- 32 minutes ago
Can you believe that after DECADES in the computer industry, Linus STILL doesn’t have even the most entry-level certification there is? Come along for the ride as Linus dives into the A+ Exams armed with nothing but a jar of water and years of figuring things out as he goes.
CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:48 What's a CompTIA?
3:24 The Setup
5:32 Test One
8:44 The Proctor Strikes Back
10:10 Test Two
13:08 Is it worth it?
16:13 Wow, he's got a lot to say...
18:18 Credits
CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
1:48 What's a CompTIA?
3:24 The Setup
5:32 Test One
8:44 The Proctor Strikes Back
10:10 Test Two
13:08 Is it worth it?
16:13 Wow, he's got a lot to say...
18:18 Credits
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:04am i worthy to join your ranks or maybe the more important question is should he bother to join
00:11their ranks depending on who you ask comptia's a plus certification is either an essential early
00:18milestone in your it career or it's an antiquated remnant from before youtube made learning about
00:25technology both easy and free but until you fork over 500 us dollars there's no way to know for sure
00:33it is almost impossible to find concrete information about the exam itself but
00:39how can that be the certification has been around since 1993 and has been passed by more than a
00:46million people worldwide and yet nothing has slipped out yet i've been dabbling in tech for
00:53as long as a plus has been around and i've always kind of wondered am i worthy to find out
00:59i decided to put my money where my mouth is if i pass i'm certified but if i fail there's
01:06no free
01:06retakes they don't even offer a discount my money is just gone along with my reputation
01:13so come along with me and let's find out together if 20 plus years of figuring it out as i
01:19go has
01:19qualified me to do any more than just drop things and segue to our sponsor see sonic their prime tx
01:261000 watt power supply features an 80 plus titanium rating hybrid fan control and a 12 year warranty
01:32yup 12 years i just wanted to say it twice learn more or pick one up using our link in
01:38the description
01:48comptia is a non-profit lobby and trade organization whose members include pretty
01:52much every hardware software and services company that you've ever heard of plus a metric banana load
01:57of ones that you haven't and if their 990 disclosure form is anything to go by running a non-profit
02:03like
02:03this can be pretty lucrative they bring in over 140 million dollars a year between member dues and
02:11certifications but not all the cert money is from test fees they also sell training materials study
02:17guides and even complete online courses that will help you prepare for your tests the only thing they
02:23won't sell to you or to anyone is the actual questions which makes it a little bit tricky to evaluate
02:30whether the test is even valuable in today's fast changing it landscape now in the past maintaining
02:37this level of secrecy was relatively easy comptia would run their exams on locked down workstations
02:43in carefully controlled rooms patrolled by humorless human proctors nothing went in or out without
02:49permission and if you were foolish enough to share what you'd seen on the test or heaven forbid use the
02:56bathroom in the middle you could kiss your certs goodbye but like everyone else they've had to
03:02evolve with the times and these days you can take the exam in the comfort of your very own carefully
03:07controlled room monitored by the exam software they put on your computer and a team of both human and
03:13ai proctors that will watch your every physical and digital move that means no alt tabbing to your study
03:19guide no gum chewing and absolutely no screen sharing or recording let's take a look at our setup
03:26well it's exam time and how do you feel i'm a little nervous actually i don't think i've taken a
03:32test
03:32in 20 years well here's your phone uh okay you can't use your actual phone there's just too much crap
03:38on
03:38it oh this is just a like one to put away this is one to put away so don't worry
03:43that makes sense i mean
03:44surely you know second phone couldn't be a thing or third phone minus would never cheat yeah well no
03:50no i don't want to cheat on the exam i genuinely want to know so i didn't do any prep
03:56going into
03:57this because what i want to know is does the school of hard knocks work well that's the thing i
04:04might be
04:04very experienced but what i've heard about the test is that it can have stuff that's kind of archaic or
04:10niche so you could actually have a ton of experience but still not score well on it
04:16wow this is quite the setup and for good reason they require you to take pictures of your test
04:22environment to ensure that you will have absolutely no aids available to you that means no paper no
