infoTECH Feature

February 08, 2012

Are You Certifiable?

IT professionals able to take a breather from work can brush up on their skills and have a little fun through an online Microsoft (News - Alert) quiz called “Are You Certifable?”

Asking you a series of questions related to Windows 7 and other IT pro and developer topics, the quiz throws a series of multiple choices at you to gauge your knowledge of technology.

To start, you can go in as a guest, but that limits the number of questions and other options available. To get the full experience, you’ll need to log in with a Windows Live account instead. After logging in, just click on the Play Now button and then choose a screen name and area of expertise. Click Play Now again and you’ll be presented with a list of categories or tracks, including Windows 7, IT Fundamentals, IT Professional, Dev Fundamentals and Developer.

Picking your favorite category presents you with the series of questions, offering you four multiple choice answers from which to choose. The questions tend to range from somewhat simple to fairly challenging depending on your expertise, but should prove interesting and informative to most IT professionals.

For example, one of the simpler questions that pops up during the Windows 7 category is:

Which of the following methods can you use to deploy Windows 7 images to 100 computers on your network while meeting three objectives: minimizing the time to perform the installation, minimizing network traffic, and minimizing the physical resources required?

1. Install Windows 7 on each computer using a DVD-ROM.

2. Install Windows 7 from a network share.

3. Install Windows 7 on each computer from a serial bus storage device.

4. Install Windows 7 from a Windows Deployment Services (WDS) server.

The correct and obvious answer is, of course, 4.

But, as I mentioned, the questions do get a bit more advanced, as evidenced by the following one:

You are the administrator for your company’s Active Directory directory services network. Your servers are running Microsoft Windows Server 2003. The client computers run Microsoft Windows XP Professional. To ensure data security on your network, you have implemented an IPSec policy. The users have been complaining that network transmissions slow down when they connect to a server that runs a custom application. What should you do to resolve the issue?

1. Use the IPSec Monitor snap-in in quick mode.

2. Use the RSOP snap-in

3. Use the IPSec Monitor snap-in in main mode.

4. Use the GRPResult utility.

The correct answer is 3, perhaps clear to those of you who work with IPSec, but likely more challenging to admins who haven’t used it.

You’re given a certain amount of time to answer each question until the clock runs out. Getting a question correct gives you a pat on the back with a “Nice work” message and a certain number of points added to your overall score. The site also provides an explanation to the answer in case you want to understand why you got it right.

Getting a question wrong displays a “Sorry, that’s incorrect” message with the right answer displayed and an explanation of that answer. You can also flag any topics that you got wrong so you can return to them at a later time with a better chance of getting them right.

Along the way you can receive vouchers that will let you answer the question a second time if you got in wrong, remove two wrong answers from the list of four, or give you twice the number of points for a correct answer.

“Are You Certifiable?” is an fun and clever way to test your knowledge and skills and hopefully gain a bit more information that could make it easer to do your job.


Lance Whitney is a journalist, IT consultant, and Web Developer with almost 20 years of experience in the IT world. To read more of Lance's articles, please visit his columnist page

Edited by Rich Steeves
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