A+ takes you through stuff like PCI busses, disk drive types and configurations, motherboard layouts, physical memory configurations, multimedia configuration, etc, etc. I don’t know your current knowledge level so if you don’t feel comfortable with A+ then a good way of judging your level is to start at the start.
Now this is going to sound bad but it isn't implying anything by the title, it's just that these books do start from the basics and generally explain things very well from a beginner’s, with an interest in learning, point of view and accelerate into quite complex technologies by building on what you already understand in layman’s terms whilst filling in all the blanks in your knowledge as you go.
The “for dummies” books (now don’t get me wrong) can be very eye opening as they gradually build up the explanation of quite complex topics in an easy to understand way so you wont go running off to the hills worried about complexities. This PC/ networking lark really isn’t that complicated honestly! It’s just getting your head around the concepts and especially the phraseology and those damned mnemonics you see in almost every text you read.
You want to be looking out for PC and TCP/IP (you’ll get nowhere in IT without knowing the basics of TCP/IP) related stuff to get a good grasp of the front door of the technical side of things. Once you have gone through those you will have a good understanding on where you are with your knowledge level and then you are off and running.
That will lead you into A+ easy and give you a good all round grounding in the process.
Hope that helps
