One of the applications I wrote about early on involved actually selling computer web support services exclusively, using the LiveZilla chat system. LiveZilla is fantastic, but if you just want to offer a simple, free chat interface between your website visitors and your support staff, it’s a little bit overkill. Tim covered Zopim, which is a great service to use if you don’t have your own web server, or if you don’t really need your own dedicated solution all the time.

On the other hand, if you do own your own server and you’d like to have your own self-hosted online chat system where you can offer your website visitors instant, live customer service – then Mibew is exactly what you need.

Instant Self-Hosted Live Customer Service

LiveZilla was actually a little bit intimidating – the system was fairly complex and really offered way too many bells and whistles for a simple, small-scale interface with occasional customers. Mibew is nice because it is PHP/MySql based, and because of that, installation and setup is almost identical to the quick-and-easy installation you may be used to with WordPress. Just save all of the files from the Zip package to a subdirectory on your web server, set up a quick MySql database with a user that has full admin access, and then edit the config.php file in the /libs directory with those details. Finally, open the index.php file in the /install directory, and you’ll see the following screen.

Believer it or not, you’re almost done. This first step of the wizard is a quick check to make sure you have all of the proper versions of PHP and MySql installed. Once that’s confirmed, just click on “Create required tables” to move on.

If the user permissions you created were okay, then this step should complete without any issues either. Now that all of the tables are created and populated, the Mibew system is fully installed on your web server. You’ll see the log in screen – just initially log in using the “admin” ID without any password.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll find yourself in the main menu. As you can see, things are pretty straightforward with this system. There are no complicated or confusing settings – it’s simply a chat system that connects your online visitors to you whenever you’re logged into the system.

If you click on “Operators“, you’ll be able to add as many new customer support agents as you like. This is also where you can set up permissions, adding or restricting what they can do or see when they’re logged into the Mibew support system.

Another nice feature is if you click on the “Canned Messages” menu option. This is where you can stockpile a whole collection of responses that you find you have to type often during chats with clients. During the chat, these canned messages show up in a dropdown box (which I’ll show you below). This can be a real time-saver during an online chat where you’re trying to troubleshoot a problem and chat at the same time.

Finally, there is the “Settings” area, which allows you to configure things like the company title that’s displayed in the chat session, whether you want to display a pre-chat survey to customers, and of course under “Themes preview” you can select from a short list of different themes for the IM session.

Click on the button code in the main menu to obtain the webpage code which you can insert into your website to allow visitors to open up a chat window with your live agents (or you). When visitors click on that button, they’ll have to at least type in their name, or if you’ve selected to enable a pre-survey, then they’ll have to fill that out as well before they can chat with anyone.

What you see on your chat window with the visitor is a little different than what they see. For one thing, you’ll have the option at the bottom of the chat window, to choose from your list of canned messages in order to save a little time during the chat. You can also click the purple button at the top of the chat window to forward the customer to one of the other available operators.

As you can see below, what the visitor sees on their end is just a little different. There are no canned messages, and the purple button in this case allows them to forward the chat session to their email address for their own records.

Overall, I really like the Mibew open source live support system because it’s so fast to set up on your web server, and it’s so easy to use. Within less than thirty minutes, you can have a fully-functioning, stand-alone customer support system running on your website, with very little work on your part at all.

Do you want to establish a better connection with your customers or website visitors? Give Mibew a shot and let us know how it worked out. Do you like the system, or is there anything you would change? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Recently Apple has revamped their Support Community page, making it easier to use, with a few welcomed features that all Mac users should know about. I keep the Apple Support Community site bookmarked and easily accessible for those times – though increasingly rare – when I have troubleshooting questions. Let’s explore some of the useful upgrades to the site and how to use it.

Create An Apple ID & Profile

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to create an Apple ID. This is useful in nearly everything you do with Apple, from buying apps to asking questions about problems you’re experiencing with your Apple product. You will only have to create your Apple ID one time to use it for all Apple‘s products and services. You can do this when you link to the Support Community site.

