Microsoft Second Shot is now Microsoft Exam Replay!

In prior years, Microsoft has offered a program called "Microsoft Second Shot" which was always only available for a limited time of several months but allowed you to re-take a Microsoft certification exam for FREE!  Therefore, you would pay the standard cost of the Microsoft certification exam (previously $125) and then you would be able to take the exam a 2nd time in the event that you failed the 1st time.  The nice thing was that you were paying the same cost for the exam whether or not you failed the exam the 1st time!

However, those days are now gone!

Now, Microsoft has replaced "Microsoft Second Shot" with "Microsoft Exam Replay" which follows the same concept but is directly CHARGING you for the cost of the re-take.

Therefore, buying an Exam Replay costs $230 while the cost of a single exam is $165.  Therefore, purchasing an Exam Replay is the same as buying the exam TWICE!

For any intelligent person, there seems to be no visible benefit from purchasing the Exam Replay pack and instead it is better to either simply study diligently and pass the exam the 1st time or else purchase the exam twice.  In the event of the Exam Replay, if you were to pass the exam the 1st time, you have still ended up paying the cost of 2 exams.  Therefore, an Exam Replay only makes sense to those who are basically attempting to pass the exam via "trial and error".  

I am not really sure how Exam Replay really benefits ANYONE, but perhaps Microsoft believes there are enough unintelligent people in the world that cannot do the math and will purchase an Exam Replay anyway...

PluralSight Black Friday deal!

PluralSight is offering a Black Friday deal on an annual subscription to their training!

For just $199, you can get an annual personal PluralSight subscription! That is a $100 discount off of their normal annual subscription price!  Woo hoo!

You should hurry before this deal runs out!  https://learn.pluralsight.com/offers/black-friday-2016?aid=701j0000002B6ujAAC&oid=701j0000002B6ueAAC&promo=&utm_campaign=black+friday&utm_content=&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=social&utm_term=

Download MSDN Magazine Issues

If you are a current or past subscriber to MSDN Magazine, you can now download all of the current issues of MSDN Magazine as well as back issues of the magazine!

The MSDN Magazine issues allow you to read them online, download them digitally or even download any code samples from the MSDN Magazine articles!!  Wow!!

You can download the MSDN Magazine issues here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/magazine/msdn-magazine-issues

Microsoft giving away FREE E-Books!

Microsoft is giving away a TON of FREE E-Books!

You can get a list of all of the FREE E-Books from here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mssmallbiz/2016/07/10/how-to-download-all-of-the-free-ebooks-and-resources-in-my-free-ebooks-giveaway/

New PluralSight courses for Visual Studio subscribers!

If you are a Visual Studio with MSDN subscriber, you have a free benefit that gives you access to a PluralSight subscription!

The courses in the MSDN PluralSight subscription are limited compared to a full PluralSight subscription, but you can see the type of content that is being made available and rotated periodically for that PluralSight subscription from here:  https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2016/06/14/new-pluralsight-courses-for-vs-subscribers-july-2016/

It worthwhile to note that the courses that are being removed from the MSDN PluralSight subscriptions, will still be available to subscribers with a FULL PluralSight subscription.  

So, if you find many of these courses, useful it is worthwhile to sign up for a FULL PluralSight subscription.

If you sign up for a Plus PluralSight subscription right now, they are offering a deep discount for an annual subscription for only $299!!

Online Microsoft Developer Training

There are quite a few online vendors for Microsoft-based training nowadays and I am sure the list is constantly growing, but here are some of the more popular online training companies I have encountered:

1. Learn Now Online: http://www.learnnowonline.com/index  This company used to be formerly known as AppDev and has been around for a very long time.  They offer a wide variety of courses and even offer specialized developer tracks
2. Skillsoft: http://www.skillsoft.com/ This company is definitely one of the most widely used online training companies by companies because of the wide variety of courses that they offer geared for developers and non-developers alike.
3. PluralSight: http://www.pluralsight.com/  This company is one of the most up-to-date in regards to keeping up with the latest and greatest technologies.  Many of the online training videos they offer cover technologies that have not been fully released yet and are still in CTP or Beta testing stages.  However, they offer very few certification training courses for developers overall.  Most of the certification courses they offer are geared towards Network and System Administrators. 
4. CBT Nuggets: http://www.cbtnuggets.com/  This company provides a large variety of courses and is definitely one of the most expensive amongst all of the training vendors out there.  It offers some developer training courses, but is largely geared towards Network and System Administrators. 
5. Microsoft Virtual Academy: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/  This training is directly offered for free by Microsoft and covers most Microsoft technologies but the courses often skip over lots of material/topics needed for certification.  Most of these courses are geared towards gaining a basic overview/working knowledge of a technology than gaining a proficiency sufficient to pass a certification exam.

Free Code School access!

Code School is offering free access to numerous courses as part of its recent partnership with PluralSight.

Code School offers a different methodology of teaching/training than traditional online courses in that each module offers hands on exercises directly within the browser for you to try out as you are going through the content in the course which makes it very easy to learn any technologies that involve development/coding.

If you want to check out Code School for yourself, this free access is for just a limited time (ends this Friday 01/30/2015), so it is best to act fast!

https://www.codeschool.com/pluralsight?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=codeschool72_as

 

Free online Microsoft Training!

If you haven't heard about or seen the Microsoft Virtual Academy website, you should definitely check it out!  It has hundreds of free online videos and training courses for Microsoft-centric content.  It even has courses which cover preparation for Microsoft Certificate exams such as the 70-480 exam!

You can check out Microsoft Virtual Academy here: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/

If you are looking specifically for preparation for the 70-480 course, you can check out that course here: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/learn-html5-with-javascript-css3-jumpstart-training

ADFS v. 2.0 Training on PluralSight

PluralSight (http://www.pluralsight.com) offers a variety of ADFS v. 2.0 training as part of their Full Library catalog.

The Full Library catalog requires a monthly or annual subscription but the material on ADFS v. 2.0, Windows Identity Foundation as well as a wide variety of other assorted topics related to development are well worth the cost!