Our company was at a loss lately, We needed to renew our Universal MSDN subscription recently, And If you are a Microsoft Partner, you recieve X amount of Licences and subscriptions free of charge. One of their requirements was MCP certifications from several staff members. The MCP's allowed us to "upgrade" our systems guy and gave him additional info on handling a specific server (And you know most systems guys are OJT's most times) The other MCP's allowed me to upgrade one of my programmers by certifying him to a specific MCP from Visual Studio 2005, C# ASP.NET 2.0 from which he returned like a kid with new toys. I myslef am WELL INFORMED and know alot about what is and isn't available I cruise the dev sites as much as anyone, but you can't compare a guy doing a course that has been approved by microsoft to me reading a couple of tutorials and playing around with something, to reallt learning it correctly via course. NOW, don't get me wrong. Doing a CERT and then not using your knowledge, or just using BrainDumps is not really getting a CERT in my book. Thats just trying to beat the system. I am talking about real courses, really learning, in order to improve and upgrade your knowledge. Thats my 2 cents. in summary: * a CERT allows you to upgrade you knowledge. * Companies like Micorosft have programs that require CERTs, and if you fit the bill with one of them, you pay just the CERTs which are much less expensive than what you would pay for the same licenses by yourself. (sometime 2,000$ less) and your team feels motivated because you send them to courses and expand their knowledge, which makes them more valuble. Mickey Perlstein Head of R&D www.interlect.co.il