Thank you so much for the info
I took the VCP course almost a year ago as part of employer training, didn't even realised by then it was a requirement for the exam! Have been working with ESXi quite a bit, but it is now that I really want to get the certification, I mean, was thinking of buying workstation 9 but the fact that you get a license with the exam is very attractive; reckon VMware should advertise more this significant benefit which effectively causes the exam to pay by itself