I have stopped taking some classes for this particular course twice, because it was not serving the best interest for becoming an effective power user. It is giving you an overview of what it feels like to be a power user, but the practices are hardly there. I felt particularly weird that after I painstakingly note all the highlights of the classes for each week, the virtual practical was just giving you line by line instructions on how to solve the problems.I guess I don't even have to pay attention of what I learned and just follow the instructions to pass the weekly requirement. This is possibly some of the most important things for someone to handle well when they become a technical support specialist.

For those command lines that requires some BASH basics- I have to take BASH and other classes on Safari(O'Reilly) to bolster my understanding in the area. Every time the instructor tells you "you don't need to know ...", it is actually BETTER for you to know more. I can't remember why I write certain commands unless I understand WHAT they were originated from, why was it there. It was very interesting once I got to know the origins of these commands.

If the presenter is more comfortable at slides and screen recordings being shown while she gives lectures, PLEASE let her do so MOST OF THE TIME. Not everyone is a natural in front of the camera, and it was painful to watch her to stare at the camera and reading the lines that she clearly does not feel comfortable doing so. Every time I realize I have to stare at the video and see her deliver the lines painfully, I became more discouraged to continue the course. She's a natural at sharing her command walk-through, so let her do what she knows the best.

I recommend this class to people who

1) got paid to attend this class;

2) never seen a Command Prompt being shown;

3) just want to know about this, not using this to work towards a serious professional path.

I've learnt a LOT and the command line prompt is so fascinating. Specially for Linux. I enjoyed plenty to write some words and with those, be able to: navigate through my system and processes, delete, create, write, change permissions, search files, partition disks, format them, read archives, remove, install, update dependencies and programs and so much more!! If I could provide any constructive criticism would be: videos are way too short and abundant. I prefer watching a 20- minute video which explains EVERYTHING I need to know than watching 10 videos of 2 minutes. I hated the supplemental readings so much. It's the teacher's job to teach us. I REALLY don't mind if you give me a hard time or tell me to read a lot of additional info to construct my own knowledge; but in order to do that, you need to teach me the rock-solid basics and show me your passion for what you're teaching. Otherwise, it becomes boring, dull and mechanical, like with Cindy's lectures. It was painful to be in such a slow pace with very easy stuff that could be wrapped in half of the time. Also, for the "most complicated things", like automation or adding a lot of flags for increasing the specificity of the commands, she didn't even explained them. The lectures could be improved if you teach with fun-facts, with simplicity and specificity at the same time, teaching with... energy. Still enjoyed what I learnt here, though.

The layout of the contents of this course needs to be reevaluated. Having people learn two different OS system command prompts at once is akin to asking someone to learn two vastly different languages at one time (think along the lines of Japanese and Arabic being learned at once). Now, that may sound a bit drastic, but for those who have no background in the topics whatsoever, it is a monumental task to parse the differences between Linux and Windows commands. Further, the VM for every Windows assessment is extremely difficult to work with due to its small size. This is compounded by several of the assessments lacking enough direction for one to complete a task properly. Please consider regrouping about how the material for this course is presented and how the assessments are administered. It can only help future students struggle less in the course.

The Qwiklab assessments don't work and are a requirement to pass this part of the course...The learning material is straight forward, but without the Q labs assessment working there is no safe place to experiment and actually fully understand how the things that you've learnt are implemented on a computer manually and physically. Hopefully they fix this problem in the future as this is important part of learning and assessing ones knowledge of the work done. It's not acceptable that these assessments are not able to be completed just because someone didn't test whether the Labs work or not. I'm doing these courses not only because its a pre-requisite to my studies, I'm also doing it because its my passion in life. Computers, Design, Programming, its all that I think of everyday...and the fact that these assessments don't work really is disappointing.

One of the least descriptive, least entertaining classes I've ever taken on Coursera. I understand that the material isn't always the most fun to learn, however it seemed like the majority of this class is just this person talking at you. Very few examples, very little explanation or visual learning, and the supplemental reading along with these lectures does not support how in depth the quiz questions are. The labs also contain very little explanation, more like, "type this, then this, good job!" Would not recommend, but understand it's a part of the overall Google course so I don't know if it really can be avoided.

Better supplemental reading, more visuals to explain the thoughts, and less talking at the camera would honestly help a lot in my opinion.

These were pretty cool courses that offer a lot of knowledge but the part where that talk about getting you information out to companies to help you start your career is fully true. They send you a survey that you select the companies you would like to share you information with out of they're selection, and that's it. There is no other follow up or anything as far as I've seen but I've been done with the program for workin on four months no with no other leads to helping me start my career. So it's great maybe to help boost a career you're already in but DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE if you are using it to help START a career. Hope this helps some people out like me looking for a way into the industry.

I liked the first two courses a lot, The information there was well presented. This instructor jumps around in topics during discussion, fails to post links she says will be available, and provides a lot of incomplete information. I flagged many of the video clips for this. I really think this section of the course should be remade with someone who is more competent as a teacher. I had to do a LOT of independent research to fill in the gaps. Cindy seems to know her stuff really well, but she's a *terrible* instructor and it would be great if this could be cleaned up to be on par with the rest of the course offerings.

Pros- There is a lot of good stuff in between the massive amounts of bleh in this course.

Cons - This course isn't very engaging, and suffers in the lesson the student doesn't have a matching machine. Puts too much pressure on the student during graded assignments, which already take too long to download and some don't even work properly (mostly the Windows ones).

Suggestions - Make more of the course (working) Qwiklabs. The material in this course you don't learn properly if you're not using it yourself. Not all students have either a Windows or a Linux OS, let alone both, and the Labas are there only practice.

