foggy147 Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Contemplating doing this online course, wondered if anyone on here is in a job doing this sort of thing and what oppurtunitys it may bring? Bare in mind I work in insurance at the moment so it would be a completely new career, I would say my understanding of computers is good and I do pick anything up with computers very quickly. Here is the link to the course details: http://www.homelearningcollege.com/Courses/IT-And-Computing/CompTIA-Pathway/ Any advise on the course or job prospects ect would be hugely appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mentman Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 CompTIA A+ and N+ are 2 of the best entry levels into IT imo. They teach the fundamentals alongside the stuff you need to know to do the job. They will get your foot in the door and make you look more respected to an employer however experience is the real key that employers look for, part time volunteering ect, something to show you can and do the job. Jobs like Helpdesk techie and IT Support are role these courses would put you in good light for. Ive done both of these courses via self study a few years back out of books and training vids i "acquired" from the internet. Also did 1 day a week voluntary work for an IT Dept at a school, and that helped greatly. I would say with self study and doing the course online you do some dedication as there still times now (im currently finishing 3rd exam of CCNP) when I get home from work and cant be arsed to do anything! After these certs/courses you could advance to CCNA (an advanced network certification from cisco) that could boost roles to network support and network engineer. But get some experience first. Good luck with ur choice and any questions feel free to fire at my inbox! Alex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-Plethora Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Just a quick heads up about the home learning college Foggy ... I have been working in IT for years but no Microsoft qualifications and so was looking at doing the MSDST (desktop support) mainly so I could get a new job. Looking online you can buy both books for the course for less than £80 and take the exams for under £200. I had a look at the home learning college and thought it would be handy to mail quetions and stuff to someone running the course. Anyway I registered interest on the site and got a phone call around 3 weeks later from one of their guys who wanted to register me. I said can he give me a cost? oh I don't know offhand. Damn right he could remember because the monthly payment was £159 with a total repayable of around £3400! BALLS TO THAT!. Grab some books, take your time and so the exam when you feel ready I say! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caliAl Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 My advice to you would be buy some books and some CBTnuggets and home study. I've been in IT for 10 years and find CBTnuggets great. Also download http://www.vmware.com/products/server (free) and setup a test lab at home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foggy147 Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 Thanks alot guys appreciate the advice. I think i'm going to do what you say and just get some books and look at the cbtnuggets videos and take the exams when I feel I am ready. Im guessing its best to do the comptia + first then the comptia+ network course? Any advice on what would probably be the best books to get what is going to cover what I need to learn? Just looking at WHsmith etc theres just so many books to choose from it's difficult to know which would be the best one to go for. Which bit of the vmware products should I download?The labcentre software? Should download any of the other software they have available? I'm sure I will have alot of questions till I get going with it so I apologise now lol! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foggy147 Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 Also as I need a more powerful pc these days as my laptop is 5 years old i'm going to build my own desktop pc so any advice on this would e great. I dont want to build a really powerful one as it wouldnt be used to play games, so just a generally fast computer that will be fairly cheap to build. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Any advice on what would probably be the best books to get what is going to cover what I need to learn? Just looking at WHsmith etc theres just so many books to choose from it's difficult to know which would be the best one to go for. Books? Don't need books... play with it, break it, reinstall it, don't do the same thing twice Says me just coming off a 36 hour non stop day and night of recovering my f&"£(ing exchange system which dropped 2 disks in the raid array over the week..... GRRRRRRRR Seriously, download vmware (or virtualbox) and just play with the software, soon get the hang of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyT Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Books? Don't need books... play with it, break it, reinstall it, don't do the same thing twice Says me just coming off a 36 hour non stop day and night of recovering my f&"£(ing exchange system which dropped 2 disks in the raid array over the week..... GRRRRRRRR Seriously, download vmware (or virtualbox) and just play with the software, soon get the hang of it. Going to take a look at that. Cheers Gav. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foggy147 Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 Which vmware software should I download Gav? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 I'm a serious fan of virtualbox (okay the licensing is a bit weird, by all accounts you can use it at work as long as it isn't for a production system, otherwise you must pay a support license of £329, which works for me anyway), and while virtualbox expects you to be able to use command line stuff, and doesn't have a fancy GUI like VMWare, it does support the same sort of things INCLUDING teleporting (their version of VMotion), and I'll be honest the command line stuff isn't exactly difficult.... VBoxManage createvm --name "cust1a" --register --basefolder /data/VirtualMachines/VMs VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --memory 512 VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --pagefusion on VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --cpus 1 VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --usb off VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --vrde on --vrdeport 10125 VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --audio none VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --clipboard disabled VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --acpi on --ioapic on VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --hpet on --hwvirtex on --nestedpaging on --vtxvpid on --pae on VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --boot1 dvd --boot2 disk --boot3 none --boot4 none VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --nic3 