• The screen shots are further made useful by well-placed blue highlighting squares that indicate menu options. This really does help you to quickly see what the lesson is trying to point out to you;

• There is plenty of white space to help facilitate easy reading as well as scanning. It's a lot like reading a picture book when you were a kid. You get an ample dose of illustrations at just the right time, striking a good balance with the straight prose;

• The icons, of which there are a ton, are intuitive and really helpful when you are scanning for a particular piece of information.

Justify the cost
At $499, some people might initially balk at paying what, at first, might seem like a high price for an online class. After all, you don't get an instructor in the same virtual room with you. But you do get an instructor that you can email when you need to over the span of months, rather than days, and this can prove invaluable when you're all alone on the job and need an expert to help give you a nudge in the right direction.

The course price includes Self Test Software's R5 Domino Application Update Exam questions, which cost $69 if purchased separately (and which are extremely valuable for helping you prepare for the test). And, the first 100 people who sign up for the course get a Lotus exam voucher worth $90. So, in effect, for a limited time you're paying $340 for the class -- which really makes it an exceptional value.

I recently took a three-day, in-person Domino course costing $1,800 and found that, dollar for dollar, there is much more value in this TLCC course than in the course I spent, effectively, $100 an hour to take. You can really take your time and milk all the value you want out of your $499 investment in this course. All it requires is a time commitment from you.

Conclusion
Contrary to what you might have heard, D-Day isn't over, it's coming. And it's something you're going to have to schedule for yourself very shortly. I've scheduled mine for June 18th, my birthday (Happy Birthday to me…). That is the day that I am going to take the R5 Application Development Update exam. You do have until October 31, 1999 to take the update exam but why wait? Better you choose the date you battle with the exam questions than have to abide by Lotus' deadline. And, the longer you wait, the more likely you are to die on the beach.

The evil little developer in me almost doesn't want you to tell you about this course because I want to be among the first certified and this course will help you do the same as well. But I know that the more people we can help over to the other (R5) side, the more we can all work together to develop our Super.Human.Power.

Contributing Editor Dan Velasco is the Information Manager for the Worldwide Sales & Marketing Department at Adecco in Redwood City, CA. He is also an R4 CLP Principal Application Developer and Principal System Administrator. Next month you'll see he's a R5 CLP Application Developer thanks in great part to this course. You can reach him via email at dan.velasco@adecco.com or on the Web at http://dan.velasco.com.