Have you ever tried talking someone through how to resolve a computer problem over the phone? I recently used Fog Creek’s Copilot software to help my father-in-law when he called me with a problem. It was incredibly simple – I signed up for a day pass and was given a small exe file to download along with a passcode which I had to share with my father-in-law. Once he had the code he went to the Copilot homepage, downloaded and ran the small file on his side and I then took control of his computer!
It was fantastic. He’d just bought himself an external USB hard drive and some backup software and I was walking him through how to format the disk over the telephone. The problem I had was in trying to remember exactly where the correct menu items were and what boxes to check in order to do the format – I was imagining windows as he described them to me and at a couple of points I didn’t understand what options he was being presented with at all. By using Copilot it was problem solved – with his desktop in front of me it took me about five seconds to navigate to the appropriate place and get the format started, all the time while he watched and I talked him through what I was doing.
It’s not dirt cheap – I think the session cost me about £5.50 – but it’s not crazy money either and it does last for 24 hours. Instead of trying to walk through things verbally and not being sure if we’d got to where we needed to be, Copilot saved us a lot of time and him a lot of headache. Next time your friend or relative calls you for some computer assistance this may be worth a go.
