How to get free tech support
If you’ve read some of the other articles on this site, you’ll know how easy it can be to get computer hardware and software without paying for it, but how do you get free tech support? Unless you happen to be friends with a computer expert who doesn’t mind helping you out, you’ll have to figure out how to solve technical problems yourself.
Fortunately, the internet is a gold-mine of free tech support and there are thousands of websites where you’ll find knowledgeable people willing to share their advice and help you solve your problems. Before we talk about where exactly you’ll be able to find free online tech support, it’s worth mentioning a few ground rules which will make it easier for you to find help.
1) Always be polite, patient and friendly with the people who you are asking for help and advice. This may sound simple, but it’s surprising how often people forget this rule. If you treat people with respect, they will be far more likely to invest their time in helping you.
2) Provide as much information as possible about your system – write down as much detail as you can find about your computer: the type of processor, how much memory, the model of graphics card, etc. And the same goes for software, make sure you know the name and version number of your operating system and any software you are using. It’s much easier to diagnose technical problems when you have all of this information available.
3) Show willingness to learn – techies find it much more satisfying to help people who are trying to figure out problems for themselves rather than fixing things for people who clearly aren’t interested in learning how to solve the issue.
Where to find free tech help
Manufacturer web site – most hardware and software manufacturers (both commercial and free/open source) will have a website, and usually there will be a discussion forum where you can ask for help from the manufacturers own support staff, or from other users who are experts.
User groups and fan sites – if the manufacturer does not have a discussion forum on their own website, quite often you will find unofficial forums set up by users of the product in question, and these are usually great places to find technical experts. Do a Google search for the brand name along with the word “forum” to find relevant sites.
Dedicated tech help sites – there are plenty of websites where good Samaritans provide free tech support for general technical problems. A few examples are:
Yahoo! Answers – a great service which allows you to pose questions to the general public. Set up an account and submit your question (remembering to include as much information as possible) to the ‘Computers and Internet’ section, and within a day or two you’ll usually get a few different possible answers.
Google – nine times out of ten when you encounter a technical problem somebody else has already had the same difficulty and tried to find an answer online. By entering a few keywords that are relevant to your difficulty (along with the word “problem”) into Google, you will quite often find a forum discussion or blog post covering exactly the problem you’re having.