none --nic4 none --nic5 none --nic6 none --nic7 none VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --nic2 none VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --nic1 bridged --bridgeadapter1 eth0 VBoxManage modifyvm "cust1a" --uart1 off --uart2 off VBoxManage storagectl cust1a --name "SATA Controller" --add sata --controller "IntelAHCI" --hostiocache on VBoxManage storageattach cust1a --storagectl "SATA Controller" --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium /data/ That will create a machine.... no fancy point and click but if you are playing with virtuals, you should either know more than just a mouse click and if you don't, don't learn bad microsoft habits BUT if you are looking for skills which can be used elsewhere other than somewhere like my 'very' interesting elastic infrastructure I run at work, then you would be better off going with something like VMWare Server, either linux or windows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foggy147 Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 I have no idea what your talking about Gav lol Bare in mind I'm starting from scratch! I'm just downloading vmware server now and will have a play around with it. Downloaded some comptia a+ and network + videos and ebooks etc so will have a browse through them and get the basics sorted first before moving on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo2810 Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Foggy, decide which route you want to take before you do anything (Desktop support/software developement/networking/IT management/security/IP voice/etc,etc) and then gear your self study towards that. Honestly, IT is now a huge arena with many different paths and you can lose months studying something only to go in a totally different direction because you find it's better paid. I've done tons of meaningless IT qualifications (including CompTIA A+ and Net+ many years ago) and the only quali's I have worth their salt are CCNP and CCDP (currently closing in on CCIE) because I work in network design. I never need to call on anything I learned during my MCSE, MSCA, MCITP, etc days... What I'm saying is, decide which area interests you first, and then research what qualification you need to get into the industry at a decent standard. As Mentman says though, experience is key so find somewhere you can do some free work and get it documented on your CV. Good luck though. The IT market is diffucult to get into these days but can be very rewarding if you follow the right route. If I was to offer you a little advice, I'd say the Security area is very much sought after right now and offers very good career opportunities if you're that way inclined. PS: If I were to start over now with little to no knowledge, I'd go for the CompTIA Net+, followed by the CCENT (Cisco) then CCNA, then CCNP, CCNP-Security and CCSP and finally CCIE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foggy147 Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 Foggy, decide which route you want to take before you do anything (Desktop support/software developement/networking/IT management/security/IP voice/etc,etc) and then gear your self study towards that. Honestly, IT is now a huge arena with many different paths and you can lose months studying something only to go in a totally different direction because you find it's better paid. I've done tons of meaningless IT qualifications (including CompTIA A+ and Net+ many years ago) and the only quali's I have worth their salt are CCNP and CCDP (currently closing in on CCIE) because I work in network design. I never need to call on anything I learned during my MCSE, MSCA, MCITP, etc days... What I'm saying is, decide which area interests you first, and then research what qualification you need to get into the industry at a decent standard. As Mentman says though, experience is key so find somewhere you can do some free work and get it documented on your CV. Good luck though. The IT market is diffucult to get into these days but can be very rewarding if you follow the right route. If I was to offer you a little advice, I'd say the Security area is very much sought after right now and offers very good career opportunities if you're that way inclined. Hi Neo thanks for that, from what i've been looking at I do like to do the practical side of a job,I quite like the sound of becoming an IT engineer setting up the networks etc and judging from doing that type of role it looks like I definately need to start by doing the Comptia courses, and then I think its the microsoft engineer course I'd need to do once I actually manage to get some work experience under my belt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo2810 Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Hi Neo thanks for that, from what i've been looking at I do like to do the practical side of a job,I quite like the sound of becoming an IT engineer setting up the networks etc and judging from doing that type of role it looks like I definately need to start by doing the Comptia courses, and then I think its the microsoft engineer course I'd need to do once I actually manage to get some work experience under my belt If you are talking about setting up desktop networks (ie: making sure all users can access shared drives and printers and access network servers), then yes the Microsoft cert's would be your route, but if you're talking about linking switches and routers to get LAN's and WAN's talking to each other (running cables and then configuring the routers/switches), etc, then Cisco is your route. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 PS: If I were to start over now with little to no knowledge, I'd go for the CompTIA Net+, followed by the CCENT (Cisco) then CCNA, then CCNP, CCNP-Security and CCSP and finally CCIE. How interesting, my background was originally in networking, both cabletron and cisco and I've moved on since then to data centre design, overall technical design and platform management. While I enjoyed my network days I wouldn't go back, and I know now that management is where I should stay, purely because there are younger kids coming into the game who technically blow me COMPLETELY out the water when it comes in deep indepth tech. The other night I was on a conf call with the guys organising a rather large change to a production platform and getting everything lined up change control, outage windows that sort of thing, when the lead software architect and my linux/network guru dude went ino an indepth discussion on the way various operating systems do a file move and what the low level system calls are used....I just sat there and thought 'that's it I'm old, I get people to do things for me now ' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Well, that said, I've been looking at something myself as a sideline for my hobby (home automation systems).... and came across this lot.. http://www.cedia.co.uk/ Not totally IT, but probably a LOT less saturated than IT is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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