Hi.

Just a bit concerned as to some of the information that I get given from the College lecturer...
The course I am doing is BTEC ND in ICT Systems Support (equiv. to 3 A-Levels), along with a Cisco CCNA course.

I asked some "complex" questions, and she and her side-kick technician didn't seem to pleased about....

Here is a question on the Cisco assessment:

Choose two popular web browsers:

1) Adobe Acrobat
2) Netscape
3) World Wide Web
4) Netscape
5) Microsoft Interent Explorer


Well, quite obviously the answers are 2 and 5 (she was standing behind urging me to press 2 and 3!!! Idiot!

Another peice of innacurate information I was given:

Microsoft Windows XP needs 128MB RAM to run - I thought it was 256 - I checked this with Mr. PC World man who claims both of us are incorrect - it is 64!

I thought I'd ask some "complex" - I don't think they are, but clearly no-one has ever asked her, or side-kick technician these before...

"What is flashing the BIOS?" Oh, well, you don't need to know that... "When will you be going through how the registry works?" Oh, we won't be going through it, infact, you don't actually need to know how it works - however, you would cover it in yr. 3 of an Engineering degree at University.
"What are dll files" Oh, you mustn't delete those, they are very important - well, what for..? Hmm, well, you know (h didn't give an exact answer).

Im sure there were a couple of extra questions I asked them both, when I remember, I'll psost them up here.

Cheers
Alex

For f***s sake!

She should be fired, preferably from a large calibre gun!

It at least explains why when I've interviewed people for techy jobs some of the knowledge is...um....interesting, to say the least!

Years ago I did an MBA and the IT section of that was pathetic. I wrote one essay and attached a note to it saying that what I'd written was the essay I expected the marker to want to see, but that in the real world such an approach would get you fired.

I got a note back saying that the marker totally agreed on oth counts!

Joe

Originally posted by amhudson119
Hi.

Just a bit concerned as to some of the information that I get given from the College lecturer...
The course I am doing is BTEC ND in ICT Systems Support (equiv. to 3 A-Levels), along with a Cisco CCNA course.

I asked some "complex" questions, and she and her side-kick technician didn't seem to pleased about....

Here is a question on the Cisco assessment:

Choose two popular web browsers:

1) Adobe Acrobat
2) Netscape
3) World Wide Web
4) Netscape
5) Microsoft Interent Explorer


Well, quite obviously the answers are 2 and 5 (she was standing behind urging me to press 2 and 3!!! Idiot!


isn't it a bit odd to have netscape on there twice?



Another peice of innacurate information I was given:

Microsoft Windows XP needs 128MB RAM to run - I thought it was 256 - I checked this with Mr. PC World man who claims both of us are incorrect - it is 64!


64 is correct



I thought I'd ask some "complex" - I don't think they are, but clearly no-one has ever asked her, or side-kick technician these before...

"What is flashing the BIOS?" Oh, well, you don't need to know that... "When will you be going through how the registry works?" Oh, we won't be going through it, infact, you don't actually need to know how it works - however, you would cover it in yr. 3 of an Engineering degree at University.

it's writing new BIOS information to the eprom that holds it. BIOS being basic input and output system, the code that boots your computer and used to control most functions.



"What are dll files" Oh, you mustn't delete those, they are very important - well, what for..? Hmm, well, you know (h didn't give an exact answer).


dynamic link libraries - libraries of common code that can be accessed by client programs thus reducing the amount of code that needs to be distributed with a single program.



Im sure there were a couple of extra questions I asked them both, when I remember, I'll psost them up here.

Cheers
Alex

Thanks for the info Cyclone :)

The other one was "what is overclocking" - it is where you force your CPU to be better/bigger than it is, but you need "expensive fans - like my son's at £65" (that was her words, not mine).

Alex :)

PS the Netscape x2 was my typo

Actually, for windows XP the minimum is 64mb but its reccomend to have 128mb, my personal reccomendation is forget anything they say on the box and ask someone who knows systems, I wouldnt run it on anything less than 256mb and about 800mhz CPU...

