Many, many, places.
Unlike search engines such as Google or Bing, Ask Leo! is a real person: me, Leo Notenboom. That means when I get a question (and I get lots of questions), I take various steps to come up with the answers I post here.
Did I mention I get lots of questions? Unfortunately, that means I can’t answer every single one. However, I can outline some of the resources I use when I need them.
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Finding answers
Ask Leo! is a real person — me! — who answers tech questions using experimentation, search engines, and AI tools. I encourage you to try things yourself, as most “experiments” won’t harm you computer. Learning to search effectively and use trusted resources can help you solve issues without waiting for expert help — mine, or anyone else’s.
It’s no secret
Here’s something I’m completely open about, but people rarely realize: I don’t know everything. (And anything I may have known, I stand a good chance of having forgotten.)
Fortunately, knowing everything isn’t what makes or breaks a service like Ask Leo! What’s more important is knowing how to find the best answer.1
How I find the answer falls into one of two buckets: experimentation, search, or some combination of the two.
“Fiddling around with it” deserves way more respect
Lots of questions that can be answered just by experimenting: trying whatever the question is about.
“What are these three dots over here?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you click on them and find out?”
Indeed — why don’t you click on them to find out?
For a surprisingly large percentage of the questions I get, I do exactly that and report back the answer.
The reason I point this out is that you don’t always need me to fiddle around for you. You can try things yourself and save yourself a lot of time.
Scared of breaking something? I have two answers for that.
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Don’t Be Afraid of Your Computer
Are you afraid of your computer? I'll look at some ways to become less fearful and more adventuresome.#19942
You will not break your computer. It’s much more resilient than that. Sure, you might confuse it, but 99% of the time, you can quickly undo whatever you did and be on your way. Seriously. (And you will not break your computer’s hardware unless there’s a screwdriver or hammer somehow involved in your fiddling.)
Restoring a backup is the ultimate undo. Let’s say you do something that turns out to be so incredibly confusing to your computer that it no longer even boots. (I can’t think of anything that would easily do that, but let’s just say there is.) Fine. Restore your most recent image backup, and it’s as if what you tried never happened (except now you know not to try that specific action again).
My sense is that many people are more afraid of their computers than they need to be. It won’t break easily, and if it does, you can fix it.2
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Why I’ve Stopped Using Google Search
Google search used to be the winner by far, but recent decreases in its trustworthiness and the improved offerings of other search engines make switching a pragmatic choice.#170290
Search engines are your friend
If you’re willing to spend a little time learning how to use them well, Google and other search engines can be your best friends. What do I mean by learning? Anyone can throw some words at Google and press Search. But there are several aspects to Google that most people overlook.
- Knowing which words to search for to get relevant results.
- Knowing how to interpret the results effectively.
- Knowing how to use Google’s advanced search, extended syntax, and additional features.
By becoming proficient at using search engines and other web-based tools, you can frequently get the answers you need very quickly on your own.
If I don’t know the answer, and even sometimes when I do, I turn to search. Google (actually now Kagi) is my best friend. (For this stuff, anyway.)
AI is your new friend
AI gets things wrong. We know that, so we know to look for that. But AI is much better at figuring out the intent of your question than a traditional search engine might be.
As a result, it does a better job of understanding what you meant (as opposed to what you said or how you said it). You’ll still need to double-check the results, but you’ll likely have some well-targeted answers to start with.
Sometimes, just pasting in an error code or an error message into an AI like Perplexity.ai can be enough to send you toward the solution you need.
When I’m running low on ideas or I know there’s a solution I just can’t think of, I often use AI to supplement my standard searches. (And definitely watch this space. AI is getting better and better at this stuff.)
Make more friends
You may find that depending on your searches, search engines send you to some sites repeatedly.3 If it turns out to be a common source of good information, sometimes it’s easier to go straight to that site and use the search functions there.
If you already know some basics about what you’re searching for, you can get an answer more quickly by focusing on specific resources.
- Microsoft and/or Microsoft support. Information isn’t always that easy to find (or perhaps understand4) here, but there’s a ton of information and answers in the Microsoft Support Knowledge Base and peer-to-peer discussion forums.
- Your computer manufacturer. For problems with your specific computer, there are few resources as authoritative as those provided by its manufacturer. The quality varies, but I send people to these resources often.
