CBT Review

I have mixed feelings about this release from CBT Nuggets. Normally, I quite like their products and dont get me wrong, up front I will say that I did like this release but there are 2 points I should make right now before we go any further.

1. The trainer isnt particularly great at explaining things.
2. This training is incredibly boring.

Sure, most training about programming probably wont excite a lot of people. But I myself really want to learn more about C#, having dabbled in other languages, so if I cant get "into it" then I suspect that most people wont either.

The trouble with this release is that the trainer shows an awful lot of documentation and spends too much time talking about whats in the documentation. Whilst its good to know where I can find stuff, I can check that out myself thank you later on - I dont need you to read it for me. When I am paying for a training course, whether it be a class I attend or a Computer Based Training product I am paying for the trainers experience and expertise, not them reading to me.

Ok, with my negatives out of the way, lets focus on the positives. Did I learn anything useful about C#? Sure, this training does cover what variables are, operators, expressions, methods. He talked about Classes, Objects, working with Menus, Events and Controls.

One other downside (depending on how you look at it) is that the trainer uses TextPad to write and present his programming, and whilst some people will appreciate that this is a free editor to use, others when it comes to programming .Net languages, want to see Visual Studio being used - myself included. This isnt a reason to not buy this training though, just something you may wish to consider.

There is quite good coverage of ADO.Net as well and also includes coverage of ASP.Net. All in all, its quite a resonable release. It certainly wont make you an expert C# programmer, but quite honestly, nothing will make you a great programmer in 11 hours.

Pros:
Good Solid Introduction to C#.

Cons:
Training is rather boring.
Trainer reads a lot of documentation to you.

Company: CBT Nuggets
Product Link: On The Job Training Series: C#
Price: $199

Our Rating: 6/10

There are 15 major topics in covered in this release of Windows Vista Training from TrainSignal, covering topics from Installing, Backing Up and Configuring Windows Vista.

As is normal with Trainsignal products, the audio and visual quality is excellent and that only leaves the...well, training.

In many of the videos, we felt that the training was good, not technically too hard to understand - we'd say aimed at the experienced home user through to Level 1 (Helpdesk) support staff.

If you are beyond this level, you'll probably find this training to basic.

This release includes coverage of the new Aero Interface in Vista, installation, managing disks, networking, backups, users and groups, sharing, IE7 and administration tasks - overall it covers a good portion of the things you'll want to do with Vista.

There were however many "little" things that we didnt like. For example, the backup video spends around 20 minutes showing us a third party backup solution which has nothing to do with Vista. Whilst we appreciate the fact that Windows Vista now ships with a "crippled" backup application, and sure, some people might like this training showing you an alternative. But when I pay for training on Windows Backup, I dont expect a third of the video to demonstrate a totally different product (especially one I have to pay for). You may disagree, but we think that a short mention of alternatives you might like to check out would have been better, not a mini tutorial.

Other gripes included the fact that there were many times throughout these videos where the trainer got stuck trying to perform a task and it didnt work. He'd forget a password, or clicks something and doesnt appear to understand what has gone on. Whilst it definately gives you the feeling that the training is done live (and I understand that things dont always work in the real world), I'd have edited these things out. It doesnt look good.

We have mixed emotions about this release from TrainSignal. Its a reasonable release for beginners, but from what we've seen the trainer is clearly not an expert.

These gripes aside there are a lot of videos in this package and unless you are expecting a really hardcore technical tutorial, you'll probably be reasonably happy with this release.

Whilst it isnt what I'd call the best training around (and Trainsignal have done much better than this before), ibut ts certainly the best at the moment as many vendors havent yet released their Windows Vista training. If you need Vista training right now, its definately the best on the market, otherwise I'd probably wait to see what else comes out in the coming months.

That said, if you are a home user, or low level support staff member wanting to find out more about Windows Vista, we recommend it.

Pros:
19+ Hours of Training. Video and audio quality is very good as usual with most trainsignal products.

Recommended to home users and helpdesk staff.

Cons:
Trainsignal claim 19+ Hours of training, although this certainly doesnt mean 19+ hours of good training. Quite frankly, removing the errors the trainer makes and the babbling on about unrelated topics, this should have been much shorter. You can't always judge the quality of training by how long it goes for and this release is highly evident of that.

In our opinion, the Trainer clearly isnt an expert on Vista and that does undermine the products value. That said, most of the training appears to be technically accurate.

Company: TrainSignal
Product Link: Windows Vista Administration and Support
Price: $149

Our Rating: 7/10