[MarkL]

Could be worse....you could be a CNE!! Talk about a dinasaur in the IT field.

Hey! I resemble that remark! Novell is losing the marketing battle, but their technology is top notch!

But seriously, Novell CNEs flooded the market some years ago, just like MCSE are flooding the market now... I went through the CNE training back in 1989-1990, when the tests were still open book, but if you had to look up more than 2 or three questions, you'd run out of time and fail the test...

There are still some certification that really test on knowledge and experiance, not just memorization. Novell's Admin & Advanced Admin tests both have "hands on" simulators where you have to use the utilities to accomplish certain tasks. And the Certified Directory Engineer certification is a real bear to pass, especially the "practical exam," where you use PC Anywhere to login to a network set up by Novell that's had it's Directory Services sabotaged, and you have to fix it within a certain time period. One of the most difficult tests I've ever taken.

And of course, the grand daddy of all "real" certifications is the Cisco CCIE, with it's "practical" exam!

Mark

MCNE, MCNI, CCNA

[Justin Thyme]

You're right Mark, Novell does have some great technologies. And many of their supporting products integrate great with NDS.

I think one thing that held them back, is that they waited too long to introduce an ability to do fairly routing administration tasks (creating users, groups, printers) at the server itself.

And I think, marketing and the power of the Microsoft machine had some to do with it too.

Mike
CNE