- Your software manufacturer. I’m surprised at how often people don’t do this. If I have a problem with software X from company Y, the first thing I do is search for company Y’s website and see what support they offer. There’s rarely anything more authoritative than going to the source.
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Two Steps to Better Search Results
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Search effectively
Sometimes, the search options offered by various websites are less than ideal.
Not to worry! There are techniques you can use to search even the specific resources I’ve mentioned using general-purpose tools like Google and other search engines. Sometimes — though not always — the general-purpose tools are more effective than the search provided by the sites themselves. For example, using Google to search for
site:askleo.com windows 10
causes Google to return results only from the site askleo.com. Sometimes searching microsoft.com using Google will return different results than the Microsoft website’s own native Bing-powered search.
Do this
Regardless of what information I find and where I find it, my experience and expertise helps me weed out the garbage from accurate and useful information. That’s some of the value I try to add.
But even without having made your career in computers, you, too, can use the resources I’ve listed to get more answers and solve more problems — all without waiting for me, or someone like me, to get back to you.
Want another good source of information? Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.
Footnotes & References
1: In my opinion, most education isn’t about learning specific facts; it’s about learning how to learn and find the things you need.
2: Assuming you’re backing up regularly, which you should be doing anyway for this and many, many other reasons.
3: Hopefully, Ask Leo! is one of them.
4: One valuable service I’ve often described myself as providing is nothing more than translating indecipherable geek-speak into more commonly digestible English.
Accents do not agree with my hearing problem. I almost never contact a software manufacturer for advice, because so many of them outsource to overseas.
I agree that Google is our friend, and that is my home page on the web.
“I don’t know everything and that which I do know, I stand a good chance of having forgotten.” – In some ways, I think I now know less than I ever did. I no longer make an effort to remember things I’d have tried – or had – to remember in the past. Instead, those things are now saved in bookmarks, address books, OneNote, etc. and can be searched for and accessed using whatever device I happen to have in my hand. Total recall!
For example, a few years ago I could have reeled off the phone numbers of my 50-or-so most frequent contacts. Today, the only number that I actually have committed to memory is my own.
Computers and the internet are certainly changing how our brains our wired.
“Today, the only number that I actually have committed to memory is my own. ” Really? Lots of people I know don’t even know their own number anymore.
I do have to pause and think about it sometimes!
The main reason I signed up for the Ask Leo news letter is because of your site coming up in search results to computing questions several years ago. The answers that you gave were easy to understand and informative so I signed up to see what else I could learn from you. You’ve provided me a lot of good info over the years and some of the articles that don’t necessarily have to do with computing but a way of thinking about things are great. Keep on translating Leo your good at it.
Leo, you still know more than many of us out here. But I agree it is true that people should search more before asking.
I stumbled upon Ask Leo years ago when I was looking for a solution to a problem. Now this is where I look as a trusted source when new issues arise. As a subscriber I also have email access to Leo, but of course Leo doesn’t answer my emails if he thinks the answer already exists on his site. (No offence. It just teaches me to search better.)
I’ve also become a big contributor to Help Forums as a result of first being helped with challenges I had. A Google search for my problem led me to the forums, then the usual format is search the Knowledge Base first before posting a new question, then acknowledge the answer and come back and help others.
I’ve actually quoted Ask Leo material a few times in answers I gave on other sites.
Leo,
I have been a long-time reader of and one-who-practices your advice and thoughts. I have also been a long-time collector of aphorisms. Your first footnote definitely made its way onto my collection and I will definitely be presenting it to my students. Thank you very much.
Bill H.
I learned a lot from the Facebook Fridays. Something similar could be done live on Instagram once a month for 30 minutes like techgirljen does. She’s very knowledgeable with Apple products especially tips on iPhones.
When searching a software publisher’s website, be sure to differentiate between official answers and those given on the community forums. Once on a community forum, I was given a phone number to call for a personal chat. Because I thought I was being given the phone number of the legitimate publisher, I didn’t bat an eye when I was told I needed to fork over several hundred dollars for a new version of the software in question. I later realized that software was pirated and not even functional. Fortunately, through the efforts of the software manufacturer, I was able to get a refund from the scoundrels who had duped me.
These days, manufacturer’s websites will occasionally post warnings on their community forum to be careful about calling phone numbers listed there. I encourage you to heat the warnings!