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Something Techie Happened on the Way to the Forum
Don’t underestimate the power of public forums—Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists can be an invaluable resource. Not all manufacturers promote these groups on their corporate home pages, because Usenet isn’t always kind to them (it’s not unusual to see postings that read “This product stinks!”). Manufacturers also tend to shy away from Usenet and foreign mailing lists because they have no editorial say on these Wild West public message exchanges. Nonetheless, these forums can be a source of real-world information—stuff you won’t get from the manufacturer (although you might have to wade through piles of useless expletives before you hit useful information).
Don’t forget to search manufacturers’ support sites before you hit the Web at large. You might save yourself some time this way.
Most Web search engines (AltaVista, Lycos, and so on) will allow you to specify a search of Usenet instead of Web pages. However, you’re better off using a newsgroup-specific search engine such as www.dejanews.com; you can do more specific searches, as well as restrict your search to recent postings.
Fortunately, you can search Usenet as well. If your Internet provider doesn’t provide you with Usenet newsgroups, or if your news application doesn’t allow searches, you can use Web-based search engines to search for the support topic or error message you’re looking for.
In addition to Usenet groups and mailing lists, some manufacturers and resellers also run their own Web-based forums at no charge. These forums are usually pretty good, because in addition to Joe Public, they’re monitored by real-life tech support personnel. Even though the manufacturers are not obligated to answer questions posed in public forums, chances are that legitimate questions about legitimate problems are going to be jumped on by the appropriate folks—they do have a vested interest in you being able to use their products without problems. (See Figure 7.2.)
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Figure 7.2 The Novell Web Forum in action.
You’ll also find forums run by third-party vendors who use them as advertising vehicles. The attraction of these is that the third-party vendors are ostensibly impartial about the product and are mostly concerned with getting it to work for their users. Again, your mileage may vary. (See Figure 7.3 for a sample forum screen for Windows NT.)
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Figure 7.3 A third-party Windows NT support site.
Pay to Play
All free support entails very little obligation on the part of the vendor, but it can be pretty good if you take ownership of the problem and follow up aggressively. Still, there are times when you might need more than you can get for free; in this case, you can invest in a CD-ROM technical support knowledge base.
In particular, some Web-based knowledge bases, such as Microsoft’s, are so busy that it can be aggravating waiting for each page to download. Instead, you can buy a subscription to Microsoft’s TechNet for a couple of hundred dollars. Whether you love or hate Microsoft, you’ve got to love TechNet. As with most CD-ROM knowledge bases, you get what you pay for—much more sophisticated features, which result in speedier access. For example, you can refine your search results by product type and you can bookmark. TechNet has every single technical information document available on the Web site, but it runs about ten times faster (see Figure 7.4).
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Figure 7.4 A Microsoft TechNet session.
| Talkin’ TechNet
Because I deal quite a bit with problems with Microsoft products, I tend to hit TechNet rather heavily. However, it’s sort of embarrassing, because TechNet makes you look like a hero when all the heroism you’ve shown is a couple of mouse clicks in the right place. For example, a couple of technicians came to ask me for a consultation on a fatal exception error that had been going on for awhile. Instead of running upstairs to look at the work-station in question, I keyed the exact error message into TechNet, which brought up a couple to hits—one of which seemed applicable. We ran upstairs to apply the TechNet suggestion, and the user was fixed in 10 minutes. TechNet’s not only for searches, either. You can also browse by topic, including Microsoft whitepapers and resource kits, making it an excellent source of learning and study. |
Tell your boss you can justify buying this stuff with just one or two paid phone calls to technical support or one or two visits from your $150-an-hour consultant.
Obviously, if a problem isn’t solvable in a reasonable time frame, you’ll have to go to the outside for help: Time (particularly downtime) equals money, and a couple of hours of consulting time can be money well spent in comparison to lost man-hours when something critical is down. If you end up having to pay for hep from the outside, take heart—your work has not been wasted. Doing your troubleshooting homework can and will save your company hundreds or even thousands of dollars, as you’ve decreased the up-front work of the consultant.
The “Cadillac” technical support databases out there (for example, MicroHouse’s Support Source), cost about $1,000 for a year’s subscription. You’ll want to think long and hard before plunking down this kind of money. Although these types of resources include carefully researched documentation and multisource technical support sources and are wonderful for professionals who need quick answers, you should think about how often you’ll go to them. Although these services usually provide plenty of magazine articles and tutorials and are searchable, you might find your needs adequately filled by Web-based search engines (see Figure 7.5). Unless you do a great deal of troubleshooting (in which case, you also need a raise), these types of services might not be worth getting.
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Figure 7.5 A MicroHouse Support Source session.
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