A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Sixth Edition (A+ Certification All in One Exam)

This book is very detailed and a great reference. I recommend it to anyone wanting to take the A+ exams.

I would have liked to have been able to print out the helpful glossary and take it with me, but it is secured and both printing and right-click feature (to copy and paste)are locked. You would have to retype everything into another document if you wanted a glossary or have a computer with the glossary.pdf on it. This makes for a very frustrating experience. I'm sure there is a good reason to lock this from McGraw-Hill's point of view, I just don't know what it is.

A+Certification is a great book for all persons who want to learn about their PC.

I got the book as a Christmas gift and was A+ certified January 4th, 2008. I read the book from cover to cover, took practice exams, and scored in the low 800s (exams 601 and 602.) There are tons of A+ books out there and this is one of the best. Weighing in at over 1,100 pages, you'll find enough information tucked between the covers to pass the A+ exam even if you only have ten days to study.

Mike Meyers did a great job with this book. It's written to where people of all educational levels can understand, and it's a very good refresher for those who already have a background in computers. It would also be a good "on the job" reference.
If you were to only use this book and the disk that came with it, then you should be able to easily pass the IT Technician Exam (220-602). I used ONLY this book and the included disk and I took the IT Technician Exam in March of 2008, and I got a near perfect score of 900 thanks to this book.
However, this book isn't enough to get you through the Essentials Exam unless you already have a vast knowledge of trouble shooting operating systems. I took the Essentials Exam (220-601) in March of 2008, and I would say that 90% of my version of the exam was about trouble shooting. They might as well have called it the "Trouble Shooting Operating Systems Exam". This book can't prepare you for how they're going to ask the questions on the Essentials Exam. I'm just lucky I have 10 years of general computer expericence and a 4-year bachelor's degree in CIS or this Essentials Exam could've been a complete disaster. You will be very disappointed when you see what this Essentials Exam focuses on. Instead of spending all that time reading this 1100+ page book and knowing everything in it from top to bottom, I could have just studied trouble shooting for about 4-5 hours. I took a lot of time learing all the technical aspects of every hardware component on a PC, and basically everything under the sun about the software side & operating systems and it seemed like only 10% of that was on the Essentials. To get prepared for the Essentials Exam all you need to do is focus on operating system trouble shooting, diagnostic procedures, configuring operating systems in general and for networks, and the command line interface commands. And the only commands they asked about were the commands that would help you restore and diagnose problems. They asked a lot about restoring and recovery of operating systems too.

Conclusion:
This book is great for the (220-601) IT Technician Exam, but if you don't have much experience in trouble shooting and preventive maintenance of operating systems, then to pass the (220-601) Essentials Exam I would suggest finding some supplemental sample questions off the internet and really focusing on installing, diagnostic procedures, preventive maintenance, and trouble shooting techniques for operating systems and networks.