Best tech tip ever: You + Google = kick ass computer tech guru

Harness the power of Google and you are a kick ass computer guru. With this one tip, you’ll give more accurate advice than those official tech support guys. You are the geek who knows how to solve any technical problem. It’s not what you know, but how fast you can locate what you need to know and your ability to find it that counts, in the long run.

How to google for any tech support question:

1. Write a concise description of your question. For example, my husband had a problem hot-syncing his Palm E2. It failed to sync after he ported data over from his old Palm. Totally frustrated, he asked me for help. E I asked Bill to write one sentence describing what he wanted to do. (I don’t use Palms, so I needed this to understand his dilemma.)

2. Identify the unique words for your technical question. For Bill’s question, I noted these words: “E2, Palm, hot-sync failure.”

3. Most important, identify exactly any error message or code unique to your question: In Bill’s case, it was: “System Mgr. c, Line 4038 Error launching application.” Combined with your other search words, these unique error codes may identify useful answers immediately. Reason: other people have experienced the same question and found answers already. With Google, you build on that knowledge. Experts always build on others’ knowledge. In this sense, Google is just a big collaborative knowledge database for you to tap.

4. Now, you are ready to google with power! Bookmark this Google search link: now you’ll have 100 answers at a time instead of a paltry 10. To locate Bill’s answer for his sync problem, I searched on these terms: “Palm System Mgr. c, Line 4038 Error launching application” and I got my answer immediately.

5. From your Googled answers, chose the most authoritative answer: in this example, I chose answer #9 because Brighthand Forums authoritatively answer user questions for Palm. Google returned 67 unique answers for Bill’s hotsync question.

6. Once I had an answer, I had to persuade Bill to use it. He reluctantly did what I asked him to do: “perform a warm boot, not a soft or a hard boot.” If that hadn’t worked, I would have asked him to download additional hotsync software. Bill was totally surprised he was when my googled solution worked! With Google, it took me less than 5 minutes. Bill is now sold on Google search for tech support and he has used it successfully ever since.

More examples of expert tech support Googling:
Example 1: one Geek squad guy tells customers to consult Google in his timeless how to repair windows in eight commands)

Example 2: Use Google Code – Google’s Developer Network: How to be a programmer: secretGeek.:dot Nuts about dot Net: Leon Bambrick’s cartoon follows. Check out the animated version on his site (and other cool tools).

Example 3:
I volunteer for organizations which do not have lots of resources. One such organization needed to send out press releases. I used Google Books to find authoritative answers on how to create a digital press release. Googling books is more efficient than owning them! You know exactly which page to go to and you have an wide range of books to read from. I then used Google spreadsheets to store my googled press contacts and I shared this information with the nonprofit. It cost me only time and know-how.

In truth, some of the most efficient web surfers have thrown away their bookmarks (I won’t) and just go to Google for answers. Try FaganFinder.com
Fagan Finder created a masterful web search toolbox for free. Enjoy!

Got a story about how Google saved your project or your job. Share it here. Spill the beans on Google and we all benefit. Thank you.

Technorati Tags: best tech tip, kick ass tip, computer guru, computer tech, Google search, google code search, FaganFinder

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