One thing to keep in mind when visiting the Support Community board is that all the help you receive is voluntary. If your product is out of warranty, you could pay Apple up to $70 for a certified Apple support technician to troubleshoot your problems. So it’s important when you use the Support Community to help others help you.

The first way to do this is by filling out your community profile, most importantly the information about the Apple products you use. If for example you have not upgraded to the latest Apple operating system, it’s important to let others know that in your profile. For sometimes not installing the latest update could be the source of your problem. If you’re a Window’s user, for example, asking about how to add photos to your iPhone from your computer, it’s important that you let potential responders know that you’re not a Mac user.

Asking Questions

You will find that in visiting Apple‘s Support Community, most feedback you receive is generously helpful. However, the one thing that irks some responders is getting questions that have already been addressed in the board. So before you sign on and post a question, do a quick search to see if your problem has been addressed before.

In the revised version of the Support Community, Apple has made it easier to find out if your issues have already been raised or addressed. When you sign in and link to the discussion board, you first locate a community from a list that consists of all the Apple hardware and software that Apple makes.

You link to a community from the list provided, or type a few letters of the name of the product you need to troubleshoot.

Once you’re in the community, you do a search by asking a question. You want to be as specific as possible in your question, for this will get you better results. So, for example, don’t just type “MacBook Air”; instead, you might specifically ask, “Why is the fan so loud in the MacBook Air?”. If then you don’t get the results you’re looking for, click the “Submit my question to the community.”

Monitoring ‘Your Stuff’

Once you have posted your question, it may take a few hours or overnight for it be responded to. In the revised Support Community, Apple has made it even easier to monitor your questions and responses. When you sign into the discussions, you can click on “Your Stuff” at the right-top side of the page.

You get a useful set of choices, including a link to the discussion questions you have posted or responded to. It’s very important that when you post a question that you monitor the responses, even if you figure out the problem yourself.

When you do get responses to queries, be sure to mark those responses as helpful. A simple click, of “Liked” will cost you nothing, and it’s a great way to thank responders for taking their time out to respond to your question.

You can also bookmark or get email notifications for any question on the board. You’re automatically subscribed to any discussion thread you create or respond to, and of course you can turn off that subscription when you no longer need it. You also now can view related responses to topical issues, which might also be helpful in addressing your own problem.

Another feature added to the Support Community is the ability to bookmark threads. This is especially useful if you’re troubleshooting a difficult problem that you need to monitor on a regular basis.

Become An Apple Genius

It’s good courtesy to not only ask questions on the Support Community board, but to also help answer them. Typically, each time I ask a question on the board, I try to address at least three or four others posted there. This type of support is what helps keep the community active.

Though you won’t get paid to participate in the Support Community, you do receive points for each response that is voted “helpful” by other community members.

Personal Layout

If you plan on visiting the Support Community a lot, you might want to personalize your community homepage. When you sign into the community, click the “Your View” tap under your username.

From there you get options for laying out and adding widgets to your homepage. If you’re responsible for taking care of a lot of Macs, you may find this homepage setup very useful.

Let us know what you think of Apple’s new Support Community, and for other sites about troubleshooting your Mac, check out my article here.

Why not? The donation process is fast and easy: Once you text the appropriate number, in most cases, you’ll need to confirm your donation with another text message. Finally, you’ll see the charge on your next cell phone bill. That’s it. Read on to see the major charities that you can help with a simple text message (SMS fees still apply).

Red Cross

Most people have probably heard about this campaign, so as a reminder, US residents can text “REDCROSS” to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross. During the donation process, you’ll be presented with the option to specify whether your gift should go to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific, or to support the Red Cross efforts. Participating carriers include all four major US carriers, such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and other regional carriers, like Virgin Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Cricket. Most wireless carriers allow you to donate up to $30 per month to a specific keyword, like REDCROSS.

Susan G. Komen For The Cure

Formerly known as The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, this organization is the largest and most widely known breast cancer organization that invests in breast cancer research, education, advocacy, health services and social support programs in the US. It’s well-known for holding large fundraising events, like the Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure, which take place worldwide. To donate $10 to this organization, text “KOMEN” to 90999. You can donate up to 5 times per monthly billing cycle.

