Orientation doesn't take that long. It's just videos and articles about the program basically.

I bought my webcam on amazon, I got the Logitech C920S, I would also recommend getting a stand with a light (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G379ZBH/) The proctors can be picky about the position of the camera and it's best to be able to accommodate them as much as possible. Plus you will have to move it around at the beginning of the exam to show them your cool room and your sweet desk.

You can likely get through courses very quickly, some will only take you a week and others will take longer. The way I do it is I take a pre-assessment at the beginning of the course, if I do well then I go through and take all the quizzes and then take the course assessment. If I am near the border of competency or below on the pre-assessment then I just go through the parts of the course that I didn't do well on + all the quizzes. This strategy works okay but not always. For example, the network & security foundations course, about 85% of the content in the course is not even on the final test.