If you're regularly digging into Windows' Control Panel and Administrative Tools to tinker with your system, or a friends', the How-To Geek has quite the time-saving tip for you. Both Windows XP and Vista have a built-in tool that lets you cherry-pick the tools you regularly use—disk management, user/group control, services, and the like—and pack them all into a custom panel. You can place a shortcut to this panel anywhere you'd like, and you can even add in links to helpful web pages or folder locations. Pretty handy stuff for professional sysadmins, or those folks regularly putting on their fix-it cap.

Whether you're missing a crucial file at work or home, or you just need to tweak one little setting to get Mom's email working again, having remote control of another desktop can be seriously handy. But not everybody can walk the less-tech-inclined through installing a VNC server and opening up their router ports, or have the time to create their own SingleClick tech support tool (cool as it may be). Today, we're looking at the best solutions for getting into a computer remotely, whether you're helping out Uncle Bif, grabbing files from home, or controlling your media server from the lounger. Photo by miguelb.

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While many call centres these days record support calls, it can help you to keep them accountable (and keep track of your account details) if you keep notes on any support calls you make.
You don't need a word-by-word transcript, but here are some basic facts you can note down:

• the date and time of your call
• the name of the operator
•  any specific details related to your call such as dates, times, or payment amounts discussed
  
• if they say anything which seems odd or wrong to you, make note of it. For example, a staffer at one ISP told me it didn't matter what phone provider I used, I'd be able to get their internet regardless. It seemed odd, and sure enough, when I rang back the next day to connect, I was told that I had to be with Telstra or a Telstra wholesaler to get their service.

Having these notes to hand can make any followup support calls much easier for you and the company you're calling.

My other advice is to ask questions to clarify anything complex, and repeat it back to them. Saying "So if I understood you correctly, the situation is..." can help make sure you're both on the same page.

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When it comes to getting help with computer or nearly any other problem, subject-specific forums can be far more helpful than a Google search. Then again, as with Google, you have to know where and how to look. Twing, a multi-forum search site, does a great job of parsing through the results from hundreds of user-driven forums and gives you the tools to winnow down the multitude of results you're likely to find. You can pull out specific phrases, dates of posting, languages, or only the topics and threads that contain video or pictures, for example, and sign up to be alerted whenever a thread you're following is updated—saving you the hassle of signing up for the forum itself. There are many forum search aggregators out there, but I'm liking how Twing does its job, and with no mandatory sign-up.

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A free Mac version of remote PC access software LogMeIn has just been released. LogMeIn Free for Mac can be downloaded here. You'll need to create a (free) account. Once installed on your Mac, the software will let you connect  to and control your Mac from a browser via a Windows, Mac or Linux PC as well as the Apple iPhone and other handheld devices.
LogMeIn Free for Mac runs on OS X v10.4 (Tiger) and v10.5 (Leopard).
I haven't tried out the Mac version of LogMeIn, but we previously reviewed LogMeIn for Windows here and told you how to use LogMeIn to provide remote tech support here.

If you're familiar with putting your PC in Standby or Hibernate mode (and hopefully you know the difference), you probably know that both are anything but a sure bet. Dennis O'Reilly, blogger at CNET, runs through a few checks any Windows user should go through to make sure their computer slumbers when they want it to. Among the fixes are disabling the "Wake on LAN" setting in BIOS, pruning down scheduled tasks and modifying the properties of your mouse and keyboard. Not all of these tweaks are feasible for every system, especially business machines, but the post is worth a read for anyone struggling with their machine's sleep disorders. Photo by Goldring.

Tech support website Satisfaction walks the middle ground between the extensive, but nameless, answers found on community forums and official, but not always extensive, answers from company reps. Covering webapps, gadgets, and desktop applications, Satisfaction has more than 400 companies being discussed, and some of them, including Google, Sandy, Twitter and Microsoft, have actual employees helping to answer questions and troubleshoot. If you ask a new question, Satisfaction emails you when the answer appears, or you can follow the thread via RSS. It's not an all-in-one stop yet, but especially for help with webapps and newer programs, it's a good place to find help beyond the FAQs.

As someone who's often frustrated by poor or incomplete user guides or product information online, I can see that the Fixya website could be a useful tool. In beta at the moment, Fixya is aiming to be a one-stop-shop for people seeking tech support, user guides and repair guides for products from a range of vendors.

Rather than a tech support business, Fixya is designed as a community, where users provide both the questions and the answers. You can browse the database of already answered questions, or pose your own question to the community of registered experts. Experts are users who have registered with the site and nominated their own area of expertise. They can post answers to the site, or help users directly via online chat.

The success of a site like this will be in attracting knowledgable people who can provide decent answers to user questions. The site encourages people to sign up and answer questions by paying them. It's not a huge amount, a few bucks per answer posted to the site. I noticed that the Top Expert on the site has already racked up 300 solved problems, so the incentive scheme seems to be working to attract problem solvers to the site.

There are already a lot of online forums for people to discuss products and tech problems - this one might be good to browse when stuck on a particular problem - or if you don't have a resident geek to help you. If you know of any particularly good 'tech support' forums, please leave them in comments.

ExtremeTech offers up 10 tips on how to get what you want from tech support. The first tip is probably the best one in my book -  do your homework and know what you want before you place the support call. Another tip, recording the phone conversation, sounds extreme but I'd advise keeping written notes so you know what they've advised and promised to do for you.

Ten Tips: How to Get What You Want from Tech Support [ExtremeTech]