My New Horizons Sucks Story - Page 1

She signed up for the full package all at once and paid in advance, which got her a discount from the obscenely expensive full price of the packages if paid for separately. With the discount, the prices were merely distressing, not insulting.

The first course she took was the CompTIA A+ Hardware & Operating Systems course. The course materials were produced by New Horizons, and were acceptable. (Although to be nitpicky, there is no " i " in Complementary, and their reference defined CMOS as "Complimentary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor.") The instructor, Linda, had a few moments of brilliance when teaching something she was personally familiar with from her work in the real world, and was at least fairly competent if not stellar in covering materials that weren't her particular cup of tea.

Next in line was "Introduction to Networking." The concepts were basic, and so were the course materials. The book, entitled "Networking" from Maran Graphics, was pretty much a picture book with short snippets of information. I suppose that basic is what one expects from a course whose title includes the words "Introduction to". This class was also acceptable, although the instructor provided much less useful information from outside the book than she had with the A+ course.

The last acceptable class she took was Novell Netware 5 Administration. This was taught by an instructor who was flown in from California specifically to teach this class, which would tend to indicate that nobody available in the Milwaukee area had the certification necessary to teach it. The course materials from Novell were very nice, the instructor was fully competent, and had real-world experience with Netware 5, not just a piece of paper certifying him to teach it. My wife was so impressed by his instruction that she actually stopped to shake his hand and thank him when the course had finished.

Now is when things start going south rapidly. Go to the next page and I'll tell you all about it.