Never, Ever, Ever, Ever Call Tech Support...

...did I mention never?

Some people have no choice because none of your friends are "computer people", but most of us know someone who is proficient with computers. If you do, then please don't call the tech support line for your computer or anything having to do with it until you have called your friend.

Here's why. This has happened with three people I know and in this case it happens to be with AT&T support (IMHO, one of the worst in this department). When you call "tech support", you get a person on the other end of the phone who has a list in front of them. Most have never programmed a computer and even fewer have ever opened one and worked on it. They go through their list and get you to change settings all over the place, other things stop working in addition to your original problem, then they say it's someone else' fault.

In all three of my friends' cases the support person said "it's Windows' fault", "it's Outlook's fault" and "it's Internet Explorer's fault" and left them hanging. They didn't walk them through changing all of their settings back, just messed up their computer and said so sorry.

Please, call your computer friend first. You may think you're being a pest, but believe me it will save you a lot of time. It will also save them the headache of having to go through all of your computer's settings to fix what the so-called tech support person messed up. Most of us can figure out a problem and correct it in less time than you will spend on hold on the tech support line remember, friends first.

Call a friend, look through user forums, but whatever you do please, please, please DON'T CALL TECH SUPPORT.