Whizlabs Mock Exam price increase-helping the community?

[Shankar Ranganathan]

I think whizlabs has increase their price of mock exam thrice the previous price.Are they helping people by this way?

[Darryl A. J. Staflund]

I don't know as the price of the unit is too high to justify the envestment for Part I of SCEA. Sun charges Canadians $180 Can. to write Part I of the exam. But given the current Canadian/American exchange rate ($1 US = $1.5 Can, I'd have to may $150 x 1.5 = $225 Canadian to purchase WhizLabs SCEA prep tool. Now why would I do that when (i) the tool only prepares me for Part I, and (ii) the tool is more than the test itself (given the exchange rate.) It's cheaper, methinks, just to buy some good books :-)
Cheers,
Darryl

[Nehal Vaidya]

I've used the whizlabs simulators in the past (XML, SCEA, SCWCD) They did help me, although they had quite a few annoying quirks, but looking at the price now, I don't think I'll be spending $100 :roll: bucks for them. Definitely not worth the current price.
Maybe it is time to start an "open source" mock up initiative

[Sanjay Raghavan]

All,
Having had the benefit of working with the folks at Whizlabs, all I can say in their stead is that they genuinely care about their customers...whenever there are questions or doubts, they ping all their resources to get them answered (whether or not they are directly related to the mock exams).
I am not completely aware of the pricing decisions...my guess would be that they have all along managed to keep prices low (through the peak of recession) and perhaps that is impeding their ability to grow into other arenas where there is a genuine gap (remember guys both venture and angel funding is really touch to come by right now). This might be one way they can mitigate the issue.
In terms of helping the community, I think their upcoming endeavors will definitely help in the IT training and certification areas.
Just to clue you all on an interesting project, I have just put together a team to write something for SCEA-part II and that project is commencing in the next few days. This is one more of Whizlabs' initiative.
So yes, of course it bites when prices go up, but I think in the big picture, the benefits to the community at large will out weigh the inconvenience.
Just my $.02!

[Shankar Ranganathan]

Hi Everybody,
I can understand their effort putting 288 questions.Everyone should make profit, I agree.But
increase from $49.95 to $124.95 is not a normal increase. Generally increase in price means it will be $5 to $10 increase not $80 increase.That is what I was trying to tell.
Rgds
Shankar

[Debanjana Dasgupta]

Hi
My 2 cents.
Sanjay, I beg to differ about their Support.
I have purchased Whizlabs at the old price.
Their questions are good, but I had a bad experience with support.
I had a doubt regarding one of the answers in Design Patters.I had sent an email regarding that, but they never bothered to reply me till now.
I had posted the same question both in javaranch and scea_prep and have received excellent explaination.
For my SCJP, I had used JQPLus, and I must say , their support was 1000 times better, they replied within a couple of hours of sending the email.
In future, I am definitely not going to waste my time sending emails to Whiz.Our friends in Javaranch and scea_prep, scea_j2ee are the best.
Thanks
Debanjana

[Sanjay Raghavan]

Debanjana,
While I cannot answer abt your experience with the SCJP tests, in the example of the design patterns, it was just a disconnect. The
Whizlabs folks constantly look at SCEA_PREP and Javaranch. Your question was brought up, but because it was already answered, they let it go...(don't remember if that was the one abt strategy vs. template method or something else...but I do know that it was brought up).
With regards to the price increase, I have requested the Whizlabs folks to provide more insight...I understand that the % is far from normal, but the dynamics of start-ups can be very different from those of large companies. But anyways, I think someone from Whizlabs will be able to provide more insight on it.

[Debanjana Dasgupta]

Thanks Sanjay
Atleast that explains it.Yes the question was about strategy and template.
Debanjana

[Shankar Ranganathan]

Hi Debanjana or Sanjay
In Java ranch I explained that Template is the right answer.Is that the same explaination you got in other sites?Please let me know.I just want to know what I have said at that time is right or not
Rgds
Shankar
My Comments posted in javaranch regarding strategy and template:
I think "Template" is the right one.The important part of this question is "slight changes in logic"
which says that there is a skeleton of the algorithm already and only a few changes to the logic needs to be made.This is ofcourse the template pattern.
Strategy pattern would be more applicable when there is a different set of algorithms and you can implement any one of them using the strategy pattern
[ February 14, 2003: Message edited by: Shankar Ranganathan ]

[Debanjana Dasgupta]

Hi Shankar
Yes the answer was template, and all the explanation I got from you and others really helped me understand.
Thanks
Debanjana

[Pradeep Chopra]

