Welcome to Helpdesk 101, where you pay your money — or not — and take your chances.
Last night, I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with my mother-in-law helping her with a printing issue. She just upgrade her iMac to OS 9.2.2 and had trouble getting her laser printer to work. She couldn’t get to the manufacturer’s site to download the printer driver. That’s an IE issue, you know, the browser that hasn’t been updated since Jesus was still in diapers.
To make a long story short, she really didn’t need to download the driver afterall. Toward the end of our “support” call, she noticed the printer icon on her desktop (she couldn’t find it in the Chooser), double clicked it and noticed that she had two print jobs that were clogging up the queue — from the weekend. She deleted those then printed to her little heart’s content.
It was the second time in a couple of weeks I was on the phone with her. The last issue involved upgrading her husband’s iMac so that he could print to a new printer/copier/fax that he had just bought, which he’s now not excited about because it’s slow and loud. Oh, well. (He’s a story for another day.)
It was my pleasure to help out, but I started taking stock of the tech calls I’ve been servicing in the past few weeks.
- Consulted on two computer purchases with various hardware additions (both Macs, thankfully)
- Set up a wireless network
- Consulted on the purchase of wireless equipment plus fast-Internet installation
- Trouble-shooted (shot?) a browser issue (IE, too)
- Assisted in setting up a router but failing to help with a wireless network issue (PC, by the way)
That’s the short version. And it’s during the time that I was trying to get my server up and running to host this blog.
I’m not offering my services to the masses, mind you, and I’m not complaining. Actually, it’s kind of fun helping out ’cause it teaches me a lot. I’m still not at the Mac proficiency level of my partner-in-crime Jerry — a true Mac guru.
But I’m getting there.
If you’re a Mac enthusiast, too, let me know…
One Comment
I love my Mac, but thankfully I’m not much on tech stuff. (OS-X helps out there) But I do get tons of calls from family wanting me to help them with Google Searches and printing as they don’t have printers and I do.