Subscribe to Feed
21
June

Family Technical Support Made Easy

Archived in the category: Uncategorized
Posted by: Sara -

Ring ring…

Me: Hello?
Friend: Sara!!! My computer isn’t working and I don’t know what to do!
Me: Well, calm down and tell me exactly what’s going on.
Friend: All I did was press a button and it my programs disappeared :|

If your job is even somewhat technical, you’ve definitely had these calls. Or perhaps you wre making small talk with the cashier at your grocery store who asked what you did and you said you were a web developer. They then say… Oh, I’ve had a problem that you may be able to help me with. That’s never any fun.

Instead of trying to troubleshoot your Mom’s latest problem over the phone, try installing a VNC Server (Virtual Network Computing) on her computer! I’m going off the assumption that Mom is running Windows XP home or prior. There is a free server she can download called: . Continue reading over at Slate.

5 comments for “Family Technical Support Made Easy”

1
Wyatt Barnett

Definitely helpful, but I would be very wary of leaving some sort of remote access server listening for security purposes. Especially VNC as there was a recent exploit that could give just about anyone full control over the machine.

Windows Terminal Services (aka Remote Desktop) also has a massive security issue–there is but one encryption key, and that is now well-known.

Now, if you could setup something like m0n0wall to act as a firewall and VPN server and then attach to a remote console after that you are good to go.

Yes, I am paranoid.

June 21st, 2006 at 5:12 pm
2
Sara

Good points Wyatt. It’s okay to be paranoid. You live in DC and look who you work for!

June 21st, 2006 at 5:53 pm
3
Weon

The thing about that is that you are tied in to helping then. The answer is to switch to a Mac and OSX because hardly anyone has them - then you can claim ignorance!

June 22nd, 2006 at 2:06 am
4
Vinnie

At least you don’t get emails where this is the entire problem description:

There is a problem with the sign up page.

I got that this morning. No address (keep in mind we run anywhere from 5-10 signup/registration events at a time), no problem description, nothing.

The problem? The database server was reset. Everything worked fine about 3 minutes later.

I can’t feign Mac ignorance on the job :(

July 6th, 2006 at 8:46 am
5
Andrew Mark Johnstone

The thing about that is that you are tied in to helping then. The answer is to switch to a Mac and OSX because hardly anyone has them - then you can claim ignorance!

That doesn’t work, I switched to Mac, and within three weeks, I got lumbered supporting a client with their Mac (with no prior knowledge of Macs), that refused to connect to the internet.

July 9th, 2006 at 9:50 am

Leave a Reply