I have had the IPExpert workbooks for the version3 track of CCIE voice for about three years. I kept meaning to open them and have a read, do some labs and get on with my studies. I have both the dead-tree variety and the electronic versions. I have never opened the dead-trees! The digital versions cause me some grief (or they did) – I don’t like DRM! I understand the need for it, it’s just that I want to be able to use what I’ve bought easily. IPExpert uses the FileOpen plugin for it’s DRM – this only works with Adobe Acrobat reader – no option to use a.n.other PDF view e.g. the great (and un-bloated) Foxit Reader or to read on a non-computer type device – e.g. smartphone. The FileOpen plugin also requires that you be online when you open the PDF – not always possible if you want to have a read while away from an internet connection. I think I’ve made my point.
I have managed to find a solution to these issues (at least the online & not Adobe Acrobat), and it is a solution which has additional benefits. You are allowed to print the documents, so I printed them to Microsoft OneNote 2010! This gives me the documents in a format that I can annotate easily – don’t need to be online to access – and the only downside is that my email address is watermarked on the pages (not in a way that makes them useless). The text in them is still searchable if I require it too. An additional benefit is that I can sync my OneNote notebooks to the cloud and access them, including my annotations from a web browser anywhere (unless your company has an aversion to cloud-based document storage that is!).
I have worked through a few of the technology focused labs, and the thing that has struck me most is that although I know this stuff it is the attention to detail that may catch me out and I need to work on. For example, when a question asks for something to be matched and translated, then leaving any ambiguity (/3/ /32243/ rather than /^\(3…\$/ /3214\1/ ) will almost certainly cost the points!
More thoughts soon!