Water.org

Text “POOPIN” (yes, you read right) to 27722 to give $10 to Water.org, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to provide aid to regions in developing countries that have no access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The organization, co-founded by Matt Damon, aims to bring adequate, safe drinking water worldwide.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation

Founded in 1980, the Make-A-Wish Foundation aims to give hope and joy to children who have life-threatening, degenerative or malignant medical conditions by granting them wishes, like meeting a celebrity, or getting a princess bedroom. To donate $5 to this organization, text “WISH” to 90999.

Keep A Child Alive

You can text “ALIVE” to 90999 to donate $5 to Keep A Child Alive, a non-profit organization that aims to provide medicine to families with HIV and AIDS in Africa and India. It’s partly founded by R&B singer, Alicia Keys, who was involved in the Digital Death campaign, along with Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest and other celebrities, where they signed off Twitter and Facebook (digitally dead) so fans could donate to this charity in honor of World AIDS Day and in order to reach a $1 million fundraiser goal.

Operation Smile

Formed in 1982, Operation Smile is a not-for-profit medical service organization aiming to provide cleft lip and palate surgeries to children and adolescents across the globe. $240 can fund a surgery and change the life of a child with cleft palate forever. That’s way less than an iPad. Text the keyword “SMILE” to the short code 90999 to donate $5.

To see additional charities and even universities that accept text message donations, see this page.

Do you know of other charities that allow donations by SMS? Let us know in the comments!

Photo credit: Susan G. Komen For The Cure, Water.org, The Make-A-Wish Foundation, Keep A Child Alive, Operation Smile, Shutterstock

One of the best ways to track and analyze all problems is through centralized help desk software. With such a system, you not only track computer or system problems, you also track which members of your staff took care of the tickets, a log of which customers or clients use the help desk most often, and it provides a great high-level overview of how well your IT staff is managing problems.

Here at MakeUseOf, we’ve covered a few free centralized help desk apps. JazzDesk is one example of a help “ticket” system that also takes care of time cards. IssueBurner is another interesting approach.  One of the best free help desk software solutions I’ve found that can handle the same functionality as some of the more expensive counterparts out there is the Close Support Service Desk.

Setting Up Close Support Service Desk

The software is called “service desk” rather than “help desk” because it’s actually useful for more than just IT issues. If you run any service at all that includes clients or customers calling you up about problems, you could use this software to track those issues. Maybe you run an electronics repair service, a plumbing business or any other field that includes troubleshooting and repairing problems. This software can help you remember, track and analyze those problems, especially if you have a team of technicians working for you.

When you first set up the software, you’ll find that it asks you where you want to access the system database. Close Support utilizes Access Runtime, and the background database, called CloseSupportBE.mdb, stores all of the data for the system. To allow distributed users to access this system for entering, managing and closing trouble tickets, just store the database on the local network. If you want to use it over the Internet, just set up an online “hard drive” like DropBox and store the central database on that account.

The one annoyance if you use the free software is an initial box that pops up when you load the software, where you need to click “Continue” to decline signing up for the free trial. Once you get into the software, you’ll see four major areas.

At the top (1), you’ll find quick search fields and buttons to create a new Call incident, or create a new Task for one of the staff (or yourself). Tasks can be assigned to a particular problem and a particular technician. The Service area on the left includes active Tasks (2) and active Calls (3). On the right side of the main screen you’ll see calls sorted by assignee, status and priority (4).

Entering details whenever a problem call (or email) comes in is as simple as using the various dropdown boxes to select the priority and the category of the problem. A box to the right allows for specific information about the problem.

Once the call is in the system, it will stay in the “live” area until it’s either resolved or cancelled. Once there’s an active problem, every change in the system automatically gets logged in the call “history” area.

Adding a new task is a useful way to create and monitor jobs for employees that may or may not be related to specific problems that were called in. You can even set particular tasks on a recurring basis, so the system can be used for work scheduling as well as fielding problem calls.

From the navigation bar on the left, if you click on companies you can see all of the clients that you’ve done work for. This is where you can manually enter new companies, and fill in all of the contact information. When you click on the company from within tasks or calls, it links to this detailed information so you can easily get contact information from within the call or task display.

