Reviews + Awards

CBT Nuggets appears to have taken a lesson from the fast food industry. You don't need an MBA or masters degree in culinary arts to know that bite-size chicken snacks haven't skyrocketed in popularity due to their taste. Convenience is the major selling point.

Following that lead, CBT Nuggets built one of the most popular lines of training aids by breaking IT instruction into readily manageable chunks. The nuggets are concise, easily absorbed training videos. Rather than force you to sit through long instructional modules, these short presentations make it easier to master complicated topics. The video snippets also make it possible to take advantage of idle half-hours here and there by squeezing in study time whenever possible. Longer training sessions just won't fit into such breaks...

In recent weeks, I have had the opportunity to review the CBT Nuggets CCNA package. The product consists of 4 CD’s containing a number of training videos on each, covering all the CCNA objectives.

The training style of the nuggets is unlike the normal methods of classroom training or reading from a book, but rather an excellent combination of the two. This method removes the monotony of the text book and the inconvenience of the classroom. Each video presents new theories and concepts, followed by actual examples and working of the theory on actual routers, switches and PCs.

Emilio Valdez is an excellent tutor with his expert knowledge of both Cisco products and the CCNA, combined with a simplistic teaching style and well interjected with humour.

These nuggets are well suited to both the student with little or no Cisco knowledge, through to the experienced engineer looking to complete the CCNA. Each theory is taught not only to examination level, but beyond that, to complete understanding in a real world scenario.

In my opinion, this is definitely the best CCNA prep software available. I will most definitely be using Emilio’s CCNP nuggets in the next step of my Cisco certification path.

CBT Nuggets are the work of Dan Charbonneau. Dan is an MCSE and MCT (Microsoft Certified Trainer). He also holds several certifications from Novell and Cisco. Dan owns and operates his own consulting and training firm.

What are CBT Nuggets? CBT (computer based training) Nuggets are an inexpensive, comprehensive video training curriculum. Now, before you start thinking that because these courses are extremely inexpensive (under-priced may be more accurate) that they are inferior, think again.

One of the hottest certifications today is the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) by EC-Council. Although this cert has been around for several years now, it seems as though 2006 is the year that the IT training industry has caught onto it as well. With numerous books on the general topics of ethical hacking and penetration testing hitting the market in the last 12 months, it was only a matter of time before we started seeing titles for specific certifications in this area.

CBT Nuggets, some of my favorite IT training videos, has added a Certified Ethical Hacker Series to their library of titles. James I. Conrad takes his shot at showing you the ropes in 11 hours of videos broken into 21 nugget-sized chunks. Although this is clearly not enough time to show the viewer everything there is to know about defending your network from hackers, their tools and techniques, it should be plenty of time to get your studies headed in the right direction.

Although this is a video series, and watching never hurt anyone, you are invariably going to want to try out some of the cool stuff that James shows you. Always keep in the front of your mind the fact that...

CBT Nuggets have delivered yet another tremendous training product. Having used CBT Nuggets products previously, I had high expectations for this Exam Pack, and once again they produced a quality training tool.

In this ISA 2004 Exam-Pack, Jeremy Cioara not only provides great technical content through these training videos, but also delivers the content in the context of every day scenarios. I particularly like Jeremy’s approach to these videos, where he starts by...

I recently passed the CCNA 802 exam after struggling with it for over a year (barely failed first exam in Dec 2010).

I've been maintaining a CUCM environment with over 200 endpoints for 3 years. I've started the CCNA Voice with CBT Nuggets, and just wanted to say how impressed I am with Jeremy's abilities to explain complex scenarios in simpler terms, and ease the students into very technical skills.

Some areas I struggled with were dial peers and dial plans in CME and CUCM, but now after seeing Jeremy's explanations, I'm sitting here wondering what took me so long to understand? I actually enjoy studying with CBT Nuggets, and can't wait to learn more.

I'm constantly impressed with Jeremy's knowledge and humor. No wonder they had him write the CCNA Voice book.

I will certainly recommend CBT Nuggets to anyone aspiring to Cisco certification. If Microsoft Nuggets are as good as Cisco, I'll recommend them, too. I'm trying to get our IT Director to purchase CBT Nuggets for anyone in our department to train with, as opposed to $5K-$10K boot camps. Do you offer any discounts for multiple licenses?

Thanks,

Jonathan Beardsley, CCNA, MCITP Telecommunications Administrator DECOSIMO CPA's

Hi Tim,

Just a quick email to say how useful and informative I am finding your videos on the 70-649 exam. It's the first time I've used the CBT nuggets and I must say it makes life more interesting rather than slogging through just the MS Press book. Must say you even made me laugh a couple of times through the series which I wouldn't have expected from online IT training! Anyhoo, just thought I'd send you my thanks, got the exam on the 15th Dec but feel in good shape to pass.

Keep up the good work.

David

Praise for James Conrad. Having used your Windows 2000 series of training videos by Dan Charbonneau to successful pass my MCSE qualification, when it came time to upgrade to the 2003 track, CBT Nuggets was my first point of call.

I wish to congratulate James on not only producing a fine series of videos but also keeping up the high standard one would expect from CBT Nuggets.

James not only takes hard to understand topics and makes them simple, but he does so with a natural poise and humour that makes learning fun.

CBT Nuggets and its trainers show what can be achieved by bite sized learning and have set the industry standard.

Keep up the good work.

I have no sales issue. In fact, I have no issues at all. I would like to say that your teaching techniques are infectious. Second to none.

The enthusiasm, knowledge and joy of your trainers shine out like a beacon on a dark night. They take pride in what they do.

My only criticism is that your videos end. I guess I can always press replay.....

Carry on.

Edward Eagle,
London, England

Hi Craigen,

We spoke a couple of weeks back about your product and I wanted to give you the testimonial I promised. Unfortunately there was no way I could afford $1300 of training for a year, but I will definitely be renewing a month long subscription for my next certification, CCNA.

I used Jeremy Ciora's INCD1 (640-822) CCENT nuggets to prepare for the exam, which I took today and passed with a very acceptable score. For me, the key was Jeremy's training approach and ability to break the material into easy to handle chunks. For example, I had spent the last couple of years trying different IP subnetting techniques. I was able to reverse engineer a subnetting problem in about three minutes, using a sheet of legal paper. After seeing Jeremy's technique, I can now reverse engineer similar problems in 45 seconds or less (and killing far fewer trees). That's measurable improvement!

Thank you to everyone at CBT Nuggets,

Jonathan Turner Aliso Viejo, CA