New Riders publish a series of books to help you study for certification, and the Exam Gear CD-ROM is part of the process. A simple Windows application acts as a window into a database of exam questions, based on the questions used by Microsoft. This CD-ROM covers implementing and supporting Windows 98.

The Exam Gear CD-ROM takes three approaches to testing your knowledge, each suitable for a different part of your study. The first approach is the Study Mode, which allows you to skip through a series of questions--which are marked as you go, and give you an explanation for the correct answer if you make a mistake. Once you've got an understanding of the material that is being examined, you can try a fixed-form Practice Exam. This chooses a random selection of questions from the Exam Gear database, and allows you to work through a timed exam. Since exams now use adaptive questions to test your knowledge, changing their question patterns based on how you've answered previous questions, New Riders also give you the opportunity to learn using a sample Adaptive Exam.

If you're about to start working on getting certified as an MCSE or a CCNA, these CD-ROMs will be a useful addition to your library of tools and texts. They won't help you pass the exams on their own, but they will certainly help you in your revision and preparation. --Simon Bisson

Like other exam gear packages this one is a manual install and as with the other this should be changed to auto install. After the installation it is very easy to configure and run and no major hardware changes needed. Also this package will run under Windows 2000 if necessary.

Again as with other exam gear packages you have the three modes of operation, first the study mode making the learning process fun and interactive. Secondly come the practice exam mode, with several hundred question to choose from you have a great opportunity to pass.

Lastly the adaptive mode, this mode is not for the novice, as it measure you exam ability and may stop at anytime. Unlike the actual exams this is not a true indication of you testing power. The price is a little steep, although I don't think will detract from the overall value of the product.