The same goes for people, whether those are individual clients or the employees doing the work. Enter all details here, and for employees, this is where you assign their username to use the Service Desk system. The nice thing is that whenever you use a customer name in a ticket you have instant access to their contact details.

Finally, another useful feature of the system is that you can export calls or tasks (either active or archives) into an Excel spreadsheet that you can use to create your own reports or just to create your own archive of resolved issues.

There are plenty of uses for this free Help Desk software beyond just IT technicians. You can use it to manage and organize just about any business that has to fix or troubleshoot problems. Give it a shot and see if it streamlines your own business!

Let us know what you think of Close Support Help Desk, or if you know of any similar tools that are just as helpful. Share your insight in the comments section below.

Image credit: Carlos Chavez

There are so many simple ways to volunteer or donate to charity by giving up a small amount of your time or re-purposing some money you would normally have spent. So here’s a list of five of the best quick and easy ways to volunteer or donate to charity. Bookmark the list of charities and use it to do the rounds weekly!

Skip1.org

This is a great concept “” it’s a site which makes you think about how much money you waste on frivolous things. You nominate something which you will give up, say a lunch or newspapers for a month. Then you donate that same amount of money to feeding a hungry child.

Yes, you’re handing over money to charity, but it’s money you would have spent anyway. It’s also easy to share news of your donation with your friends via social networks, and hopefully convince a few of them to skip something for charity too.

Free Rice

Free Rice has been around a while, but it’s so good it’s worth making sure it’s on this list. Play a simple, addictive trivia quiz and Free Rice will donate rice for each of your correct answers. This is a free and simple way to give whenever you have a free moment. Read more on FreeRice here.

Causes

There are a number of things you can do using Causes, including raising awareness for your chosen charity and helping to raise funds for them. By far the easiest way to donate money with Causes is to set up a birthday or holiday fund. This way, instead of receiving presents from friends and family, you simply ask them to donate the money on your behalf. It takes about two minutes to set up, since you can log in with Facebook Connect – just choose the charity and you’re set!

Charity Gifts

Here’s another easy way to spend your money on charity instead of something you were already going to pay for. Instead of giving gifts to your friends, give them the knowledge that you have donated to charity on their behalf. The Donation4Charity website searches all the big charity gifting sites (such as UNICEF, WWF and Oxfam) and lets you search the gifts according to how much money you have available to spend. Buy a goat for charity for about the same price as a modest gift!

Sparked

Spend 5-10 minutes donating your expertise to charity: Give website feedback, brainstorm fundraising ideas or help design an awareness campaign. This is what they need help with – if you can spend a few minutes working on it then you’ve made a difference to a real charity with just a moment of your time. Read more on Sparked here & get going!

And many, many more!

There are so many great ways to donate your time to charity “” the sites listed above are just a few. Here’s some more great articles which introduce many more you might like to try.

• Introducing Jumo ““ The Social Network for Social Good
• How To Easily Coordinate Volunteers Using Volunteer Spot
• 5 Crowd Funding Websites To Support Your Favourite Charities, Bands & Projects
• Find Volunteering Opportunities Near You with VolunteerMatch
• 10 Search Engines To Help The Environment
• 5 Cool Edutainment Games You Can Play and Also Donate To Charitable Causes
• 5 Websites To Lend A Hand & Make A Difference To The World

What are your favourite sites for donating your time to charity? Do you appreciate charity gifts given on your behalf? Let us know in the comments!

All these Mac disability support resources are included by default in the Mac operating system, plus there are several online tutorials and websites to help users understand how to use the assistive technology.

Even Mac users who don’t have disabilities might find these features useful””such as the speech command features that allow you to navigate your computer without using the mouse or trackpad.

Universal Access Features

One of the most useful tools for Mac users with disabilities is the Universal Access features, which can be found in System Preferences > Universal Access.

When you first enable these tools, you’re welcomed to an on-screen tutorial guide for how to use its features.

