Hello, I'm one the authors of MCITP: Microsoft Windows Vista Desktop Support Enterprise Study Guide: Exam 70-622 from Sybex. ISBN: 978-0-470-16535-5. To those ready to leap into the Microsoft MCITP exam 70-622, welcome. It’s been a long wait for book material to help you study. Vista shipped in January 2007, but proper study materials were not immediately available. There were reasons, at least from my perspective, that this book wasn’t ready sooner. First, the beta for Windows Vista went through several major iterations before being finalized. Second, this operating system was not simply an upgraded version of Windows XP, it was really a completely new edition of the operating system, from the brand new installation routine to the greatly improved security features. Third, the exam objectives were suddenly pulled and re-worked by Microsoft after the operating system shipped. Writing this book on my part was an effort to learn what is new about Windows Vista, understand some of the “under the hood” features important to a desktop administrator, and ultimately have enough information to be successful on test day. Hey, I had to pass the test just like everyone else.

Certifications have been an issue of contention throughout the recent years. Some would contend that the act of taking a test does not prove much of anything except the ability to memorize some answers. When the certification industry was red hot, not coincidently the same time as the dot com bubble, fly by night certification mills were promising high paying jobs. They were giving you questions and answers and telling people that they were competent to run IT departments after two to four weeks of questionable training. Those same people obviously retooled since the bubble burst and are now selling the wonders of flipping real estate for millions. I’m not one to tell you a certification can change your life, but you’ve got to start somewhere. I started with an eagerness to learn and an ability to soak up knowledge from all of the computer magazines I read, but I wanted a way to get exposure to a wide variety of subjects that applied to the business I worked in. Certification programs from Cisco, CompTIA, and Microsoft fit the bill and also proved to my employer that I had baseline knowledge of the subject and an ability to learn new technologies. Knowledge is not wisdom without experience though, and that came over the following years of my life.

I just received a copy of the book myself, and to tell you the truth, it looks smaller than it should with all of the hours I put into it. I ran out of laser toner twice printing those same pages, so be lucky you don’t have the Microsoft Word version of this book. You can be sure that we have packed this book with information and plenty of questions to test your knowledge. You should certainly combine the book with the experience on your own test Vista systems. I’ll be filling this blog periodically with my own information and experience that does not fit into the format of a study guide. I’ll fill you in on the processes and methods I used to write the book and maybe a behind the scenes peek into the process of putting this book together. I hope this dialogue allows you to see the authors as real people that are really trying to help you through your certification journey. It’s a lot of work, for both of us, but it will be a rewarding experience if you do it right. Here’s to the journey.

- Eric Beehler (www.consortioservices.com/blog)