04:28pencil no touchscreen devices of any sort unless they are out of arm's reach and depending on which
04:35documentation you look at you may or may not even be allowed to have a vessel filled with water i'm
04:42going to hope for the best here they use an exam taking software that includes a human proctor who
04:47watches to make sure you do not leave the view of the webcam and they monitor for any software running
04:53on your pc to ensure that you are not recording the session which of course i took as a challenge
05:01now we don't want to invite another battle with a large tech organization so we won't be showing
05:06you any of comptia's copyrighted materials directly but with that said in order to make
05:12sure that any examples we come up with are representative we might have figured out a pretty clever not
05:18to mention nearly undetectable way of recording the entire exam session maybe jordan could give you
05:24guys a run through of what we could have done to do that at lmg.gg floatplane the check-in
05:30process was
05:31pretty straightforward i verified my identity gave the human proctor a little tour of the room with my
05:36webcam so that they could confirm that i was all by my lonesome and didn't have a stack of a
05:40plus study
05:41guides just out of frame then once they were satisfied my crew very quietly slipped some cameras
05:48into the space so that you could all watch this yeah in spite of our editor's best efforts really
06:01solid showing by the way though um that's pretty boring so why don't we do this a different way
06:06right out of the gate i was freaking out i don't remember the last time i touched an office style
06:11multi-loader tray printer like this my problem with this was the parts you're supposed to talk about
06:18could be in either of these locations depending on who makes the printer which i didn't know
06:21because i don't know where those parts are anyway except fair enough i was off to a really bad start
06:26i have so many problems with this diagram there's no motherboard in this computer also what is the
06:33box in the bottom of the case that's the box that the motherboard goes on i would have thought maybe
06:38it's supposed to be a power supply but there's a clearly a power supply up in the top in fairness
06:42to
06:42them this was a pretty fair question and the potential causes and answers did make sense it's
06:48probably a thermal issue okay this one was actually pretty easy i thought i struggled with
06:52this one really yeah error requesting a4 paper um so what i figure was happening is your users
07:00accidentally putting a4 instead of letter so you just change the default to letter i'm going to
07:04confess i thought a4 was letter that's different oh this is metric letter is imperial i almost
07:09certainly got this wrong then unless you studied their materials and you know what their prescribed
07:15order of operations is for diagnosis you are not going to get this answer correct no this is a have
07:20you paid for the training materials check yeah i think i did get it right though and we should give
07:25them some bones some of the questions really did test if you know your stuff that's true like this one
07:31it wants you to try to figure out how you would get internet to a remote location the most likely
07:36way
07:37and there are valid and more valid answers i think this is a question where it's you don't
07:44have enough information that's true because like how remote are we talking cellular could be pretty
07:48good for remote but if it's really remote it's probably going to be satellite i actually like this
07:53question okay a lot of people forget what factors mean in this context factors are different things
07:59a factor is something you have something you are something you know each of those is a factor
08:05so password and pin those are both something you know one factor password and thumbprint that's two
08:11different factors did i get it right we'll never know what do you mean we'll never know i thought you
08:16screen recorded the exam allegedly doesn't matter uh yeah no this is a good question this is something
08:23people should know what constitutes a redundant internet connection to ensure that the connection doesn't
08:29drop nfc sure ain't show 70 questions in our video he's not wrong so while you're over at float
08:35plane for jordan's alleged video maybe you can check out the extra test commentary and after that for
08:39now let's take a break and move on to part two of the exam okay uh i think so but
08:46i don't know what
08:47it is you said that it's a little different yeah this time you're going to be talking about operating
08:51systems about security uh some software troubleshooting okay and the very vague operational procedures okay
08:58there was one software troubleshooting thing on the last one but it didn't tell me what operating
09:02system i was using so that was really confusing it was for pointer trails i was like where to find