Screen Magnification

For example, enabling the Seeing tool provides the visually impaired or those with learning disabilities the ability to magnify a desktop screen for easier viewing.

This feature has options for the range of zoom and how the screen image moves in relationship the mouse. It also, of course has keyboard shortcuts for turning the feature on and off.

Another way to enlarge the screen for those with low vision is to open System Preferences > Displays and change the resolution size of the screen, from the actual size to a smaller size, making the font and icons much larger.

Similarly, in Mac OS X”˜s Address Book, users with impaired vision may Control-click on a phone number label and select “Show in Large Type” to get a really huge display of a selected phone number.

Also, in Safari’s Preferences, users can click the Advanced tab and change the minimum font size for the rendering a web page, from say 14 points to 18.

Speaking Features

For Mac users with hearing disabilities, the OS X’s Calculator features a speech command that will announce the numbers as they are pressed on the keypad.

Also check Jeffry Thurana’s how-to article on using the Mac’s popular Speech Commands features which allow users to navigate any Mac without using a mouse.

Online Resources

The resources described above are only a handful of the more than 50 other tools available for Mac users are disabilities. These features are all built into the Mac OS X operating system. Other tools enable users to customize the type of digital voice used for speaking and text commands, as well as use the numeric keypad of a keyboard to control the VoiceOver commands.

VoiceOver also has interactive tools to help you get started with its features.

In addition, Apple provides a great set of video tutorials explaining how to use of accessibility features, including Voice Over, screen magnification, mouse and trackpad sensitivity, and audible keyboard cues.

ATMac.org is also a useful site dedicated to providing reviews, how-tos, and other resources for Mac users with disabilities, chronic illness, or other impairments.

Topics covered on the site include:

• Accessibility news about all Apple products
• New and updated AT software
• Software which has AT uses, although it may not be written with this purpose
• New and updated AT hardware that works with Apple products
• Getting the most from your existing hardware and software in terms of accessibility
• Hints, tips and tutorials about all of the above
• Coding accessible software

Apple Mobile Devices

Many of the assistive technology resource described above can also be found in Apple”˜s mobile iOS 4 devices””the iPhone, iPod touch, and the iPad.

Tapping on the Settings app > General  > Accessibility will provide similar Mac options for VoiceOver cues, zooming, and audible aide assistance.

I’m quite certain there are other enhancements Apple could make to further assist Mac users with disabilities, but it looks as though the existing features are great start.

Let us know of other resources that might be helpful.

Image credit: Shutterstock

If you are ever faced with the task of repairing computers – either professionals or as an amateur – it’s important to have the right tools. This includes software that can help you pinpoint and solve system errors. Let’s have a look at six programs that can save you a lot of time.

PC Wizard

Properly diagnosing and repairing a computer requires knowledge about what is inside it. Some information, like the processor that a computer has and the amount of RAM installed, is extremely easy to come across. But other information, like the exact model of motherboard or hard drive, can be more difficult to determine. This is particularly true in pre-built systems from companies like Dell, as they often do not include technical information about their PCs.

PC Wizard is the easy solution to this issue. This software scans a PC and returns detailed information about the components inside. This includes everything from the audio controller to the motherboard chipset. You’ll also be able to see the temperature of the processor, video card, and hard drive (provided the system has those sensors installed).

OCCT and Furmark

Many computer problems are caused by stress placed on components as they reach maximum load. It is not hard for a processor to run well when it is only using 25% of it’s potential, but when maxed to 100% it begins to generate significantly more heat and draw far more power. This can expose problems with a computer’s cooling solution or power supply that are otherwise not an issue.

Controlled stress tests reveal these issues. My two favorite programs are OCCT (for the CPU) and Furmark (for the GPU). Each program can put a load on a processor or video card that will replicate what happens when a program demands everything these components have to give.

MalwareBytes Anti-Malware

Malware is one of the most common causes of computer problems. Unsuspecting folks download the wrong file, and now suddenly their processor seems to be running at 80% or higher usage no matter what they’re doing, or their homepage has been changed to llamas.com.

