I know the policy for this forum is to be nice, but sorry, I am p....d off.
I did hear on the 18th that there are a few places free for this exam. Applied for and get my voucher on the 19th. Since than I have been studying every day about 8h, concurrently to my day job. You can imagine that this is not too much fun. I took the exam today and saw that the exam is extended when I came home.
I understand the necessarity to extend the beta exam if you didn't have enough tester until yet, but this was predictable for you at least one week ago. In my opinion you did take the p.... out of all beta tester which have done the exam in the last few days.
And don't tell me that I did know about the exam long enough for a stress-free preparation. I didn't know it before the 19th. And I think that I am not the only one, this might be one of the reasons that you didn't get enough beta tester.
The ones which have already given up are now winner.
And I am not one of those guys who just tried there luck because it is a free shot. I have developed real world J2ME application in the last years. Without this former experience I would never have tried to take the exam.
A few words to the people who consider to take the beta exam:
I don't think it is worth the effort, even if it is free. It is such a large (lots of APIs, underlying technologies, no logic concepts like OO in SJCP) that to be sufficient prepared you have to spend at least 50h. You could try it with maybe 20h, but this would be a waste of time for sure as you will not pass even with a lot of luck. Even if you have experience with J2ME development. Lots of things which are asked you will maybe have looked up one time during a project and since then long forgotten.
If you compare the necessarily time to the saved money, it is just no relation. Wait until there are enough information available about this exam and you can do the preparation in half the time. Even if you are working for 10$ per hour the saved exam fees are not worth the stress. Not to talk about the waste of brain cells.
Tobias Reinhardt
Ahh and I don't like the fact that Sun Certification are becoming like MS Certifications. You don't have to understand anything, just memorize some books.