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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 10/24/2007 Getting answers to your Microsoft Products
questions online As the PC
marketplace evolved, the biggest problem in the marketplace has been customer
support – users trying to get answers to their questions about using vendors products. Microsoft is the biggest vendor in the
pc marketplace, offer application and operating system software, and a wide
variety of hardware and accessories. The
traditional way to contact Microsoft or any vendor was though a customer support
telephone line, and usually you had to be a registered user of a product, and
often you had to pay an annual software support contract. But the biggest horror stories were
always about people spending hours on a customer support telephone line
– with support reps who didn’t know their product, and the
resultant consequences. The WWW
has changed customer support immensely. Particularly in the area of software
updates, which used to be distributed first via floppy
disks, then 3.5 diskettes, and then cd-rom, and now
automatically through the internet. Today anyone who has a windows-based
computer can get operating system updates automatically from Microsoft, and
periodically you can check online with Microsoft to see if they have updates
for your Microsoft Office suite products – like Word or Access –
which you can download and install. And today
millions of people still call in on customer support lines to their vendors,
and spend a lot of time talking on the phone to solve their problems. Probably the biggest difference in
this support area today is that a lot of customer support has moved overseas,
into countries like India and Ireland. A couple years ago I made the mistake
of asking a Microsoft support person how the weather was in Seattle, and he politely
replied he didn’t know because he was in India ... But I
personally prefer to go online
for Microsoft
support and they do have online forums for all of their
products that I have visited many times and got a lot of good information out
of.
All of
these forums are monitored not by actual Microsoft staff but by MVP’s
– Microsoft Valued Professionals – independent volunteers who
have advanced certification in the particular Microsoft product they are supporting. I
have received some excellent responses from MVP’s. Additionally
I have received extraordinary technical information just from other users who
participate in these forums, which makes them similar to the Users Groups of
old. In one
instance I found a software professional who
calls himself Papajohn who I truly believe knows more about
Microsoft Moviemaker than any actual Microsoft support people I have
contacted. I’ll be doing a future Raw Bytes on using Moviemaker again
soon. It is my
personal opinion that Microsoft does not support their consumer products like
Moviemaker and their Lifecams very well. The one
caveat I will give about the forums is that I have received emails from
well-intentioned people – other users - that was totally wrong. Anyone
can use the Microsoft support forums for free; you just have to create a free
Microsoft Passport account to ask questions.
The Microsoft
forums are an excellent
resource and I would advise anyone to check them out. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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