Since I posted my blog on the registration problems with 83-640, many of you commented about performance issues that occurred during your exam. Although I couldn’t respond to all your comments, I was taking them very seriously and escalating them within my organization. In response to the feedback that you have provided and comments from other customer channels, Microsoft and Prometric have decided to suspend Exam 83-640 and revert back to Exam 70-640, starting June 2, 2010.
Because 83-640 and 70-640 measure the same objective domain and skills, both result in the same certification. The primary difference between these exams is that each uses different question types to assess those skills. As a result, the reversion back to 70-640 doesn’t change how you should prepare for the exam.
What does this mean?
If you are currently registered for 83-640, you will automatically be registered for 70-640 at the same time and location. If you prefer to take Exam 070-640 at a different time or location, you can re-schedule your exam online or contact Prometric customer service.
If you’ve been waiting to register for this exam until I provided an update on the status for these issues, please register for 70-640 at your convenience. Simply visit www.prometric.com/Microsoft to register online.
If you took 83-640 but did not receive a score, please contact Prometric’s customer service if you have not already done so. I will work with Prometric to investigate these issues, but it’s very important that you contact Prometric to initiate this process because they have part of the information that I need to determine your final score.
Cutting Edge Technology in Exams
We are committed to incorporating performance based items into our exams because we are also hearing from you that this is how you want to be tested. We have learned a lot about the deployment of virtual labs and will continue working to incorporate performance based items into exams in a way that ensures a world class testing experience.
For more information on this decision, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/exam-dev-release.aspx#tab4
"We’re taking action based on your feedback" - does it mean all those Welcome Kits that you have promised to send during last 10 months are on the way to anyone who got your score reports?
Thank you! I was waiting for some announcement like this. Now I can register for 70-640!
Why do I get the feeling that most, if not all, of the problems associated with testing would be solved by kicking Prometric to the curb and going back to Vue? Vue was always the better choice. Not surprised at all to see that Prometric is keeping up the level of absolute suck all the MCT's warned you guys about when you made the switch.
Liberty et al,
I thank you very much for your efforts to help us. A few comments. While I appreciate the voucher, and will never walk away from a legitimate freebie, I must say that $125 doesn't come anywhere near compensating me for the injury I've suffered due to the failure of Microsoft and/or Prometric to deliver a reasonable and dependable testing service. As an example of what I mean by injury: I burned a week of my vacation from my day job to cram for the test back in April, and all I have to show for it is a "failed" mark for a test I never even got to start. That's how Prometric rolls, Liberty. They can't deliver a test, and then fail the candidate. I got a refund via an appeals process, but that damn mendacious "failed" is still on my candidate history.
I understand that corporate messaging requires Microsoft and Prometric employees to spin this problem as a minor set-back/learning experience, so that for example the faq you link to above says stuff like, "...Microsoft is committed to incorporating performance-based items in our certification exams and will continue working to incorporate performance-based items into exams in a way that ensures a world-class testing experience." But please, let's be honest: This last attempt, on 083-640, to incorporate performance-based testing was a complete failure, and an unnecessary embarrassment to Microsoft. Again, I'm not talking about the psychometrics/content of the exam. Indeed, the knowledge and skills I acquired and honed while studying for the test are the only silver lining in this misadventure. I'm talking about the pathetically incompetent provisioning of the performance-based portion of the exam.
This seems like a huge setback. I love the idea of the performance-based exams (my one session went well, after a delay loading it), and Microsoft had really been touting this as the future of their exams to improve validity. Future plans for this seemed to be a major part of the justification for the switch to Prometric-exclusive 2.5 years ago: 'with just one provider, we'll be able to work more closely with them to improve the performance and bring out new technologies!' kinds of things were said.
Now after all this time working on 83-640 (it's been 2 years since the pilots started as 70-113!!), without getting it expanded beyond just the one exam, Prometric STILL isn't consistently providing adequate performance for this technology?? Isn't that one of the things (should be of many things) Microsoft was supposed to convince them to do via the exclusivity clout??
I sat the 71-113 beta exam there was the same problems after several hours I also ended with a fail even I never had the chance to run it. I accepted that it was a beta. Then to experience that NOTHING has been learnt from the beta and production has been started and you take money for a product that is not improved since the beta. That is sad. It makes me want to rethink if I want to join future betas.
When we will get Welcome Kits fixed? It is 10 months delay for most of us.
Θα έχετε διαβάσει κάπου μέσα στο forum ότι η εξέταση 70-640 είχε αντικατασταθεί από την 83-640, η οποία
i took the 83-640 exam last year & did encounter problems during the lab phase of the exam . Prometric was able to get the issues resloved & I was able to finish the labs and . I enjoyed the labs as a testing portion of the exam and passed with ease. Sorry to see the labs suspended because of Prometric problems. It was the right way to go with Microsoft exams.