Does anyone here have one? If he/she does, will he/she be so kind and explain me how the process goes?

I have this voucher key that is good for one exam. I want to take my chance at some exam (got to decide which one first), but... Are there any books, tasks, whatever, that they give you to prepare yourself for the exam, or...?

They don't give you anything, you're supposed to acquire the knowledge yourself.
They're just certifying you know what you're supposed to know.
There are Microsoft Books available for every subject of course and they contain the knowledge you need to know, in a very dry business way.
If you can get them, CBT Nuggets are very useful.
They're videos of professionals walking you through the material and demonstrating things.
Test exams like and [url=http://www.measureup.com/]Measure Up are a good way to see if you can take the exam without wasting your money (or voucher). If you can score approximately 70-80% you'll usually be able to pass the real exam.
Braindumps are the old exams as written down by people who took them, so you can see what kind of questions to expect.
And some people just learn the questions and pass :P

When I went thru the process, there were books as well as computers to assist with the self-paced learning. There may be supplemental books that may assist with the questions that you could get.

I am in the process of certification. I've come to a few conclusions about the whole process.

1. It's pointless, in the sense that passing the exam is no measure of your programming skills whatsoever.

2. It's difficult as hell. Some questions come down to a choice between different orders of parameters in calls to obscure functions you won't even find referenced in the official books for the particular certification.

3. You can't learn the answers in advance, because there is no way for you to know the questions in advance. There is a large pool of questions for each exam, out of which a subset is selected and sent to you at the time of the exam (in an isolated room in a certified testing center). There is no internet connection. Cell phones and other electronic equipment are not allowed inside the examination room. (Neither are weapons. I had a quiet chuckle to myself when I read that. They make you sign a form in advance, promising to abide by all these rules). Questions are periodically changed, precisely so that noone can simply collect them all and find the answers in advance. This has been done because this was actually happening (as Smannesman said) so that is no longer an option.

Oh hai

http://search.dilbert.com/comic/Certified

My company used to be certified as a MS Gold Partner. We just recertified as Silver as they changed their requirements. One of the things you have to do is have so many people with so many certifications.

There are the exams and there are study materials for them. Some exams are way harder than others. You'll want to do some research. However, if you go down this road, you might as well commit to certifying several MS technologies.

The easier exams are just trivia, a test of your memory essentially. You're right, of course, but that's not really the point. The point is to convince your potential client that you're not going to bring down their enterprise SQL Server install by doing something you should know better than to do.

Thanks for all the replies so far.

I'm thinking about taking Windows 7 Configuration or Windows 7 / Office 2010 Deployment. I know something from everything, but I don't think I'll be able to pass a paper exam (I assume the exams are done on paper?) on some other subject, so these two are the most viable at the moment.

I think some can be done online. Check the test description.

No paper exams for the MS certs as far as I know.
With the 2008/windows7 track there are only checkbox questions.

That is to say, you get a question, and four possible answers and
you have to choose 1 or more answers. They will tell you how many
answers there are. There are usually around 50 questions and
the pass mark is also usually 700/1000.

With the old 2003 track they had simulations, I don't know why these
aren't in the 2008 exams.

I recommend the self-paced learning books and cbtnuggets for
learning material. But there are others like Sybex and O'reilly which
are ok. But I would use them more as a supplement to your study material.

The Windows 7 Configuring 70-680 exam isnt too hard, so that is a
good starter exam.

In our case, the point is that my company's MS software licenses will be cheaper the more of us that have an MS certification. We're taking 70-536 (.NET Framework Application Development Foundation) and 70-562 (.NET Framework 3.5 - ASP.NET Application Development), by the way. That's my company as in "my place of work", I don't own it.

Right, you're doing the same MS Partner thing we did, Silver level?

Ironically, forcing us to go Silver has made my small company move way more towards open source than the stuff I've been doing for years. Somehow, now that they get to tack on an extra 700 dollars to each employee's new laptop, they aren't so keen on MS stuff anymore.

We ran out of Windows Server licenses, they refuse to pay for anymore and are decommissioning our ActiveDirectory in favor of an open source LDAP.

MS didn't change the buying habits of big companies with their change, I think the small shops are reeling from it though, and dumping MS like hot rocks. The trouble with that is these employees get used to open source and often move to big shops. It's a losing strategy with only short term gain for MS.

I always preferred this one. :)

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2000-08-31

Hehe, I was about to post that one :-) It's a pretty accurate depiction of what happened when I sat down in front of the examination computer.

Truer words have never been spoken. What certifications are good for is getting past HR into an interview with someone that can actually assess your technical abilities.

That and if you work for a reseller, having enough people that are certified gets you a price break when selling things.
I remember working with someone that was Cisco Certified yet didn't understand the concept of a routing or ARP table. Paper Tigers make me sad. :(

Yea, most likely I'll be picking that one, just the academic 072 version, but it should be the same.

Gotta love all the replies, thanks a lot guys. I'm now 95% sure that I'll be taking the exam.