nelson_p@apollo.HP.COM (Peter Nelson) (02/21/90)
On numerous occasions I have found myself in need of
technical advice on PC-related subjects. Since my
background is technical to begin with, my questions are also
technical: differences in BIOS's, OS's, pros and cons
of different windowing or multitasking systems, differences
in performance between different processors, benchmarks,
software compatibility tests, diagnostic software, and
many other topics. Once in a while I will also have a
"where to buy" or "Brand X vs Brand Y" question.
Where can I go for such advice? I will often post questions
to local BBS's or to Usenet, or to our "pc_users" mailing
list here at HP/Apollo. Sometimes I get responses, often
I don't. When people do answer they are taking time out
of their busy schedules to do so, and I appreciate the kindness
but I also appreciate that nobody really has any obligation
to pass out free advice and, anyway, you get what you pay for.
Sometimes I will call local computer stores but I've found the
knowledge level at such places very low, and anyway they are
biased by their desire to sell me something.
We have an extensive technical library at work and I often
look things up, but that can take a lot of time and many PC
publications are not very well indexed, if indexed at all.
Question is this: Are there any commercial services
offering advice or answers to technical questions for a
fee? I don't want a full-time consultant but it would be
nice to have a phone number to call where for some reasonable
hourly rate I could get advice about PC-related matters with some
confidence that the guy on the other end knew what he was
talking about and had no commercial incentive to steer me
in any particular direction.
When I look around this newsgroup at the huge volume of
questions people ask it seems there would be quite a market
for this kind of service if the rates were reasonable.
Comments?
---Peter