The A+ Exam:
It may be a bit misleading to label the A+ Exam an “exam.” It actually consists of two components, the “Core” (A.K.A. Hardware) portion and the “OS Technological” (A.K.A. Microsoft Windows) portion. You are given 90 minutes to complete each of the two portions of the exam. There is no set number of questions, per se, in each portion. There are also differing difficulties between questions. The question you receive after you complete a question is based on your response to the question before. A correct response will yield a more difficult subsequent question, whereas an incorrect response will yield a simpler question. It may dawn on you that it would be a clever strategy to strategically miss questions to yield very simple ones. However, after a certain number of missed questions (most likely done using a ratio format, the actual number of questions lies somewhere around 80), the test will stop, and you will shortly after be informed of your failure. Likewise, after a certain number of correct responses, the test will stop, and you will be informed of your passing. The butterflies in your stomach will begin to flutter as soon as you see the exam stop, no matter how you think you did. It is a very unsettling feeling, to tell you the truth, but if you do as prescribed by this guide, you should do fairly well on both portions of the A+ examination.
The exam must be taken at a proctored test location as administrated by both major CompTIA testing providers, Prometric and Vue. I will not recommend one over the other, I will simply advise you to choose based on the available testing locations. When you actually take the exam, it will be on a computer at a testing location. The computer will guide the exam and calculate your next questions and score dynamically. As soon as the test is completed, your score will be sent to Prometric or Vue and you will be notified of your success or failure. About a month after that, you will receive in the mail your A+ certificate and ID number to login at CompTIA’s website and for proof of certification.
Here, the technical content of this guide begins. Now that you are clear on the purpose of the A+ certification as well as the procedures involved in testing, you can now begin learning some of the actual content of the hardware portion of the exam.
To begin, you should familiarize yourself with some essential knowledge. First, you should be competent of some basic types of connectors and their technologies. Before that, it is important to understand what the difference between “synchronous” and “asynchronous” data transfer is. In synchronous data transfer, data is transferred synchronously, or according to an established procedural timing. In other words, there is no necessary overhead – data is data. In asynchronous data transfer, data is transferred according to a set of rules at any interval of time. There is no longer a need for timing. However, a need to organize and set a system for the transfer of data is necessary, resulting in a 20% overhead in extra “flow control” data.
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