September 2010
Beginner
336 pages
7h 29m
English
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Chapter 21. Ten Ways to Find Help Online
Some problems can't be fixed by reading a book, unfortunately. The most troublesome problems pop up only when a certain version of software tries to run on a specific model of computer containing a specific combination of hardware. Only a small handful of people will ever experience that particular problem in their lifetime.
That little fact doesn't make it any less frustrating when the problem occurs on your computer, though. So, in this chapter, I show how to find that small cluster of other people who have experienced your same problem, stumbled upon a solution, or posted the solution on the Internet.
This chapter explains how to arm yourself with the tools you need to extract those solutions from the gazillions of informational tidbits living throughout the Internet.
Finding Help through Search Engines
Without a doubt, the first stop when you're searching for solutions to computing problems should be Google, the best search engine on the Internet. As I write this, Google's search robots are scouring billions of pages across the Internet, indexing them word by word, and enabling you to search the results for free.
Google lets you locate information several different ways, and I describe the most effective methods in the following sections.
Searching Google for specific information
When I'm troubleshooting a computer problem, I always begin my search on Google (www.google.com), as shown in Figure 21-1. Google provides a quick and easy way to find ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.