Chapter 15: Finding Help Online

Overview

If you’re new to using online technical support, you may think that the Internet is just bursting with the type of information you need. This is true, but only to some extent.

The dot-com failures and the tough economic climate in technical companies of the last few years have shrunk the free, expert-help web sites that were so popular in the late 1990s. Many companies, even those that conduct much of their support and sales online, have cut back on online technical support. Online services like CompuServe and MSN, which used to maintain active resources for users with questions, no longer have them or have reduced them to shadows of their former selves.

Making it harder still is the fact that much of our computer hardware is not manufactured in the U.S. What this means is that you may find yourself referred to a web site for product details that appear only in Taiwanese or Chinese. And it’s not like this material was easy to comprehend in English or gets easier if you have to read the labels on a diagram written in another language.

Even when you can find a good site, you may have to be a subscriber to access the best material or it’s been written for someone with a graduate degree from Caltech. After all the years I’ve been doing this type of work, my eyes rapidly glaze over if I’m trying to learn one thing and I get treated instead to a long, highly technical discourse on voltage.

But there is good material to be found—in some cases, more than you’ll have time to sift through. There are still some support sites that strive to answer your most difficult questions in a matter of hours. Other sites may offer a wealth of info on configuring a device or troubleshooting an installation; you just need to know where to find them and how to use them to your best advantage.

The better prepared you are with information about your technical problems, the better the quality of help you’ll receive. Attitude matters, too, because it takes time to find what you need, and you have to be willing to do some reading and note the suggestions you find.

This chapter explains the places you can go online to get assistance, what you need to know, and what features you’ll typically find at these sites. In addition, this chapter looks at some of Windows XP’s new options for online assistance.