Wednesday, October 3, 2012 at 1:10PM

I have had a few questions emailed to me asking about the 70-687 exam after I posted about my pass on Techexams.net . For those who follow me on twitter and Linkedin will have already seen my posts last Friday about the pass. My final score was respectable but not perfect by any means but I hope to give an informative opinion on the exam. I have now also started to write up a study guide for this exam.

New Format

New logo! The new Microsoft logo is the first thing you will see on this examination to tell you that this is going to be a little bit of a change from what we have been used to over the past few years. Don't worry though, there is still the tried and tested format of the multiple choice question used for most of the test. Yet after the first few questions it starts to throw you drag and drop questions. E.G. Pick from this list of answers, disregard the wrong ones and arrange the rest in the right order. I would say I got about 10 of these questions, nothing to amazing and nothing too much to worry about.

Difficulty

It is on par with the old Windows 7 client exam, not the most taxing examination if you are used to taking these on a regular basis yet might stump a newcomer to IT. If you are thinking of taking this certification as your first step into the world of IT I strongly recommend taking the Windows 7 client examination while it still exists as the market demand will be higher. If you have taken the Windows 7 exam it seemed to me that only about 30% of it is different and the other 70% are reworked questions from the old examination.

Content

Ok, here comes the tricky part. Because of the nature of Microsoft examinations and questions being drawn from a pool your experience may be a little different than mine. Mileage may vary so to speak. Looking at the new subjects within Windows 8 I was tested on

IPv6 link-local addressing

Storage Pools

Direct access (you only need to know what this is, not how to set it up ! )

File History (really pushing this one, about 5-7 questions on this subject alone)

Picture passwords and PIN passwords for the tablet OS

Installing Windows Store apps on multiple clients

Sign off

I cannot really tell you much more than an overview becuase of that nice little NDA Microsoft gets you to agree to at the start of the exam. If you have any questions or queries please pop it in the comments below, I have squarespace hooked into my iPhone notifications so will be able to reply pretty quickly.

Books

If you want the quickest and quite frankly best laid out and written book on this subject I reccomend the official Microsoft Press book for the course. You can buy it here from Amazon. Or click the link below if you have AdBlock turned off.

Amazon.co.uk Widgets