If anyone is in my position, I think this information may help you.  First, before you sign up for any classes, make sure you are familiar with whichever language you choose to focus on (I am choosing C# due to the close relationship of syntax with Java).  I have received two books to teach myself what I need to know before I go to any class or do any practice tests.  These two books are: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-536) Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Application Development Foundation and Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5.  The second edition for the Self-Paced Training Kit you can pre-order, but I am not able to wait for it to be released.  Start off with the Training Kit book, and then move on to the ASP.NET book because of the way they are structured and the indepthness of the first one.

To go along with these books, I would suggest purchasing a membership for at least a year to the site LearnVisualStudio.Net.  It has been highly recommended by some .NET Developers that I know and it looks to have a very large amount of tutorials already made, as well as ongoing videos.

After I get a good grasp of the material from these 3 sources, I am going to take a practice test to see how I fare for the 2 exams for the MCTS.  If I feel the need, I will take a class for each exam (I believe they are 2 or 3 days long) and give feedback to those that are interested.  If you have any further websites or learning sources, feel free to post them in the comments.

First, let’s explore the options of accessing usenet.  There are usenet providers such as Giganews (which is a very large access provider) which offer different packages per month of download size ranging from a few GB to Unlimited downloads, as well as large retention rates of posts (up to 240 days!).  Retention rates are good so that if you are looking for something, you have a better chance of finding it if the access provider you have has higher retention.  Another thing to look for is whether they offer SSL connections.  Secure connections means that not everyone can look to see what you’re downloading (if someone was filtering your internet traffic). 

Secondly, we need to take a look at a newsreader.  There are many types, some free, some you pay for, which means there are different features.  Get one that suits your needs as you see fit.  I really like Newsleecher, but it is not free.  The benefit is that you can use their supersearch feature which will mean you do not have to update groups (this take awhile as some of them have over a million posts – each file is a post) in order to find something you are looking for.  An alternative to using their supersearch feature is a site I HIGHLY recommend called Newzbin.

Newzbin is great for several reasons.  First, it is very cheap to be a member of (I believe like a dollar a month), and having excellent filters for searching as well as easy organization of all files needed (many movies, etc. are broken into several files so you don’t have to download one LARGE file, but several small files – normally Winrar’s .rar compressed format).  These include the par2 files (use QuickPar to check to see if all the files you downloaded are not corrupt or if they are, to repair them).  Also, being a member there allows you to have access to their “Adult Material” site as I like to call it.  That would be NewzXXX which has the same features as their other site.

With that being said, read the comments on newzbin.com, if there are any, and download all the files into one .nzb (this will open with most newsreaders).  Then unpackage the files (many are .rar which you will use Winrar as previously mentioned) and enjoy!  If you download something and are not sure what program you will need to unpackage it or join it, either google it, check on filext.com (the file extension site), or go ahead and contact me.  Good luck hunting!