I don't like to ask for help. I especially don't like to ask for help with the two things I do for a living--working with computers and doing online research. But let me make this clear from the outset: This foible is not a guy thing. I will roll down the window to ask directions and I do read the manual. No, my reluctance to seek tech advice is the product of bitter experience.

Many is the hour I've whiled away, watching the clock tick by with a phone jammed to my ear, listening to on-hold music, and counting the cents being sucked out of my long-distance phone budget. And the advice I get in the end? Well, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's worthless. But those are the breaks, right?

The horror of being kept on hold recently drove me to test-drive some online help facilities. One of them, WebHelp.com is an assisted Web-search service in which you pose a question and a real researcher enters an online chat with you to suggest relevant Web pages. Two other services I've looked at -- All.com and pcsupport.com -- provide a similar service for computer technical support.

The experience of seeking help online has its benefits. Sure, you have to wait--sometimes a little longer than you would even on the phone, but you can work while you're waiting, so that's no drawback. The results were varied. Sometimes it took a frustratingly long time to get to the answer, though some of the techies I chatted with online were smart, clear, and got to the root of the problem in no time at all. But that's pretty much how it works with phone support. The biggest benefit is that you can keep your phone line free while you're waiting (assuming you don't share a voice and dial-up line, that is).

Help with web search

Web searching is among the most frustrating of all Internet experiences. What you're looking for is often out there, but the most heavily touted search sites--Excite, Lycos, Go, and Yahoo!--don't provide the crucial results anywhere in the first couple of pages. I've done research online almost daily for a decade, and I'm still amazed by the dross some search engines return.

When I just don't have the mental bandwidth to deal with sorting through dud results by myself, I turn to WebHelp.com. There, you enter your e-mail address and your question (using normal English queries instead of Boolean constructs), and wait for someone to get online (a process that could take five minutes or more).

When your search assistant gets online, you're given a first name or other handle, and are told that your query is being researched. A little chat frame appears on the right part of the browser window--and when the researcher finds a likely page, it appears in a frame on the left side of the screen. If the site they turn up doesn't meet your needs, you tell them why and they try again. I did not get a good result from my first try with WebHelp, but even my trickiest search requests have been answered within five tries--a good average, especially since I've been evaluating this service for months.

The best feature of all is that you're e-mailed a transcript of your chat session, complete with all the links (oh, and an ad banner to pay for the free service). For anyone who ever lost a good result in a mess of history lists and bookmarks, this feature alone earns WebHelp.com a recommendation.

Can you have it all.com?

All.com provides live technical support around the clock, seven days a week--at least in theory. The best response time (less than 10 minutes from asking a question to getting someone on the line) is between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. Central time. The support staff at All.com is a couple of notches above anything I've found on phones or at other support sites. During my informal testing over a few months of casual use, I've been led through DOS-level debug codes and explored the innards of printers for fuses--and never had the feeling I was a guinea pig for someone who didn't quite know what they were doing.

However, they do require you to jump through a few hoops to get what you need. Before you can get into an online chat with a techie, you must download and install a program from the tech-support software company Motive to handle the conversation. Other sites (such as PCSupport) do this using Java, a friendlier approach by far. And this download knows things about your PC that some might not like, such as the location of your Windows directory and the amount of free disk space you have. This kind of thing may be essential to some kinds of tech support, but not everyone likes the idea of it being made available to someone they don't know.

Once you're connected, it's easy to forget the installation headache. I found response times very quick, and the personnel both smart and friendly. One niggling complaint about the interface is that instead of being able to press Enter to send a message, you must click on the Send button on the screen--a usability glitch few online chat clients leave open. Nevertheless, for a service that (at least for now) is free, All.com inspires a lot of confidence.

PCSupport.com

Although it provides perfectly adequate support from live chat technicians, PCSupport.com is at its best in other areas. Although the help has been prompt and adequate each time I've visited the site--and the chat client software is Java-based and loads quickly--I've consistently had the impression that the techies there take longer getting to an answer. That's not always a bad thing--most support people know not to assume anything from the people who call them--but it's something that PCSupport ought to tackle better. For one thing, the site asks what level of expertise you have when you ask the question (and I, with a touch of immodesty, have always answered "expert"). And I've had to repeat the question I've already laboriously typed in because the techie apparently didn't read it or perhaps was playing for time.

However, I've not left a session at PCSupport without a good answer--and that's all anyone should hope for from a request for tech support. And better yet, the site also comes with a swath of other support options. There's an e-mail support option, tech support forums to check out, and McAfee.com-style pages for online virus-checking, disk maintenance, and software updates. While these functions don't necessarily solve any immediate problem you may be having with your PC, it's a decent service, and the price (which is zilch) is right. One downside: You need to download and install elements for some of these functions, including software-update checking. But that's really just a quibble, considering that other places charge for this kind of service.

Thanks for your support

There are other places where you can get technical help online. MyHelpDesk.com and NoWonder.com are two that have earned quite a reputation. But neither of them offers quite what these three services do. MyHelpDesk doesn't provide online chat with help staff, and NoWonder puts your problems out to bid--you end up paying for most of the help you get.

Given my druthers, I'd submit queries to both PCSupport.com and All.com at the same time. On the occasions I've done this, PCSupport got online first, but All.com hit the nail on the head faster--so it was all pretty much equal. And for the optimum online search, running a metasearch with Copernic 2000 and seeking WebHelp.com at the same time is hard to beat. That's the great thing about free online help services--you can get a second opinion at the same time you get the first one.

Contributing Editor Matt Lake has racked up experience in three major corporations and one branch of the government. He currently operates RegSelect.com and helps nonprofit organizations develop a Web presence.