Originally posted by amhudson119
The other one was "what is overclocking" - it is where you force your CPU to be better/bigger than it is, but you need "expensive fans - like my son's at £65" (that was her words, not mine).

Overclocking has many aspects to it, but the general point is to get more than you paid for from your hardware...

you can do things like tweaking your memory settings to gain a little more bandwidth, to full blown CPU overclocking such as increasing your FSB (front-side bus) and chip multiplier to get some beasty speed...

my current CPU is an Athlon XP 2500+, but its running at XP 3200+ speed ;) its just as simple as increasing the FSB to 200mhz from 166mhz... although yes I do have a big heatsink on it, for the XP2500 to XP3200 OC you can generally get away with it on stock voltage and stock heatsink...

of course overclocking has its risks, but of course you have to remember most things are made to take a little more than they're supposed to to make sure they can handle their speed... increasing something generally means giving it more cooling or more voltage....

also there are OC's for graphics cards, such as flashing them with different BIOS's, or enabling disabled graphics pipelines, and most of the new ones allow for increasing the GPU and memory frequency's...

I've done a fair bit of overclocking in my time, generally if you play it safe you'll be fine... but dont go messing with stuff you dont understand...

and I sometimes wonder with IT teachers in schools and colleges... I've always known a lot more than most about computers and up until going to Uni all my tutors have been a bit on the under-knowledged side... at the end of the day the internet is full of info at your disposal, if you need any help give me a PM, I help out on a few computer forums so I'm used to it hehe

oh and a few of your questions answered...

DLL's - as said above dynamic link library's... they are just a file full of already compiled computer prodecures that allow programmers to save time doing repetitive programming if a feature has already been written, some are in-built into windows, some are bought from companies that specialise in particular tasks etc...

WINDOWS REGISTRY - although your teacher was correct in saying you dont need to understand the registry, they are also incorrect... understanding the layout of the registry can be handy, I've manually removed a lot of virus's in the past on windows 95, before anti-virus's were much good... understanding how different data is stored, where important places are can be quite handy, microsofts web-site and quick searches on the tinternet can bring up any info for specific registry changes, such as auto-login for windows XP etc :) or changing modem settings for larger packet sizes for ADSL and such

Originally posted by xafier
Actually, for windows XP..... I wouldnt run it on anything less than 256mb and about 800mhz CPU...


I wouldn't run it (Win HexPee) on anything.

Fair enough, these are simple questions and any IT pro should really know the answers - including any IT teaching professional.

But if they teach you what you need to know for the course, and you get the qualification, then that's all you need really. I've been doing tons of IT stuff - I'm a programmer at a medium sized company and help out a lot on the IT side. To be honest, in some respects it's like driving. You pass the test to allow you to go out and learn to drive in the real world. Yeah you learn important useful stuff, but there's loads more to learn by actually doing it.

As long as you know where to find the information you need, know the ground rules and understand the basics that's the main thing. I guess the course might be a bit 'thin' but there's no substitute for experience and it might help you get that job.


Still, they must be a but daft to not know any of that stuff :)


I'd add that .dlls are particularly useful because different executables that need to do common operations (file & network IO, for example) can call out to the code in the same .dll file, meaning you don't have to package that functionality over and over again into different .exes. Eases the pain of debugging cos you only have to fix one lump of code when you realise you left a debug message in there that dumps out "f@anny batter" to the app's console on a customer's server everytime someone logs in, heh...

Thats the good thing about AMD the whole barton range is exactly the same chip, just with different fsb speeds and multiplyer settings, the best way to get the most out of them is to get a xp2500-m now because its a mobile chip all the multiplyer settings are unlocked so you can clock it really high, i managed to get 2.5ghz out of the chip keeping it prime 95 stable and only running at 48 degrees, on air!!