This is where a free malware program like MalwareBytes is handy. You can install it free of charge on as many computers as you’d like and use it to try and find and remove the malware that is causing innocent folks so much trouble. Cleaning up malware on an already-infected computer is tricky, so don’t expect this (or any other) anti-malware software to perform magic, but this program will give you one more tool for tackling the problem.

Revo Uninstaller

One problem that often confronts computer repair technicians is a program that won’t uninstall properly. The program may be consuming disk space, or interfering with other programs, and you’d like to remove it. Yet the built-in uninstaller fails every time.

Revo Uninstaller is a program tailored to defeat such problems. It can track down the different components and registry entries of a program and kill them. In my experience it can remove about 80% of the programs that have previously failed to uninstall through conventional methods, and you may want to simply use Revo Uninstaller by default, as it cleans up after programs more throughly than the default uninstallers usually do.

SiSoft Sandra 2011 Lite

You can learn a lot about a computer by benchmarking it. Hardware is hardware – it is made to precise specifications, and there is very little variation between various examples of a similar product. This creates a good baseline to compare the performance of a computer to, which in turn makes it easier to find where problems might be occurring. Benchmarks can also be handy because, in some cases, a problem assumed to be a hardware defect isn’t one at all. Instead, the problem is that the hardware just isn’t up to handling what the user is demanding from it.

There are a lot of useful free benchmarks, but SiSoft Sandra remains one of the most full-featured and robust examples.  The benchmarks included can be used to gauge the performance of hard drives, processors, video cards, memory and more. In addition, SiSoft Sandra offers some comparative examples of benchmarks run using similar hardware. This can help you determine if a computer is behaving normally.

While I find SiSoft Sandra’s benchmarks to be the most compelling feature, the program offers a number of other tools and hardware information utilities. I find other options to be better in these areas, but the extra tools are handy to have, and some users may prefer them.

Conclusion

The 5 must-have apps listed here are ones that I’ve used in the past. They’re great programs – but given the expansive universe of programs available, they’re surely not the only ones around. If you know of a program that would be useful for computer repair technicians feel free to throw some love on it in the comments.

The Eldy Association is an Italian non-profit organization looking to make it easier for new computer users to learn about email, browsing the web and more. According to its website, the Association’s goal is to “reach out to the elderly and disabled community with a simple computer program that can encourage their staying active and social, thus reducing their isolation and loneliness”.

What Is Eldy?

The resulting computer program that the Eldy Association came up with is Eldy, a bundle of essential programs in a easy-to-understand interface for the elderly, with big text and simple, recognizable icons, that has been translated to 22 languages. Think of it as a blown-up mini-operating system that contains an email client, chat system, web browser and even access to a simplified version of Notepad, Eldy TV, and Skype.

Installing Eldy

Though it’s like an operating system, you can install (and uninstall) Eldy like any other program. I should mention that although Eldy is available for Windows and Linux, the version for Mac is actually in beta. After you install the version for your OS, it will ask you a few questions so you can set up your own email account and profile/username for the chat system.

Here is where you get the chance to set up your own email account if you know the POP3 or IMAP settings in the “expert” route, but it can also set you up with a brand new @eldy.org email address in the “beginner” route.

What Eldy Lets You Do With Ease

Once you’re done answering those, you get The Square.

Here, you can clearly see what programs to use to perform a task. You can check your mail, browse the web, chat, and watch TV. You will have the Back button available anywhere you go for easy access to a page back or to the Square. On my Windows Vista machine, Eldy ran pretty smoothly and the experience was nice and snappy.

The email client provides simple instructions to do the basics, either read your mail, write an email or see your contacts.

I noticed that when you write an email though, a link to Eldy’s website gets appended, which may not be a bad thing as it could help your fellow senior friends learn about this easy-to-use tool.

The web browser is also easy to use with a main portal (or homepage) where you can see bookmarks you’ve set. You can adjust the font size using a slider with magnifier icons.

In the chat area, you can choose to join a public chatroom to meet new people or chat with friends on the Eldy network.

If you need more features, like video chatting, you can use Skype, which is under Useful Tools in the Square.

You can also edit your profile and detail what you are doing, which would be like tweeting or posting a status update.

