Got a Tech Support Question? Here’s My Advice.
I originally imagined that the “Ask Pogue” video series would answer questions from Yahoo Tech readers who had questions for, well, Pogue. Questions seeking opinion. Questions seeking comment on tech and trends and culture. Questions for me, or for Yahoo Tech. How-to questions that might be of interest to a lot of people.
As it turns out, a lot of people see the words “Ask Pogue” and, not unreasonably, think that I’m a tech-support service.
So I get a lot of “Can you help me?” email.
It doesn’t really work that way. I do my best, and I love hearing from our readers. But I’m not Yahoo’s tech-support department. There aren’t enough hours in the day to research, troubleshoot, and answer every cry for help from every reader about every piece of equipment.
In today’s “Ask Pogue” video, I’m demonstrating something that may strike you as screamingly obvious: You can use Google, Bing, or Yahoo search to find the answers to your tech support questions!
You’ll get better, faster answers than you’d get by calling a company’s 800 number, or hunting through its support website. You’ll also get better, faster answers than you’d get by emailing me.
Here are a couple of examples:
I can already predict the comments that people will leave for this video, by the way: “This is new? This is information? How stupid! Everybody knows that you can search the Web for tech support!”
Well, guess what?
Apparently, not everybody knows that — because about 40 people a day still send their tech questions for me to answer.
As I said, I’m happy to help, but I can help only a few of you at a time. Fortunately, with today’s tip, the rest can help themselves.
You can email David Pogue here.
