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Whizlabs - SCJP5 Generics and API issues

 
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I wanted to see if others out there shared my opinion and experience regarding Whizlabs SCJP5 preparation kit. I have taken all the quizzes and exams in the prep kit. What I found time and time again was that the API and Generics questions were many times off the topic points discussed in the K&B book. While Whizlabs and the K&B book have no official relationship, they are both study and prep materials for the exam and in theory should be covering the same material.

I found (and reported) errors in the mock exams. Most of the time it was subject material that was not covered in the K&B book. I posted questions to javaranch and from what I have received in responses the K&B book won't steer you wrong. Questions on the mock exam that went outside of the scope of the book I always got wrong. The quizzes in Whizlabs which test more "theory" then practice (so they stick better to the scope of the book) I scored higher on.

I imagine there are others out there that have had a similar experience. At this point I couldn't recommend the Whizlabs product to anyone. These errors frustrated me and impacted my mock exam test score. Whizlabs has not responded to my emails other than "we have received your email and forwarded it to the department responsible".

The other areas of the Mock exam I felt were on topic and good. Has anyone else had this experience. When I searched the forums for mock exams I only saw good things about the Whizlabs exams and was a little disappointed with the actual product.

If others have had good/bad experiences with it I'd like to know. If nothing else my thought here is not to bash Whizlabs, but hope that they fix these problems. I also hope that others can learn from my experience with the product.
 
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Hi Rob,

I found Enthuware a lot better product than any other commercial products available. Mostly, folks start trying mock test after completing K&B. If they find questions out of Sun objectives it causes frustration. When
objective covers so many things and it is stupid to puzzle the aspirants
asking out of course questions. I don't understand why some commercial exams
don't stick to exam objectives. Typical questions can be created on
available exam objectives. As far as my experience with exam says, it would
be far better to stick to K&B; There were no any question that could make
me puzzled. Questions were 100% from the exam objectives. One may miss
some questions only due to lack of proper attention on the question; but
can't miss them due to because they were asked out of scope.


Thanks,
 
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Well, I cant say that I had a problem thus far with the generics or API questions being off the course cylabus. Not completely anyway. Yeah, I recall one or two multiple choice questions where one of the correct answers were items not covered in the k&B book. That was annoying but not as annoying as having to suffer through a question that dealt with a topic that is not at all a part of an exam objective.

But all of that only bothered me half as much as the fact that the Whizlabs toolset itself is fautly. I ran into glitches with the Adobe Flash player being used by the product. When I was taking an exam which covered incorrect questions I had from previous exams completed, which also included incorrect questions from a previously taken interactive quiz, the software behaved erratically. While taking this exam, when I got to a question that I got wrong from the previously completed interactive quiz, the software did not wait for me to complete the question and click "next"! It just displayed the question, and, without any delay, presented the next question! And then it did it again for the next question! It seemed to do this for each question it had to present from the incorrect questions I had from the last interactive quiz I took. VERY ANNOYING. I was hot, to say the least.

I will continue using Whizlabs to completion, even with the faults mentioned by you and me because the content is still quite good, even with the out-of-bounds questions. I am currently working thru exam 4, then I'll take the final, work through that, then I'll buy the Enthuware product and have at it. And I'll take the bonus exam on the K&B book disc.
g

[ May 16, 2007: Message edited by: G Marshall ]
[ May 16, 2007: Message edited by: G Marshall ]
 
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