You can watch Eldy TV which means you basically get access to Hulu, YouTube, Fancast and the like. Under Useful Tools, you get access to Notepad (since you probably won’t need a full office suite), Skype like I mentioned before, and a document browser, where you can select images and files to view and delete.

There’s no program to help users practice their typing, which could be very useful. Overall though, Eldy is an excellent tool for seniors to learn how to use simple computer programs. Not only that, Eldy has even made things extremely easy for anyone that actually wants to show and teach a senior how to email, chat, etc.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are also programs geared for children. If you want to teach your kid, for example, a fun way to learn the alphabet, there are games just for that. Want to teach them how to type? Here are 3 excellent websites. Want to teach them computer languages? There is Scratch. There are many educational websites to keep kids happy.

Do you know of any other programs that facilitate tasks for new computer users?  Or have you been trying to teach an elderly person how to use the Internet? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments!

One of my favorites has always been Instant Housecall, which Joel wrote about. The problem there is that the free version doesn’t offer unlimited remote pc support. You can only use it with a limited number of remote contacts. The full version is quite expensive.

Crossloop, which Mark covered, is also a great solution, but both people need to download and fully install the software for it to work.

Recently, I was tasked with helping a family member troubleshoot a virus-infected computer. The family member lives in a town three hours away, so it isn’t an easy task to go down and help him out. I wanted a solution that I could install on my laptop, but he wouldn’t have to install – at least not beyond simply visiting a website and accepting certain plug-in installations. I finally found the perfect, free remote PC support solution in Netviewer Support.

Setting Up & Connecting

The first thing you’ll want to do if you want the ability to help out anyone with their computer, anywhere in the world, is install the “support” version of Netviewer. I say the support version, because Netviewer actually comes with a free “meet” version as well, which is mostly for providing online presentations. The “support” version has the remote pc support feature that you need, so make sure to install that one.

Once you run the install and re-launch the application, the login screen lets you choose between basic or expert. As far as I can tell, in the free version either choice is the same (advanced options aren’t enabled).

Once you launch the app, you’ll see the control bar on the right. This is where all text chat takes place, and where you’ll enable or disable control of the remote computer. To initiate a connection with your family or friend that’s asking for computer help, just click on the “invite” button.

The software opens up your default email client with a pre-written message. All you have to do is type in the email address of your friend and press send. The message is already embedded with with session ID.

Once they receive the email, all they have to do is click on the link. It will take them to a special area of the Netviewer domain that automatically installs the required Java app. They’ll need to accept several warning messages along the way, such as this first one that informs them that the session may be recorded.

Entering Remote Control Mode

Once your friend enters the session, the support person (you) can see their desktop. At the beginning, you don’t have any control of their desktop until you click the “ON” button next to the “Remote Control” text at the upper right corner of your Netviewer control panel. When you do, your friend will see the following pop-up box.

Once they accept, you have full control of their computer through the Netviewer interface. The window view on your screen is encapsulated by the Netviewer window, which you can maximize or minimize if you need to get to your own screen. You can access your friend’s entire system, and you can even send the computer a reboot request.

A few useful add-ons that make the support session more interactive is the chat area, where you can chat realtime with the person at the same time that you’re troubleshooting the PC.  The Netviewer website touted integration with Skype VoIP, but I could not get that part working, and suspect that it’s only enabled in the paid version.

What is enabled in the free version is also this useful File Transfer area. This basically uses Netviewer sort of like an instant FTP or peer-to-peer file transfer using this drag & drop area in the control panel. This makes it very easy to download files from the computer you’re supporting, edit or otherwise work on them on your local PC, and then upload them back to your friend’s computer.

All of the tools included in this free “support” version of the Netviewer application make this the best remote pc support app that I’ve used yet. You can only use it for free for non-commercial purposes, so don’t try to start up your own computer support business with it – or you need to buy a business license. However, to help out with the occasional request from a friend or family member, Netviewer is perfect.

So, give it a try and let us know what you think. Do you know of any other similar apps that do the same thing just as well or better? Share your own experiences in the comments section below.

Image Credit: ramasamy chidambaram