Thanks for the replies!
Keith, yes you can order it from Amazon.com but not, it seems, from Amazon.co.uk. The time and expense of ordering from the U.S. site made it prohibitive as I needed the book quickly.
Marcus, your reply gives me an opportunity to thank you for all the assistance that your mock exams have given me in preparing for the exam. Computeach recommends that people visit your site and take your three mock exams in preparation for the real thing!
Computeach specialises in distance learning courses. Their material is a mixture of online learning and bespoke written material. As I am presently studying with them, I do not want to pass comment about their courses. I know of the 'boot camp' courses you talk about although Computeach doesn't provide those. I share your reservations about them.
You can see some material on the JDK 1.4 objectives at
http://www.jchq.net/certkey/index.htm And you are very likely to be able to get the S&B 1.4 book from
www.amazon.co.uk (possibly even second hand which should be a competitive price). Once a new version of an exam comes out sales of the older versions tend to diminish of course.
What is the Computeach course like? I have always been frustrated when I see Certification courses as they almost always cover material not on the exam. An example of this was (and still is I suspect) that the official Sun one week courses cover material not on the exam. When you are paying a big chunk of money out for only five days I would want to stay narrowly focussed on the exam topics [/rant]
You might also like to read this document that describes some of the new features of the JDK1.5 exam (so you know what to ignore if you are using a JDK 1.5 book)
http://www.examulator.com/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=183 [ June 01, 2006: Message edited by: Marcus Green ]