As far as my limited experience, I would go for the PIX. The PIX may be sucky, like Negrita says, but it is by far the industry standard, and the most effiecient out there. I hate to get into all cliches and everything, but you get what you pay for.

Cisco is a lot of work; you'll need to do your homework on it, but I'd bet that anything you need to do, a PIX will do it for you.

My 10 cents.

Thanks, Don, I'll look into it. I also bought unemployedmcse.net at the same time I bought unemployedmcse.com. Haven't decided yet about .net.

Once I get some solid traffic going, I'll certainly put up some links to EH-net. Soon as I figure out how.  But I'm allowing larger avatars to be used. So many forums out there limit the size of your avatars. The avatar is half the fun of creating an account. I'm allowing 100x100 pixel, 500 byte avatars

BTW, it's not just about Microsoft certs, it,s about any cert. In fact, my local New Horizons has a class upcoming in a couple of weeks for the CHFI. Strangely, it's an online class ONLY, suppsoedly because of low student turnout. It's like three hours in the evening, Mon, Wed, and Fri, for about three weeks. I'd  really love to go for this class, but there's no place near me to do the exam. I'm in Cleveland, Oh, and according to Prometric's site, there's only three places in Ohio to do it, Cinicinnati, Dayton/Fairborn, and Maumee, outsde of Toledo. Maumee is probably closest to me, but it's still like a two hour drive.

But I was looking at the course layout for the CHFI on ec-council, and it still looks like it's cool stuff to know. The class is still around $2000.00 or so. 

I just started a new forum website, http://www.unemployedmcse.com

It's NOT my intention to spam, I'm just sincerely trying to help out anyone studying for exams. No cheating or posting test questions allowed, but intelligent discussion is encouraged about the entire certification process; choosing a school, choosing a certification, etc.

Sorry, Don, please don't yell at me. I'm just sincerely trying to help out the group.

I won't mention this anymore.

The only school worthwhile in my area was/is New Horizons. They have MCTs on staff that know what they're teaching. All the other schools in my area are worthless.

Now THAT'S something to lose sleep over. With everything else going on in the world, Korea and it's nuclear progress, now China is trying to hack into our systems.

And there's nothing we can really do abour it, short if sending someone to China to track track down these people physically. That would be kick in the pants for diplomatic relations.

Maybe we should issue another embargo to China and stop buyong everything with a "Made in CHina" label. Yeah, right.

But this is a dplomatic issue, and this is computing. What should we do, guys?

Thanks Don. Great article.

VMware, good idea.

I just bought the other day, one of those external USB hard drives. On sale at my local ofice supply store, it's a Maxtor 160GB USB drive, for only $79.98, after $40.00 "instant rebate".  Prices have really come down a lot.

Install VMWare on my local machine, and then install the virtual machines onto the Maxtor 160GB. If Ican ever make it beyond the 3.5 hours plus it takes to install Flight Simulator X.  FSX box says it requires *only* 15GB to install. Have yet to make it all the way through and have it completely installed. Made it to DVD disk2 yesterday, and in rearranging the cables, the USB cable became unplugged, and the install aborted. My fault, doh!

Is a decent VMWare install possible over only a USB 1.0 bus?

Yes, welcome.

Rule 4 of "the ten laws of geek" by Tapeworm:

iv. thou shalt help guide those who seek answers, so long as they have complied with law three.

• with respect to the open-source state of mind, always share information with those who are curious; don't hide it.

You're in the right place. 

Yes, I got the Office 2007 cd, have not installed it yet, because, well, there's only the one legal product key.

I'd like to find someplace online where you can purchase just the product keys. ANyone know anywhere where yo cando that?

Of course, there's the issue of how much a product key would cost. In my mind, it shouldn't cost a lot, because, geez, it's only 25 alphanumeric charatcers! How much could that possibly cost?

OTOH, I just KNOW they're going to want a lot for a product key, because it's involved somehow into the licensing part of the software. 

I ordered the other day, from Amazon, Tapeworm's excellent "1337 h4x0r h4ndb00k". Just arrived today. paperback, 250pgs. NOW I have  a portable copy of "the ten laws of geek", and "how to design your very own ascii graffitti bag". 

SOME things it's OK to pay for. It's a sure bet my local bookstore wouldn't carry this; I would have had to order it anyway.

IMHO:

No one version of Linux is the best, but I think the install routines I have seen for various flavors are pretty similar.

I like Red Hat 8.0, I like Kubuntu and Ubuntu. Knoppix 8.0 came on my CEH membership card, and the distro of DSL (Damn Small Linux) is only 50MB, so it's pocket-size. You can go to a publicy available computer, like at a library say, do a three-finger salute, and boot up DSL, and have fun, if you don't want to mess up your home machine. What's neat about DSL is that you can run it from a USB drive. DSL and Firefox Portable on a USB thumb drive, and you're pretty close to unstoppable.   

But you didn't hear it from me....

 

We've already been through this a million times. it's an old topic, but I agree with both of you.

Makes me wonder a little bit about your screening process, though; you didn't discover they were only paper before you hired them? Did you give them any kind of testing?

I went to the one in Cleveland, Jan 23rd, downtown at Renaissance hotel. about 1000 people, presenter was Matt Hester, who often does presenting at regular Microsoft events at a theatre in Middleburg Hts.

Lotsa hype, quite a few vendors had stations set up there, including my old school, New Horizons. The local NH has a class coming up for the CHFI, but it's only online. Don't know why, other than maybe it's not a big seller. But it's in the class guide, listed at $2995.00  3 nights a week, MWF, 6p-9pm, for 3 weeks, I think.

You would think I have enough certs.

I just discovered a new organization today. Man, I wish they were all this easy. All you have to do to belong to it is to say you're a member. Oh, and they ask you to email them to "register". I already did this morning. Organization is
  ' Or 1=1--
Johnny Long is a member.

I also would not remove the DMZ. In my experience, I've seen a lot of networks that didn't have a DMZ to begin with, and if they had, they wouldn't have some of the problems they have.

Of course, if oyu're going to install a DMZ, you HAVE to make sure it's installed and configured correctly. If you don't you may as well not install one at all. It's not enough to just install a DMZ, you have to configure it correctly. That's half the job.

Yes, Welcome.

I attended the class. Couldn't have passed without it.

Some people can do self-study, and some can't. I like to do classes, so I can have somebody to ask questions.

But that's just me.
 

As far as certs go, my local New Horizons is scheduling soon the CHFI class, but it's only online: I'm going to have to ask my contact at NH about it....

I passed the ver 2.3 courseware. I passed the exam in Dec. 04.

Make sure you bone up on URL deobfuscation. It wasn't even covered in my class, but I had a question on it in the exam. One of the easier questions, but you have to know the formula.