Dear Ranchers,
Thanks to you, Whizlabs has grown!!! You have downloaded our software hundreds of thousands of times, and we have helped over 1,23,000 people get the IT certifications they wanted. It has been almost 2.5 years now, and we have received thousands of mails from you in the meanwhile - we have read every one of them, and are happy to bring you "New, reinvented Whizlabs" that we hope will help you be even more successful in your careers.
We started off in late 2000 with three guys. We are now those same three guys, plus another 31 great people - that includes about 20 well-known authors and subject experts and we will be growing to about 80 soon. We are now forced to move out of the little hole-in-the-wall we started out at - to a slightly-larger-hole-in-a-slightly-larger-wall. Below are some of our achievements in the past:
•Success rate of 99.7%
•Only company for IBM XML, IBM OOAD, IBM WebSphere, IBM Enterprise Connectivity, BEA WebLogic, and SCEA exam simulators.
•First to launch SCWCD (Sun Certified Web Component Developer) exam simulator. Partnered with Wrox to provide SCWCD exam simulator with their first IT certification publication.
•Partnered with leading IT Certification and Technology portals like CertCities, TheServerSide, JavaLobby.
From one product in October 2000, we now offer over 25 proven certification exam simulation products. We've also launched a spanking-new, high-performance exam engine across most of our products. Plus, we're bringing out even more products and value added services. Look for us to offer more options in preparing for IT certification exams soon.
We know how important certification exams are for you - here's what we've implemented recently to make sure you get the world's best prep for IT certification exams:
•Test Engine - A state of the art test engine that is fully automated, combined download for trial as well as licensed version, excellent GUI, Quiz, Context sensitive help.
•Online Version - In this month we are launching the online version of our products. So, now you don't have to be bound to a single machine or location but you can access your exam simulator "Anytime, Anywhere". Moreover all of you will be thrilled to know that in this online version you will be able to gauge yourself within the community, i.e. you will get your relative score within the community that tells you how you are doing compared to others. What's more? It will be FREE with all of our products!
•Quality Management System (ISO-9001: 2000)- We'll soon be one of the world's first (if not THE first) ISO-certified IT certification exam simulator companies.
•Review Panel - We have got renowned gurus to review and approve each of our products. This way we want to make sure you get nothing less than the BEST possible. Each and every question and their explanations add tremendous value to your preparation for the exam.
•Guidance - Many of you ask us for guidance regarding the process of certifications. Questions like, Which certification exams are worth it? and What you should expect in the exam? How to go about passing a particular exam? That is, which objectives are tough and which ones are easier to handle? What should be a step-by-step approach? What should be first and what next? What is a MUST and what needs thrust? We are working to provide you exhaustive information regarding all these queries that you have. We will be writing articles on most of the certifications, which will answer these queries beyond your expectations. This information will be comprehensive enough so that you won't feel the need to spend your valuable time looking for resources elsewhere on the net. You will get everything you need at one stop only, we want you to focus more on your actual work, that is preparing for the exam and leave the rest to us. We will get you unbiased views and reviews from gurus to help you make better decisions and adopt best practices. Click Here to see a sample article we've contributed in the past for IBM.
•Support - Many of you want 24/7 mentoring to answer your questions as you prepare for the exams. Very soon we will put in place online chat and a much stronger and responsive email-support.
To continue working in these directions requires a little money over and above the commitment and passion that we have, and this is not possible with our current pricing model. We'd love to charge you even lower prices, but with the funding market in doldrums, we figured the only sensible way to pay for all of this is to charge what we'd call 'fair price for value'.
Though we received reasonably positive response from the community but still there is a section that is not aligned with our recent price hike and we definitely can't ignore that. Therefore, in view of the demand from the community we decided to once again analyze our costs, revenues and profit margins. The number of people going for J2EE certifications is much lesser than other technologies and hence a rather smaller community to serve. Therefore, it's not a workable model to keep charging a low price and provide quality. We are also not willing to stop our above-mentioned initiatives, which are going to help us build a world-class organization in the long run. At best we can bring down the prices for few more months by squeezing our costs and profit margins. Yes we understand that we haven't yet started providing the offerings that we said are going to be launched very soon. Thus we have revised the pricing once again and brought them down by upto 40%! We have also decided to give you discounts till the time we start providing these offerings. So, please avail 20% discount over and above the lower prices till the end of this month (February 2003). You can avail these discounts by purchasing our products from the link provided for our existing customers on the buy page of every product on our website. You will be asked to provide a password, which is "OCT-14-01" (excluding quotes).
On the other hand we appeal to the community to understand that it is not possible to provide what we want to, below this revised pricing. We choose to provide you quality services and products that help you fulfill your commitments and goals that you have set for yourself and charge a reasonable price for it rather than give you cheap products at a cheap price which are ultimately ineffective and hence of no value to you.
As always, we welcome your valuable suggestions! Please write to us at [email protected].
We have come this far, thanks to your support. We will never forget that. We hope to support you in your drive to be a great IT professional in the days to come.
Looking forward to your success!
Whizlabs team

[Shankar Ranganathan]

Dear Whizlab team,
Thanks for everything
Rgds
Shankar

[Deva Anna]

Its nice to know that there is company called Whizlab which does test simulators. But posting such a huge marketing material in a forum like this is totally unacceptable.

[Alex John]

How about if Whizlab put some ads within Java Ranch ? Sure it will really help JavaRanch.