WOF: Do you provide tech support to friends and family?

Doesn't bother me anymore...since I installed a free remote desktop program. As long as their computers can boot & get on the web, I can fix, or see what the problem is remotely.
And since I set up all of my family members computers, they are locked down in regular user mode and can't screw them up too bad

Hell yes, but its always the same thing right click to cut and right click to paste...lol The comic in this is great it really is a clip of my life.Thanks Techspot your my home page

I do it all the time for fun. I've even been considering doing it part-time for pay. I keep XP running on a separate partition on my PC mainly so I can try things on there then tell my dad what to do on his machine. I am not crazy about helping people over the phone; if they don't know a folder from a file the language barrier gets pretty steep! I also hate working on gateway laptops. I have had to reinstall windows twice on a friend's gateway (i don't know what she is doing to pick up some nasty malware; the internet history is always cleared when she gives it to me), as their driver support and installation is the most convoluted I have seen. But I love building new PCs and upgrading old ones.

I'm with you. I never charge family and friends and I just enjoy helping. But I have to say this. If they start to get like I have to come over right then and think their life is the only one that counts then I start telling them to call a tech and see what they can do. I have only had to do that once. Most people I have helped are very greatful and appreciative.

my family pays in meals..

There ya go! the barter system. I thought about doing that and taking chickens for payment, but its so risky to accept personal chicks.

Ohh yeah this i do. Not much phone support, more like on site support.

I don't charge them for it, but sure do appreciate gifts which recieved a few times.

hello ...

yeah, it will never END & so natural, i just don't take it as work anymore for I don't do it for work anymore (in network ONLY now .. phew!) ...

but since around 10 years, i brought my brother into the business, now he does the tech things for the family & i continue with friends, not always billing them for except for components ... i love doing it so easy ! but i also need some time for me & the wify in week-ends LOL & for gaming too...

cheers!

All the god damn time, if it's not my dad, it my sister, if it not them it's my sister in law. If not any of them, its a friend who needs help with there laptop.

It bloody annoys me sometimes, but other times i do it because i have nothing else better to do.

Help out my neigbour, he returns the favor with mowing my lawn.
Help out the pensioner 3 houses down from me, he returns the favor with flowers, plants, fruit etc...


Do not help family and friends. I got bitten in the bum too many times.

I help more than a 10 person in a week

A friend of a friend called and told me her internet wasn't working so I went to her and to my surprise, her homepage was "about:blank".

Of course I do! again being the only computer person in the whole family, Regularly does my Granny download that "toolbar of doom". All to often does my cousin drop her laptop expecting me to be a mirical worker and magic it back to life.

The most annoying part is that they all live so far away, they could at least pay the petrol to get to them!

Get pestered a lot, especially now I am retired. Don't mind family, but "friends" looking for a cheap solution annoys.
A coupe of weeks ago while in the hydrotherapy pool a guy was complaining about his brand new computer of two weeks not even turning on. After a few expletives from him, I calmly suggested that behind his tower above the power cord, there might be a switch. Give it a flick.
Next day in the pool I asked him how he went. "Works fine", he said.

Yepp =P even tried to make a self help page,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Beginner%27s_Guide_to_MS_Windows_Optimization
but I dont think it worked =P The problem is that they dont even want to try to solve it themselves, they just call and say, I will be over in 10 min ..

I had the same problem with my parents computer.. reinstall every 3-6 months... untill switched from XP to Linux (first debian, than ubuntu)

My 60+ year old parents are now happily using linux. And the amount of work for me has droped 100 fold.

What i hate most is this kind of IMs:

"Can you find me this song?"
"Can you find me my sql's website (or even specific data on site)"

... that's why there's /ignore

People are such users. I once couldn't get a meager $15 an hour for 3 hours work for a son of a lady living in our condo. Guess that they don't know the Geek Squad charges $65 an hour. Never went back. My brother's windows xp computer requires scan after scan after scan. I literally spend hours each week on it and only got a burnt to a crisp steak for it on my birthday once. He's afraid of Firefox with Adblock Plus (which would alleviate the need for scans.) How do doctors rake in so much money? Then there are the egos of people like my brother's wife and her computer. There could be no problem, could there? Your still running IE6? Paid $100 for Norton AV when you could have downloaded Avast for free? Once I reloaded windows for a guy and got paid about $100. The next time I went there, his son deleted his printer from control panel. I told the father who argued with his son and the son gave me a flat tire which cost $70. Net $30. Nightmare city.

Well its been going on for long long time, but there is a downside to it as well, most of them don't really try to solve even the minor things at their own (as several others has pointed out very rightly).

For example, I remember a very umm interesting tale, someone I know called me that his PC's Keyboard/Mouse isn't working, I asked them to check lock lights are turning on or not and cables are connected etc. They said yes cables are connected but no lights ..... long story in short is, when I eventually got there and checked I found out that his wife had 'cleanly cut the KB/Mouse cables with scissors' ....... and reason was, guess what ......................... he was spending 'too much time on his PC'