How to manage your role as family tech support

By Sarah Stokely on October 3, 2007 at 10:31 AM

Lifehack.org had a really nice guide for surviving if you’re the family tech support guru. As someone who’s been the household IT go-to person for several sharehouses and fielded my fair share of phone calls from my (interstate dwelling) parents, it certainly rang true for me.
The final tip is perhaps the most useful one, too – install Logmein on their computers so next time they call you for tech support, you can log in and diagnose the problem yourself, and as a bonus they get to *watch* what you’re doing onscreen so next time they’ll hopefully be able to help themselves.


How to Survive as the Family Tech Support Guy (or Gal) [Lifehack.org]

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Comments

  • Knuckles10
    October 3, 2007 at 3:24 PM

    I work as a computer technician and the only people I’ll do any tech support for free are my mother, father, sister and girlfriend. Thats it. I MAY give a discount for other family members or do it in exchange for something (a few beers perhaps?). But it has to be something otherwise you’ll become the free meal and be called all the time.

    There is an excellent article about doing computer work for family members here:
    http://www.technibble.com/doing-computer-work-for-the-family/

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