Certification paths

I don't know if this is the place to post this, but it is the dotnet.general
discussion group after all. Having said that...

I'm thoroughly confused. I've been wanting to obtain Microsoft
certification for quite some time and now that I'm financially able and have
the free time to do so, I don't know where to begin. It looks as if I would
have had an easier go of it back when there were just the MCAD and MCSD
certifications for developers. Now, there are those along with MCPD, MCTS,
etc., etc. I guess what I'd eventually like to have is MCPD certification in
VS2008, but right now it'll have to be MCPD certification for VS2005.
Soooooooooooo, where do I start?

--
Things are more like they are now than they ever have been before.

Re: Certification paths

Well that is easy; there is *only* one place to start... 70-536, app dev
foundation. After that, you have different streams: web, windows and
distributed; you could do all three MCTS first (any order), or you could
specialize and do the MCTS: Web then MCPD: Web [etc, or Windows...]

The only one that bothers me is MCTS: Distributed; this is (in many
minds) a dead duck (now that WCF is well established) - but is a pre-req
for MCPD: Enterprise...

But hey! Start down either web or windows (which should help towards the
2008 web and 2008 windows... just with the migration exam) and you'll be
en-route.

Marc