Command Line is a special form of torture. And anyone who says that they like it are clearly masochistic. That being said, the course content was fine. I especially like the parts about permissions and killing rogue processes. But I had a TERRIBLE time with the labs. Not because the content being tested was too difficult; but because the scoring of lab activities consistently had problems. There was big latency lags, finicky VM Instances with the Windows RDC, and many times, I had to start a lab over due to incomplete scoring. What a huge waste of time! It made completing each module stressful and unpleasant.

The least stimulating use of your time imagineable. Just hours upon hours of memorizing commands you'll use once and fun facts about technology that'll be obsolete by the time you actually get a job in IT. Don't bother watching the videos, just read the transcripts (assuming they're not riddled with typos, since they often are) since you'll get the same (very little worthwhile) information in 1/20th of the time. This SERIOUSLY needs to get some fat trimmed off, the material can be difficult enough without the course being a massive test of patience.

You better make sure you've got a good memory to get through this course. While the information is basic on operating systems that most people have knowledge of, the quizzes and qwiklab practices are a joke.

You're expected to remember things from weeks ago--assuming that it takes you the full six weeks to complete this course.

the qwiklabs are a pain and the instructions are unclear and a major headache. It took several attempts with tech support to find out what I was doing wrong.

This certificate better lead to some good jobs after all this work.

This course, similar to the previous one in terms of difficulty, as been a big challenge and I had to deal with alot of things that I had no idea that existed. It's not been easy as the way the course is given to us students is not the best way in my opinion because It looks like everything is rushed and it gets kinda boring after a while. The quizzes through qwiklabs well.. I still don't have a positive opinion about them. I had a big fight trying to copy and paste from my windows to the VM... Overall I am not enjoying the course.

I was looking forward to this course and was very disappointed. The structure of the course was very confusing and chaotic. I wasn't sure why we were being taught how to create a folder, this seemed like a very basic "user" task. When the instructor was demonstrating processes in PowerShell or Linux, she sped through the commands so quickly that I would usually have to play the video over several times. This is such an important course in the certificate that I strongly suggest google revisit the content and the instructor.

The course does provide a lot of information, however, the constant short videos (an issue I've had with all of the Google courses I have taken), no command prompt lists at the beginning of the weeks' course--it can be difficult to remember all the prompts for both operating systems. It would be handy to have the lists beforehand for an easy reference guide and to make it easier to follow along with the instructor. Not a terrible course, just some tweaks would make the experience easier to follow.

It was extremely difficult to navigate but the information contained is interesting and informative. The videos just make it super difficult to understand and the transcript and the video has different things - like white background and blue script that are informing us these are important. The initial quiz was difficult was navigate and eventually pass. (some questions are asked in such a strange way, it is difficult to interpret and plus many of the correct ways are marked wrong several times.

I honestly cannot recommend this course due to its reliance on qwiklabs every week. I was left dreading the assessments because qwiklabs would crash, run slow, not save my work, and sometimes just not work at all. I was in contact with the qwiklabs tech support team without and it was just frustrating. The labs should have been fixed before this course was released to students. It costs a lot of money to take this course and the quality of the labs is just not good enough.

The course itself was quite good. The reason I did not give it high marks was because the labs for week 6, were EXTREMELY difficult due to lack of instructions. I spent hours on Youtube looking for help. This course is for people without any experience other than what we are getting in the course itself. I did not find it helpful to have something that caused me so much frustration. A little guidance would be helpful for the labs for week 6.

Honestly, the linux instances were great. The windows RD is trash unfortunately. Eventually i figured out the issue, however. I reported the bug and the workaround, posted to the forum and hopefully it worked for everyone else. I still have two final assignments on week 6 but this course was a slog. I attempted some of the assignment 14 times, zendesk on the qwiklabs side is absolute trash. coursera support was phenomenal however.

The instructor was not a good choice to teach this kind of material, her personality was dull and I found myself not excited by the content because of it. The content itself was REALLY dense for a 6 week deal. I don't feel like 6 weeks is long enough or that there was enough practice work to really make the content stick. The back and forth Linux/Windows was mind boggling and was not an effective way to teach someone.

Major issues with tech support from Quiklabs. Two of these labs could not be completed due to issues with the systems in their VMs. It took them 6 days to respond to an issue I raised, and their response completely ignored the issue I was having. They literally just copied and pasted the instructions for the lab into an email. I almost ran out of time to complete the course before its deadline due to this.

Our instructor WAS MOST DEFINATELY NOT AN INSTRUCGTOR. SHE WAS PULLED OFF AN ASSIGNMENT AND GIVEN THIS AS AN ASSIGNMENT. I can say this because I was an English Teacher for almost 40 years. I can spot someone who knows how to keep the attention of the class and someone who is simply reading off a script. I give our instructor points for trying but most definitely as an Instructor she gets a D-.

I found this course to be the hardest one to slog through. It felt as though you are thrown a lot of information but not enough to actually feel as though you've learned or applied anything. If it is important enough to teach, then make a full lesson of it. I have enjoyed the courses to date, but this one, I feel, needs a complete overhaul. Additionally, the labs often did not function correctly.

Most of this course was just copying and pasting code into powershell. I wish there were more opportunities to practice writing the code for the simple navigation. There was not enough repetition of this process to get familiar with all of the commands, thus making the last lab one of the worst of the entire course.

Lots of good- accurate- but useless information. I have been a Desktop Support Tech since 2002 and have never needed to use Powershell or Command prompts to this level. For small to mid-level companies....this is WAY to much. Your basic front line support help desk guy will never use this information....esp Linux.

The Labs were bad this chapter. Also is it possible to make the video larger when you're taking notes, especially with the both tabs closed. it would easier to see what commands and whatever she's trying to show how to better. It's a hard to take the notes and trying to see what she's doing with the smaller video