The Pinged Hobbit

A lot of people would say the only thing Internet Explorer is good for is downloading something else to surf the web with. Truth be told, I’d tend to agree. My current browser of choice is Firefox and it has been for a long time now. That’s not just because I spend most of time using a Mac either. Even when I use a Windows machine I still look for the the FF icon to do my web browsing. I only use IE when I have no other option, like if I am using an ASP based app which does seem to need IE to run properly. Judging from the ever growing market share of other browsers against IE. Its a fair assumption that more and more people I coming to realise that they don’t have to be stuck with what comes installed on their machine. Continue reading »

Remote support utilities are one of the things I find very useful in my normal working life. I’ve spoken before about Teamviewer and Logmein Rescue. It’s so much easier to support a client when you can see what they are seeing on their screen. The biggest problem with both Teamviewer and Logmein Rescue is their cost. There not particularly expensive, but if your a small IT company with a few distributed clients it might be too much of a stretch to your budget to afford them. Ammy Admin is a free utility that provides much of the functionality of the paid for apps, but at no cost. Continue reading »

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One of the points I stressed when I talked about how to be good at IT support was being able to access the computer of the person you are trying to support. The hardest part about supporting some one is getting an understanding of what is actually happening on screen. Human beings make very bad eye witnesses, they have a tendency to put their own interpretation on to what they see. Sometimes adding information, sometimes missing out things they don’t see as being relevant. Plus the person you are supporting will have a tendancy to try to hide anything they might have done that caused the error (and as any support person knows 90% of all errors are user related). Continue reading »

Yesterday I posted about how to deal with the IT support department. Well as you may have noticed, I try to be fair and look at both sides of things. So I’ve decided to follow that up with some helpful hints for the person at the other end of the phone to make their life a little smoother hopefully, and perhaps help the person calling them not to get too stressed! Hopefully these hints will be useful for anyone considering a career in a helpdesk role as well. Continue reading »