Re:Recomendation: Onsight, Internal Training Depts (Score 2, Interesting)

I'd totally agree with the last note in the parent post. Big training firms that put out more classes than you can remember definately put out some really poor quality classes. I wouldn't suggest you take any class they haven't offered for at least a year. Of course this means you can't take any class about new technologies until they're older technologies, but you're better off that way since you won't learn it wrong.

My company sent me to two Learning Tree classes which sounded great on paper, but were pretty lame . The instructors seemed to have walked in off the street and read the training paperwork, but didn't have any real world experience, so they couldn't help me with anything not in our handouts.

I also took a class from some other similar company (forget the name) and had a worse experience, so I guess Learning Tree isn't the bottom of the barrel.

I'd definately try to find a local LUG and pick brains of other geeks. You will learn one way to do it which is not guarenteed to be the best way, but it's a start. How you really learn is to have several LUGgers try to teach you the best way, and you get to learn a lot in their holy wars as they explain the pros and cons of their positions.