Road To MCSE: The NT-CIP Certification or ‘One’s Born Every Minute’ Page 3

Thomas Shinder

LANOP is an Answer to No One’s Prayers

The author goes on to say that Lanop is the answer to the
prayers of these allegedly panicked students who feel they have thrown months of
their lives down the drain. Lanop is the answer to no one’s prayers,
especially for the students in the throes of the Windows NT 4.0 study scene.

Why? Because Lanop has no credibility in the industry. A
certification of any kind is only as valuable as the entity issuing it. Who are
they? What do they do? When you think of high quality anything, does the image
of Lanop race to the forefront of your consciousness? Has Lanop ever come
to mind, other than perhaps as a provider of brain dumps a couple of years ago
for the Windows NT 4.0 track? (They appear to no longer sponsor brain dumps).

If this company lacks credibility, why would one think their
certification series would make any difference at all to an employer?

While some may argue that providing an independent
certification path for Windows NT 4.0 may be a good thing, it would have to be
provided by a luminary in the industry in order to make it effective. An unknown
training organization is very unlikely to have such clout. If IBM, Compaq or
Dell had decided that this was a good idea, they could have put together a
program that might have lent some credibility. Even better, a University could
sponsor such a program. But neither industry heavyweights nor The Ivory Tower
have come to the conclusion that this was a good enough idea to implement.