Working for a shop to become familiar with computers and their components can be one way to learn, but those jobs tend to be a little difficult to obtain without prior knowledge... After all, how do you sell products to customers if you have no idea what they are or what they do?
If you want a place to start, get ahold of as many computer magazines as you can, especially ones that solidly cover hardware (PC Magazine, Maximum PC, to name a couple). Read them. Cover-to-cover. Look up any terms you don't understand. Go online and read as much as you can on computers (advertisements count to an extent, but look for pc repair forums, they cover more). The key here is not to accumulate the ultimate knowledge on computers (you can't), but to become familiar with the terms and components relating to computers.
See if you can find a copy of an older A+ Certification book (they're really thick) at your local used book store, and buy it as reading material. Start plowing through it. Only study a bit per day (maybe a chapter, no more than 2 per day) so you don't overwhelm yourself and burn out... You will find that if you treat the book as a vast source of information instead of the book that you get all the test answers from, you can become quite knowledgeable, rather than just being 'paper certified' (a term meaning someone who basically just memorized the answers to a large number of the standard questions for the A+ Certification test and passed with that (yes, it can be done, but should DEFINITELY NOT be done)...
But keep in mind that A+ certification is not the be-all-end-all... If you truly want to be a 'computer repair person', you will need to know software, which will mean at least SOME sort of Microsoft certification (the MCSE program covers many such), and as well, you will probably want some sort of systems certification (for networks, like Sysco Systems certification)...
And you should definitely enroll in at least a community college computer repair course (most colleges that have them, have several levels, you should probably complete them all if you can), so that you can get practical hands-on experience in a safe environment, as well as get appropriate information as to what to expect from such a job, and how to approach dealing any issues.
Hope that helps, and you have a great day!
If you want a place to start, get ahold of as many computer magazines as you can, especially ones that solidly cover hardware (PC Magazine, Maximum PC, to name a couple). Read them. Cover-to-cover. Look up any terms you don't understand. Go online and read as much as you can on computers (advertisements count to an extent, but look for pc repair forums, they cover more). The key here is not to accumulate the ultimate knowledge on computers (you can't), but to become familiar with the terms and components relating to computers.
See if you can find a copy of an older A+ Certification book (they're really thick) at your local used book store, and buy it as reading material. Start plowing through it. Only study a bit per day (maybe a chapter, no more than 2 per day) so you don't overwhelm yourself and burn out... You will find that if you treat the book as a vast source of information instead of the book that you get all the test answers from, you can become quite knowledgeable, rather than just being 'paper certified' (a term meaning someone who basically just memorized the answers to a large number of the standard questions for the A+ Certification test and passed with that (yes, it can be done, but should DEFINITELY NOT be done)...
But keep in mind that A+ certification is not the be-all-end-all... If you truly want to be a 'computer repair person', you will need to know software, which will mean at least SOME sort of Microsoft certification (the MCSE program covers many such), and as well, you will probably want some sort of systems certification (for networks, like Sysco Systems certification)...
And you should definitely enroll in at least a community college computer repair course (most colleges that have them, have several levels, you should probably complete them all if you can), so that you can get practical hands-on experience in a safe environment, as well as get appropriate information as to what to expect from such a job, and how to approach dealing any issues.
Hope that helps, and you have a great day!
