Latest in tech support

Your favorite company has dropped the ball, and that $80 subscription you paid for didn’t exactly match its description. Worst of all, its website’s “Contact Us” link is a complete and total lie. All it leads to is a page full of canned answers that can be chosen from a list. Yeah. We’ve all been there. Sometimes, you have to do things another way.
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Google added a small but potentially significant update to its Google+ Hangouts: a remote desktop feature. Similar to Skype's desktop-sharing feature, Google+ remote desktop lets you remotely control and view another person's computer while chatting away, assuming you get that person's permission, of course.
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If you work in the IT department of a company that has an internal network, the odds are pretty good that you've had to make use of Remote Desktop once or twice. Remote Desktop is one of those utilities that, like many utilities, gets used a whole lot, but the extended features or little bits of functionality go unused for a long time. Even some veterans of remote desktop are sometimes surprised to discover that you can do something with it that they never realized.
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IT solution Soluto has launched a brand new version of its simple tech-support system, which brings new features, new plans, and for the first time, an official PC list, rating the best Windows laptops on the market based on Soluto's data. After installing Soluto's client on the supported PCs, you can check them out from your own computer, tablet, or phone, perform actions remotely when needed, and more.
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We live in a very personal world where PC brands try to connect with us on a more intimate level. Sure, it's just another form of advertising, but with social networking, it's easier than ever to get in touch with these companies for support, information on new features, and insight on future products. It's all rather great, but shouldn't we able to contact the head honchos of these businesses, too?
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One of my favourite comedy shows has to be, without a doubt, The IT Crowd. Before, the IT department in a company had this image of being the fun killers that stopped you from browsing Facebook on the company computers during your lunch break. Post-IT Crowd, suddenly the IT departments were hip, cool and fun people to be around. What a difference a TV show makes (and it's set to return next year).
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Have you ever called customer service, only to end the call frustrated, disappointed and without resolution? Or perhaps there was a resolution, but it was unfavorable and certainly not worth the time you spent on the phone? We’ve actually covered in detail how good the customer service is by some of the major tech companies, like Apple, Amazon and others. But have you ever considered that there are things in your power that you can do to change the outcome of these calls?
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Despite the best of efforts, outages are part and parcel of online services. With cloud services and our 24x7 dependence on them, service disruptions can be more than irksome. Giving users a way to check the current status is one way of customer support. Apple has revamped its system status page and rolled out a more comprehensive one that should help to keep users informed.
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Misplaced brand loyalty – or brand disloyalty as it sometimes manifests itself – is a game I gave up on long ago. Speaking from experience, buying or ignoring a certain company’s products “just because” without duly considering the real pros and cons is a mug’s game. Apple have arguably one of the best regarded customer service records of all large-scale technology manufacturers. Of course there are horror stories.
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You’re sitting at home, minding your own business. Suddenly, the phone rings. You pick up, and it’s Microsoft (or Norton, or Dell, or …). Specifically, it’s a support engineer, and he’s concerned – concerned for your well-being, and for your computer’s health. You see, his company’s servers have detected your computer has fallen prey to a dangerous virus that’s been making the rounds.
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Every day dozens of tech questions cross the desktops of editors and contributors on MakeUseOf Answers. Many of them are easy to answer and have actually been asked and solved previously. Looking at other Q&A forums, the same scenario unfolds. It seems that many people don't understand how to use the Internet. Or maybe they are overwhelmed by the amount of information presented.
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There seems to be this huge misunderstanding that anyone who knows something about computers is a geek and can fix them, regardless of what is broken. In reality, when it comes to complex issues, most geeks simply know how to use Google and aren't afraid to try and follow instructions they found online. The thing is, this is an amateurish approach, which is fine when playing with your own computer. It becomes a problem with other peoples computers.
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There are few things in life that bother me more than bad customer service. Between suffering through automated menus, trying to communication with people whose accent is undecipherable, and voice recognition systems that make me feel as though I must be talking in a foreign language - I dread calling customer support, I really do.
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Service disruptions can be due to various reasons - from local problems in your computer or the national Internet node to some glitch on the servers along the way. There are ways of course to figure out if a website is really down or it is some other error. But apart from these third-party services (I would also add Twitter to the list), there are the official status pages of online services too.
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We've all had our fair share of computer problems, but most of them have been about being unable to connect to a network, being unable to run a certain program, or some other software-related issue. However, you have a much bigger issue if your entire computer doesn't seem to run at all. Let's forget about problems that might plague Windows, but concentrate solely on the hardware in your system and what might occur with them.
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