If you're thinking of using a training provider which still utilises 'in-centre' days as a feature of their programme, then take note of these difficulties experienced by the majority of trainees:

- Frequent long journeys - 100's of miles usually.

- Accessibility to workshops; frequently weekdays only and usually 2-3 days at a time. It's not easy to get the time off work.

- Don't forget lost vacation time. Usually we're lucky to have twenty days annual leave. If half of that is used up on workshops, then we haven't got much left for ourselves.

- Workshop days often are over-subscribed, meaning we have to accept the '2nd best' solution.

- A lot of trainees want to work as quickly as possible, but some need a more gentle learning curve and want to set their own pace that fits. This brings difficulty and tension a lot of the time.

- Soaring travel costs - driving to and from the training facility plus accommodation can start to get expensive every time you have to go. If we just assume a basic 5-10 workshops at about thirty-five pounds for an over-night room, plus a petrol cost of 40 pounds and 15 pounds for food, that becomes a minimum of four to nine hundred pounds of extra costs to cover.

- Study privacy is often very important to a lot of trainees. Why would you want to throw away any job advancement, salary hikes or accomplishment in your job because you're getting trained in a different area. If your employer knows you're putting yourself through certification in a different industry, how will they regard you?

- Who amongst us hasn't shied away from raising a hand in the air, because we wanted to fit in?

- When your work takes you away from home, you now have to deal with the fact that days in-centre can become impossible to get to - but unfortunately, the fees were paid along with everything else at the start.

It obviously makes much more sense to be trained when it's convenient for you - not the company - and make use of instructor-led videos with interactive lab's. Study at home on your computer or if you have laptop, why not get outside if the weather's nice. Any questions that pop up, just get onto the live 24x7 support (that should've been packaged with any technical type of training.) It's never going to matter how many times you would like to re-take a quiz or test, on-screen instructors can never get frustrated with you! And remember, as a consequence, you don't have to worry about any note-taking. Everything's laid out there for quick access. Could it be more straightforward: A lot of money is saved and you avoid all the travelling; and of course you get a more stress-free study setting.

Commercially accredited qualifications are now, very visibly, taking over from the traditional routes into IT - but why is this the case? The IT sector now recognises that to cover the necessary commercial skill-sets, certified accreditation from the likes of Adobe, Microsoft, CISCO and CompTIA often is more effective in the commercial field - at a far reduced cost both money and time wise. University courses, for instance, become confusing because of too much loosely associated study - with much too broad a syllabus. Students are then held back from learning the core essentials in sufficient depth.

When an employer understands what areas they need covered, then all it takes is an advert for a person with the appropriate exam numbers. Vendor-based syllabuses are set to meet an exact requirement and aren't allowed to deviate (like academia frequently can and does).

You have four 'Microsoft Certified Professional' ('MCP') examinations to take in order to qualify at the MCSA level. Of these, 3 examinations are compulsory elements and therefore must be sat, but the fourth is actually picked from a range of 'electives'. A progressively more valuable & completely acknowledged elective is the CompTIA 'Security+' , which for understandable reasons is becoming increasingly more popular with students. The MCSE consists of seven MCP examinations, that reflect the greater emphasis on organisational security, systems planning and network-design.

As you might have picked up, the MCSA & MCSE qualification tracks aren't entirely easy to understand. It is normally a good idea to examine all of your plans with an IT professional, before you part with your money and buy what may possibly look like a bargain course. Certain very expensive courses aren't always the best quality, & certain reasonably priced ones are very good. The cost alone is not the best way of assessing a course. You ought to be enquiring about exactly how effective the training materials are, just how efficient is the help and support & how suitable are the exam practice software?

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