09:08that setting is going to vary depending on what os i'm running version of the os even so let's see
09:13how this
09:13goes so how do you think he's gonna do it around two he's not passing it you underestimate him he's
09:20had the twitter account hacked three times before we get to part two of the exam i was barely even
09:28able to take the exam she was gonna boot you out man dude she did boot me out yeah the
09:33proctor wouldn't
09:34allow me to take the exam because the aspect ratio of my webcam view wasn't right and i kept trying
09:41to
09:41tell her yeah on my interface there's no black bar the problems on your side and she was like you
09:46need
09:47to uncover you need to uncover it you need to uncover it like just tell me what you want to
09:52see
09:52in the view yeah this is clearly a software bug on your side i think i saw what she was
09:58talking about
09:58because the next time i went on yeah it briefly showed my 16 by 9 with like a black bar
10:04in a square
10:05box okay and then like corrected and then the next proctor no issue oh yeah this was interesting though
10:10like can you email good timing for this one yeah a question on identifying phishing emails you could
10:18use this a couple months ago yeah if i had done this test a couple months prior i actually probably
10:23wouldn't have fallen for that yeah just the refresher never hurts how can you prevent phishing oh user
10:30training you're training yeah back to back on how to prevent phishing attacks they saw you coming
10:36any mac question i basically went like this this one made me so mad they say botnet attack a botnet
10:46attack
10:47is not having an infection on your computer that makes you part of a bot swarm no a botnet attack
10:54is
10:54using many to attack a target which is probably a dos this is a malware infection yeah you're part of
11:01a
11:01botnet probably yeah or maybe it's a crypto miner which they don't even know about actually they've
11:06never touched on crypto on this at all interesting and this is an up-to-date test this was a
11:10flawed
11:11question anyway next question i really liked this question because even though it's super basic
11:16it's the kind of thing you're going to run into all the time my facial recognition isn't working
11:21what do i do and you just guide them through it from the help desk yeah that's fair all right
11:25okay
11:26okay this made me extremely angry what do you mean by least additional expenses and impact on users
11:33it doesn't even say buy it it says use it so i don't know if they already have it why
11:38not use a
11:38third-party licensed backup software that could be the least additional expense if i want it done
11:43in a good way i suspect they want external drive but it's just because you're not putting load on your
11:49drive or as much load on your drive then i don't think they want external drive because that's not the
11:54least additional expense i said d but that's not what i would recommend it's also not a good
11:59backup if it's not a different device it really isn't you know what you're probably right the answer
12:03probably is external storage because that's technically a backup and it doesn't say what i'm
12:08backing up do i have two drives in the system already i don't know i don't know enough information
12:13you're backing up colin's collections of social stuff so you know so i'm gonna need more than just one
12:18external storage device a big one can you recall exactly what you were thinking
12:27high data usage on a smartphone that reaches its monthly limit customer uses it primarily for calls
12:32and sms that's what they tell you the user lies we were going the exact same place
12:39that should totally be a response this is way above your pay grade both valid as an entry-level guy
12:45oh yeah that's true you just wouldn't be making this this is whatever the hell your boss tells you
12:49to do that's your next step that's fair yeah you guys got to remember jordan actually comes from like
12:53this space so i'm speculating a lot of the time yeah no this is the junior guy does not get
13:00to
13:00decide this but hey i passed baby with all that out of the way now that i've taken and passed
13:08the test
13:09what do i feel this is worth other than the shiny penny worth of dead trees and toner well i
13:15think
13:16that depends on who you're talking about for the average consumer looking to learn about fixing
13:20computers and it honestly it's a hard no from me compared to back in 1996 these days there are nearly
13:29unlimited resources right at the tip of your fingers all for the low low price of an internet connection
13:35hi it's james with ltdstore.com you'll be saying lt we every time you use our new precision driver
13:40are you getting this camera man and check out this nut driver bit these nuts are gonna love it watch
13:45this
13:46a regular driver doesn't store bits but you can fit one two three bits in here and if you go
13:51to the
