potatogun, I had this rambling long post about the merits of theory vs. "nitty gritty" and then I saw Dale's sig quote about "[reading] the Cocka-doody question" so this is the revised version! Hope it answers the question.
I don't know if I'm really qualified to tell you which areas of theory you should study. I think that Becker's "theory parts" were reasonably useful, it is just their "this technology does this and is important for business for this reason" sections that are dated. Focusing on theory, will, I believe, get you farther than focusing on technologies, which quickly change, but you do still need to know important technologies. I think I would be most familiar with technologies that relate to a network environment (how information is shared and protected, how systems are audited, and yes a bunch of acronyms and terms), but I certainly wouldn't neglect other technologies and I wouldn't do an exhaustive study by any means, One thing I find useful when I come across a tech concept that I don't really understand is looking it up on Wikipedia, reading the article and following references that catch my eye. Just spending 10-15 minutes perusing the articles will give you enough background that you just might understand the concept and remember it. Of course, you might just get lucky and have an exam question on something that you had read an article about!
FAR - 98; AUD - 94; REG - 95; BEC - Waiting;
Becker Scholarship for Success (I got it free :))
