Every program under consideration really needs to work up to a properly recognised accreditation as an end-result - not some little 'in-house' plaque for your wall. Unless your qualification is issued by a conglomerate such as Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco or CompTIA, then you'll probably find it will have been a waste of time - as it'll be an unknown commodity.

A number of years ago Microsoft updated their chief certification paths. They up-graded from their earlier 'MCAD'/'MCSD' (Microsoft Certified Application/Solutions Developer) examinations to the MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) and the MCPD (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer) examinations. Normally, there are two MCTS pre requisite examinations prior to moving onto the complete MCPD exam. If you're new to the industry and haven't ever programmed before, (although the initial unit from MS is branded a 'foundation' unit,) it could be sensible to do a programming introduction course first. It is also normally practical to take a support qualification prior to each of these, so that a decent understanding of software environments & software support can be acquired. A 'support' certification will help you to obtain your first I.T. job. The full career-track will need approximately six to seven hundred hours of study time, which means if you are studying part-time you will be able to complete within more or less twelve - eighteen months.

Some certification companies are still using one of the most out-dated training concepts - classroom lessons. Quite often pushed as a positive point, if you talk to a student who has had to attend a few, you'll find them listing some or all of these:

- All that travelling - frequent journeys and quite often 100's of miles each time.

- Weekday availability with workshops is typically the case, and with two or three days required at a time, this causes a lot of problems for a lot of trainees who are working.

- And let's not ignore lost vacation time. Usually we're lucky to have 4 weeks off each year. If half is given up to classes, then we haven't got much left for ourselves.

- Classes normally get over full.

- Tension can run high in mixed classes as most students want to move at a pace comfortable for them.

- You can't ignore the added cost of driving or taking public transport or several days accommodation either. This may well run to many hundreds of pounds more - sometimes thousands. Do the maths yourself - you may be surprised.

- It's important to maintain privacy. We wouldn't want to run the risk of giving up any advancement that could awarded to us just because we're retraining.

- Surely, all of us at some time have avoided asking a question, because we wanted to fit in?

- Working away from home - many trainees find themselves working or living away for sections of the program. Classes are hard to get to, yet the money has already changed hands when you paid initially.

It would be better to watch a video and study with teachers one-to-one through filmed modules, working on them when it suits you - not somebody else. You can train wherever you want. If your PC is a laptop, you could catch some sun in your garden at the same time. Any difficulties and get onto the live 24x7 support. You could go back and re-cover all the study modules as often as you need to revise. And of course, you won't need to make notes as you have access to the class forever. Put directly: You save time, hassle, money and completely avoid killing more trees.

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