13:51site right now within the next 20 minutes because we don't have all day we'll give you a good deal
13:55and
13:55a few seconds of your time here and there as for on the professional side of things well i do
14:01question the
14:02relevance of actually a lot of the questions and if i was in charge i would want to see a
14:08lot more
14:08questions that force the subject to demonstrate real tech problem solving skills but with that said
14:16it's not like my sister would have passed the test and i definitely see the value in having some kind
14:21of certification that demonstrates an above average level of technical knowledge i mean put yourself in
14:26the shoes of a hiring manager you're expected to interview candidates for everything from sales to
14:31marketing to it you can't be expected to be intimately familiar with everything and a plus and other
14:39certifications guarantee at least some baseline level of knowledge allowing you to focus more on
14:45evaluating a candidate's references or cultural fit so with that in mind then if you're a working nerd
14:52with a bit of xp but you're looking to pad the old resume it could help you land the interview
14:57but
14:58you should know that your experience and your attitude are probably going to have a bigger impact
15:02once you're past that point of course all of this kind of assumes that somebody who has an a plus
15:08certification actually knows the material that's covered by the exam well here's the thing these are
15:15my scores and while they don't tell you exactly which questions you got wrong or what the correct
15:20solutions should have been they do provide a summary of the subjects that require further study and
15:27boy is that ever a list now as i mentioned before i absolutely disagree with the structure and even
15:33expected answers of some of the questions there were clear cases where they wanted a particular answer
15:39but if you have enough experience you'll know that you need way more information before you choose
15:44that as a solution but with that said they obviously think that their approach is representative of
15:49your knowledge so then why are they playing things so loose when it comes to grading with any amount of
15:56study guys this was not a hard exam a passing grade is only around 75 percent would you hire a
16:03techie who only knows how to build three quarters of a computer well i guess food handling certs are no
16:08better and if anything the stakes pun very much intended are a lot higher than leaving one last group of
16:14people to talk about the ones who already have a plus now comptia even though they don't offer a
16:20discount on retesting if you fail they do offer a lower cost path to recertification and it's kind
16:27of cool you only need to renew your highest level comp to assert if you have more than one but
16:31i'd be
16:32curious to know how many people out there are regularly renewing their a plus now that it expires after
16:37three years the argument for expiry is that it ensures that a technician skills keep up with the rapid
16:43changes in the information technology field and you can renew at a reduced cost with an eight to ten
16:49hour e-learning course but guys i can't help feeling like it's less about keeping people up to date and
16:55more about the extra revenue my test didn't acknowledge windows 11 even once which coincidentally
17:01turned three years old this month so it seems to me that it's the test itself that's having trouble
17:06keeping up with rapid changes in the it field as for our last last group me well i guess i'm
17:15glad i did
17:16it i'm kind of stoked that i passed i've heard a plus described as easy and common sense but i
17:22don't
17:22mind being an easy common sense kind of guy so i'm gonna enjoy being certified while it lasts and the
17:28while it lasts bit is key because now that this video is out i am sure that they're gonna revoke
17:32my cert
17:33causing significant harm to my future job prospects if only there was some other way i could make money
17:39maybe by wearing these shoes from vessi but i love my sandals this is not gonna sponsor us if he
17:45keeps
17:45wearing those sandals so i'm gonna steal them there must be a reason why linus is so obsessed with
17:50sandals i got to find out maybe they're actually better than vessi i spent 20 seconds putting that on
17:55and i just slipped right into vessi one second with ability though i give a five star but i don't
18:00want to
18:00show up on ugly toes maybe it's waterproof of course not you think you're vessi how about the look
18:07vessi strikes again the ugly sandals are nearly 20 percent heavier mission complete i replace all
18:13of his sandals with vessi check out their core side classics at vessi.com linus tech tips wait he has
18:19more sandals if you guys liked this video why not watch me put these skills to the test in a
18:24head-to-head
18:24tech support challenge against jake
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