Do you recommend CustomGuide.com for beginners to Access? (1 Viewer)

I'm new to Access and I'm seriously considering paying $45. for a 6 month subscription to the site, customguide.com found at http://www.customguide.com/access_training/access_training.htm.

Do you recommend it? 50 is the price of a good book on Access. I'm a visual learner, so I tend to think that this woud be a good learning tool for me.

Has anyone used them before?

I have been looking for software or a site that will train one in how to use Access. To date, I have found that CustomGuide.com offers great training for the beginner to intermediate, but falls short of training the expert. It costs $45. for an individual to access the training for 6 months as many times as you want. That's the price of a book, (actually, I have found books that cost even more than that for Access Training).

You can view the online flash training demo at http://customguide.com/access_training/access_training.htm

Scroll down to the "Online Learning : Access Training" session and click on one of the links in the left column (in that section where it says, Access 2003, Access 2002, Access 97).

Tell me what you think.

I see one major flaw in the approach to training and it's a flaw exercised by most trainers - physical or virtual - of Access. They are telling how to do all these wonderful things but they aren't giving reasons as to WHY you would use them or in WHAT situation you would use them.

True, but keep in mind that is not their intention. One could easily write an entire book (or for that matter, an entire training course), on the "why" factor. They could also write an entire training course on "Database Design" too. All that to say, I do agree with you, but tackling that aspect , would easily double the training course itself, and they probably just wanted to get it out the door, if you know what I mean.

Even still, given their approach, would you recommend subscribing to them?

CustomGuide Response

Hi,

I'm actually the president of CustomGuide. Funny – I wrote the material for Access and stop in here every so often to get ideas and tips. Anyway… our material for Access is definitely at a beginner to intermediate level - and, of course I'm biased, but you won't find anything better out there for that. It’s almost useless at an advanced level.

We plan on updating our Access material sometime this year to include a chapter on VBA, another on Internet applications, and another on workgroups and security, which would put it at an advanced level, but still not expert.

If you’re not in rush, you might want to wait until March, as O’Reilly Media is scheduled to publish both a book and CD based on our content. (See http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/accesspt/index.html). Probably shouldn’t tell you that, as we won’t get the sale, but that’s what I would personally do. Good luck with Access!

Jon