks (this book)
A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide by Michael Meyers, Scott Jernigan (please see this book on Amazon for my review)

I really liked this A+ Training Guide because it was very detailed and it presented most of the material in concise tabular format. This made it easier for me to compare and study various items side-by-side. It included VERY helpful and clearly documented exam tips in each chapter, comprehensive study questions for each chapter and numerous tables of related data were provided for comparison. I found the two preplogic exams, which were also included in this book, to be very valuable preparation as well.

I read this entire book one/two chapter(s) at a time over a period of time. As I covered each chapter, I worked through the practice questions at the end of each chapter making sure to understand the details surrounding the ones which I missed. Once finished with this I took both preplogic exams in the back of this book. I was careful to study the items and explanations which I missed on the practice tests. I then went back through each chapter, studied the Exam Tips items more comprehensively, and took detailed notes relating to each exam tip item.

This was my favorite book to use for studying because of the direct, concise, tabular layout and format. This is purely a personal preference thing; however, I believe that both books helped my exam preparation and ability to learn the actual topics in different ways. Both books contained numerous practice questions, for study and for the exams, and the more questions you can use to learn the material the better off you will be in preparation for the actual tests.