For those who have a choice of actually ordering a training video or a book - the decision making calls for extreme thinking. For all those who are doing Microsoft Certification Courses like MSCE, MCAD, MCTS, etc or the various Cisco certification courses like CCNA there are umpteen number of choices and the most obvious ones come out to be a video training course or a book.
Books have traditionally been the matter of choice while preparing for exams, but do they really fit in when you want to take some competitive exams that really test your skills and ability to perform. I for once, doubt that having a mere bookish knowledge will not definitely help in any way.Training Videos seem to be the best option in such situations. Videos show you the practicality of doing things and the demonstrations get easily registered in your mind. I recently checked out a website that specializes on a+ training videos. Well, these are very specially designed videos for each of the courses. Each video starts of with an introduction and a brief specifics on what is being covered in the video. You also have some really cool and interactive lab sessions designed in the video which simulate the actual workings of the topic - this helps a person easily register the session in his/her mind.
The player used in the videos have all the basic operations that you will find on the latest media players and you can at any time pause and then resume at a later point of time. I for once found the Bookmarking functionality to be very useful to bookmark important concepts that can be retouched later in time. Also, these videos come with a complete Course Map by which you can easily select specific topics to cover and finish them. The search functionality too helps you out - you can search by words or phrases.
You can take notes right away and also print the content for easy review and to study offline. Finally, you can congratulate yourself by printing a certificate of course completion. So, with so many possibilities - books will sure remain an impasse to these modern training videos.
