Best Computer Hardware Certifications For 2015
Becoming a computer technician is a great point of entry into the IT field, and computer hardware certifications will help demonstrate your knowledge and competency in maintaining computers, mobile devices, printers and more. These top five computer hardware certs can get your IT career off the ground.
To a certain extent, the title of this article is something of a misnomer. In the interests of increased specificity, it might be more appropriate to add the words “general” or “mostly vendor-neutral,” although we do include a credential from Apple in this list that focuses exclusively on Apple hardware. And in fact, it’s possible to view some certifications from hardware vendors such as HP, Dell, Cisco, Juniper, Fortinet and so forth as hardware focused, at and beyond the entry level. Thus, as you peruse this guide, don’t forget that there are lots of other options from which you can choose if you’re interested in demonstrating your knowledge and abilities with particular vendor’s products and devices.
There’s another misnomer involved in calling these credentials hardware certifications, too — namely, the idea that hardware can exist or operate independently of software (or vice versa). If you dig into the curriculum for any specific hardware-related certifications in any depth, you’ll quickly realize that by and large software is in control of hardware nowadays.
Software comes into play for installation, configuration, maintenance, troubleshooting and just about any other activity you can undertake with hardware. We don’t want to misrepresent the focus and coverage of these certs, so it’s important to understand that the hardware label simply indicates that devices are involved, not that hardware is ALL that’s involved.
