I'm preparing for the LPI Linux Essentials exam with the LPI Linux Essentials Certification All-in-one exam buide by Robb Tracy. The front matter says copyright 2013, but some of the material leads me to expect that it was last revised in 2012, and maybe not revised as thoroughly as it should.

A good deal of Chapter 3 on Hardware strikes me as obsolete. A lot has happened since 2012. New models, new technologies with higher speeds and capacities, and so forth. And does anybody still have a floppy drive on their PC? And the chapter never even touches on network hardware such as ethernet and WiFi, or blue tooth.

Does the exam ask questions about outdated hardware, or does it ask about more current hardware not covered by the book?

The book spends a couple pages on PICs, but neither provides chip manufacturers and numbers, nor pictures of PICs, nor diagrams showing the cascade, and explains the pins very poorly.

How much detail about PIC pins does the exam go into?

If it's enough to worry about, can someone suggest a better resource for learning this stuff?

I think the question you might want to be asking yourself is whether or not the information being presented in the guide is relevant to the test. As you state (quite rightly, I might add) the information in the guide is a bit dated, and does not cover the true state of hardware today. This is a problem in any sort of guide when it comes to technology... in a very short amount of time the guide becomes dated and somewhat useless.

However, the same holds true for certification exams in technology... they also become obsolete in very short order. So the question I would be trying to find the answer to is exactly what you are asking yourself... is the exam as dated as the book? If it is, is there a new exam being written that will take this one's place shortly, and should I wait for that one to come out before I bother taking the exam in the first place? If it does get superseded, how long will my certification under the old test last?

I know that other certifications such as RHCE and even MCSE make this very clear.

As for a better resource for learning this stuff, I always lean on the concept of pure experience. Go out and beat up on these sorts of things yourself. Find some old cheap hardware and play with it, breaking it and fixing it, etc. When it comes to new hardware, that is a hard thing to learn via experience since it all comes out so fast and is expensive when it initially comes out, but in terms of certifications I don't think you have to worry too much because those exams have to lag behind somewhat due to the nature of technology. What is brand new and shiny today may in three months time be a lost technology that no one actually bought into and is therefore not worth even testing someone on. As such, exam writers have to look at technology and decide what parts of it have stayed around and will have lasting power, then test you on those parts.

Thank you @Wells.

I actually have equipment for my own hardware lab, and have scheduled a day to pull it all apart and put it back together with my study mate.

But my lab equipment is as dated as the book. Experience is all well and good, but it is not possible to experience everything, and I need to know whether to focus my energy on the dated book content, or on researching more current information between now and when I'm scheduled to take the exam.

So yes, you are correct, another way to frame my question is whether the exam this June will be as dated as the book.

But also, how detailed is the exam? If it's as detailed as the book, then I need to find additional resources, because the book does a terrible job of explaining some of it, such as the PIC pins.

LPI requires recertification every 2 years. One would hope that they'd update both the exam and the official guide that often, but the guide is four years old!

Those companies "require recertification" so that they can stay in business!