Tech Support When You Need It

Sites, tips, and advice for getting tech support when you need it.

Steve Bass

It's Sunday night, nice and late, and you need help. You're still in your home office finishing a dopey project due the next day. In a moment of Dilbertian weakness ("Sure, Boss, can do!") you promised a Word doc with fancy headers and footers, and gleefully volunteered to insert a bunch of spreadsheets and images. But can you remember how to do any of it? Of course not. I'll show you where to get help, sometimes instantly, and often free.

If your first thought is to turn to Clippy, Word's chirpy, anemic little helper, banish the thought. Instead, tap into the Internet for the myriad of Web sites that offer help.

Dig this: Clippy's been evicted from Office XP. Read the obit and make sure you check the excerpts from the first movie: "Listen! Next to Microsoft Bob, you're the most annoying thing in computer history" and "Is there any way to turn that moronic paper clip off?"

The Support You Need

You might have the impulse to call tech support, hoping for a cushy, toll-free chat with a seasoned professional. (Ha Ha. That was too funny, no?) It ain't gonna happen, and our intrepid reporter Jeff Bertolucci tells you why tech support's so bad--and how to wheedle the help you need. It's in his "Get the Help You Need."

No time to plow through all of Jeff's story? Here are the parts to hone in on. Jump to "Get Expert Advice on the Web," the section that provides a thorough evaluation of the five top Web help sites.

We supply a handy, fast chart that compares the services.

And if nothing else, zip over and read the valuable "Tech Support Survival Guide."

Here's a way to reduce your anxiety when you call tech support: have all your serial numbers and other system information in one handy spot. Scott Dunn tells you how in his May Windows Tips column.

Help Is on the Way

For free help--and plenty of it--try AskMe.com. Besides computers, the site's experts tackle several topics, and my experience has been terrific. For instance, I asked a tax question (a real one, on Saturday night, no less) and had four answers within an hour.

Dig this: Say you don't need any help and you have a fast network connection (or lots and lots of time). Visit the Lots of Robots site. You'll see a strange, eerie, and intriguing 24MB animation.

So you like free help? Good, I have some more suggestions. Computing.Net is a technical support site with over 16 top-notch, no-nonsense forums. The range of forum topics includes all versions of Windows, obscure operating systems (OS/2), one OS novices haven't heard of (DOS), and Linux, Unix, and BeOS as well. It's worth a visit, if only to learn whether there's an OS/2 upgrade. (Please, if you're an OS/2 fan, don't write to ask when the new version will be available. Thanks.)

Have you looked at Microsoft's Windows Resource Kit yet? Not only is it free, it's on a CD in your office and it's a great resource with answers to hardware and Windows questions.

The Experts Exchange is also high on my list for getting answers to thorny and esoteric problems. My experience was good. I got help with a gnarly JavaScript and Internet Explorer issue in a matter of hours. The site's free, but they use a convoluted system that requires you to gain points before you can ask more questions.

Have Your Checkbook Handy?

If the free options fail, here are a few fee-based services I've had some luck with in the last year.

First up is ExpertCity, a 24-hour Web-based service with plenty of experts. I checked regularly between midnight and 3 a.m. (hey, I write better with a last-minute, beat-the-deadline adrenaline rush) and at least 12 people were on duty. The experts can remotely control my PC to actually see the problem and then walk me through the solution. It's cool and it works. But it's not free. Experts make bids based on the time they suspect the job will take, and the price ranges from $5 to about $20. Stop by the site.

Another good one is the PC Crisis Line, a help service that sounds like a 1980s Berkeley counseling group. They provide live phone tech support with 24-hour coverage. I called using a pseudonym and hassled them with an obscure database problem and a confusing Word conversion predicament. They came through with flying colors, both for accurately diagnosing the problem and for working quickly and efficiently. They're not cheap--$3 per minute (with a 2-minute minimum) and a buck an hour after 10 minutes.

Finally, a shameless self-promotion that my editor made me add: Consider PC World's Expert Help, which offers access to experts around the clock for a nominal fee.

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