Some training academies are still using one of the most out-dated training concepts - in-centre classes. Quite often pushed as a positive point, if you track down someone who's been through a few, you'll most likely hear about many or all of these:

- Recurrent travelling - hundreds of miles most times.

- For those of us that work, then Mon-Fri classes represent a difficulty in getting time off. Typically you are contending with several days in a row too.

- Lost annual leave - most trainees are given only twenty days of leave annually. If you use up half of that with training classes, you haven't got a great deal of holiday time remaining for the student.

- Because of the cost involved, many training providers fill the classes up to the brim - certainly not ideal (increasing the ratio of students to teachers).

- Often, tension develops in mixed classes because most students want to move at a pace comfortable for them.

- Quite a lot of attendees report that the (not inconsiderable) costs of getting to and from the training school while covering the cost of accommodation and food becomes prohibitively expensive.

- Quite a lot of attendees want their studies to remain private thus avoiding all questions in their work.

- Who amongst us hasn't avoided posing that question we were dying to ask, just because we wanted to look smarter?

- If you occasionally live or work away from home, consider the added problems of making the required workshops, as time becomes even more scarce.

The best possible solution is watching a pre-filmed workshop - providing direct instruction whenever it's convenient for you. Study from home on your PC or if you've got a laptop, you can go anywhere. If you have any questions, then logon to the 24x7 support facility (that we hope you'll insist on with any technical courses.) You have the ability to go back and re-cover all the study units whenever you want to. And of course, you don't have to take notes as you have access to the class forever. Basically: You save money, avoid hassle, don't waste time and completely avoid polluting our environment.

Consider the points below and pay great regard to them if you're inclined to think the marketing blurb about a guarantee for your exam looks like a reason to buy:

You'll be charged for it somehow. One thing's for sure - it isn't free - they've simply charged more for the whole training package. Passing first time is everyone's goal. Taking your exams progressively one by one and funding them one at a time puts you in a much stronger position to qualify at the first attempt - you prepare appropriately and are aware of the costs involved.

Go for the best offer you can find when you're ready, and keep hold of your own money. You also get more choice of where you take your exam - so you can find somewhere local. Paying in advance for examination fees (and if you're financing your study there'll be interest on that) is a false economy. Don't line companies bank accounts with extra money of yours simply to help their cash-flow! Many will hope you don't even take them all - then they'll keep the extra money. The majority of companies will require you to do mock exams and with-hold subsequent exam entries from you until you have proved to them you have a good chance of passing - making an 'exam guarantee' just about worthless.

With average prices for VUE and Pro-metric exams in the United Kingdom costing around 112 pounds, it's common sense to fund them one by one. It's not in the student's interests to fork out hundreds or thousands of pounds for exams when enrolling on a course. Study, commitment and preparing with good quality mock and practice exams is what will really guarantee success.

Commencing from the idea that it's necessary to find the employment that excites us first, before we're even able to weigh up what career training would meet that requirement, how are we supposed to find the correct route? Because without any previous experience in computing, in what way could we be expected to understand what anyone doing a particular job actually does? Arriving at an informed conclusion only comes through a methodical study of many different criteria:

- The sort of individual you are - what tasks do you find interesting, and conversely - what you definitely don't enjoy.

- Is your focus to obtain training due to a specific motive - for instance, do you aim to work from home (working for yourself?)?

- Is your income higher on your priority-list than anything else.

- Considering all that computing encapsulates, you really need to be able to understand the differences.

- Our advice is to think deeply about what kind of effort and commitment that you will set aside for your training.

For most people, getting to the bottom of these areas tends to require the help of a professional who can investigate each area with you. And we don't just mean the qualifications - but the commercial requirements besides.

The old fashioned style of teaching, using textbooks and whiteboards, can be pretty hard going sometimes. If this describes you, find training programs that are on-screen and interactive. Where possible, if we can study while utilising as many senses as possible, our results will often be quite spectacular.

Find a course where you'll receive a library of CD and DVD ROM's - you'll start with videos of instructor demonstrations, and be able to use virtual lab's to practice your new skills. You'll definitely want a demonstration of the study materials from your training provider. The package should contain demo's from instructors, slideshows and virtual practice lab's for your new skills.

Purely on-line training should be avoided. You want physical CD/DVD ROM course materials where available, so that you have access at all times - you don't want to be reliant on your broadband being 'up' 100 percent of the time.

An advisor that doesn't ask you a lot of questions - the likelihood is they're just trying to sell you something. If they push a particular product before getting to know your background and whether you have any commercial experience, then you know it's true. With a bit of real-world experience or some accreditation, your starting-point of learning is not the same as someone new to the industry. If you're a new trainee starting IT studies and exams from scratch, it's often a good idea to start out slowly, beginning with user-skills and software training first. This can be built into most types of training.