Best free web search
New search engine shows hits in 3D
This is the first time I've seen a search engine combine a 3D display of search hits with the ability to filter search results into subject areas using tabs [1]. The interface works really well and is really worth checking out. Unfortunately, the relevance of the search engine hits is poor compared to Google. Thanks to Ray M. for this one. For a Google based alternative consider the Cooliris [1] and Piclens [2] Firefox extensions.
[1] http://www.searchme.com
[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2207
[3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579
TechSpot battles Google for best PC support info
|
By
Scott Dunn
When your computer is behaving strangely, you want answers and you want them in a hurry. My hands-on tests evaluated a dozen searchable sites to find the ones that get you the answers you need. |
Finding searchable databases of tech answers
The only sure things are death, taxes, and technical malfunctions. Last week's column described ways to troubleshoot computer problems yourself. Sometimes, though, finding a solution requires that you consult the collective wisdom of Internet forums.
Many of the free tech-support sites want you to register, post a question to one of their forums, or send e-mail. Phooey! When problems arise, you don't want to pussyfoot around with confirmation e-mails and other getting-to-know-you games.
I set out to find sites with searchable forums or articles that let you dig for answers right away, without any registration or other sign-up; you just search and go. I found 12 that fit the bill. To my surprise, a free service named TechSpot gives Google a run for its money at finding solutions for PC problems.
To evaluate these sites, I chose two problems that have vexed me or other Windows Secrets colleagues in the past. The first was relatively simple: Web sites won't load? Clear the cache. The second was more complex: Vista Explorer crashes when you right-click a folder, requiring you to find and remove the offending context menu handler from the Registry.
I graded the support sites based on how easy it is to find and use the proper search control, whether the site found a question close enough or parallel to my own, and whether it returned a solution. Since the correct answer is the most important thing, that category was given approximately double the weight of other factors.
Not surprisingly, the success of a particular search depends on the keywords you use and whether the search tool supports such operators as +, –, and quotation marks.
Most people don't want to spend a lot of time selecting the perfect arrangement of keywords. So, perfect or not, I used the same two keyword phrases for all the sites I tested:
some websites won't connect
Explorer crashes on right-click Vista –IE –"Internet Explorer"
Not every site I tried accepted these search phrases. The sites that didn't support search operators couldn't parse the second search phrase at all.
Even without the operators, however, some sites complained about my use of small words, such as the word on. One site (PC Mechanic) even rejected the first phrase because of the word some. In a handful of cases, I had to rephrase the search term when the first attempt failed. Rephrasing rarely improved the search results.
It's not unusual for searches to return dozens — if not hundreds — of results. Consequently, I limited my evaluations to support sites that returned the correct answer among the first 10 items fetched.
Test questions bring winners and losers
In my tests, the top-scoring support resource isn't even a tech-support site. King Google has the built-in advantage of drawing from other sites, technical or not. When you enter the correct search string, Google excludes results from nontechnical sites.
Google didn't earn a perfect score: The answer to the first question, although found in the first Google result, was mocked by the original poster as being inadequate. The fifth result Google returned on the first search had the correct answer but was specific to Firefox.
A close second to Google was TechSpot. I almost skipped over this site because the subtitle — "PC Technology News and Analysis" — led me to think it didn't offer support. But the easy-to-find search box at the top of the main TechSpot page helped me find solutions to both problems with minimal digging through results.
Google's sister site, Google Groups, recorded a modest score of 76. The site may be helpful for answering complex technical issues but proved to be too technical for my first question. All the answers proposed by Google Groups denizens assumed the problem was far more complicated than it actually was.
Apparently, this was also a problem at the MS Expert Zone, which focuses on more complex issues. That site had an embarrassingly low grade of 42 and certainly didn't win any points for its interface. You have to scroll down to find the link for searching the newsgroups. Also, the only way to see all the results in a thread is by double-clicking a result, not single-clicking as is normal for Web links.
Ironically, many of the sites that had the best answer to the right-click crashing problem (install the freeware ShellExView utility for removing problem right-click commands) linked to an article on the Help With Windows site. But that site fared poorly in my scoring, because the search results displayed so many entries on Windows 95 and 98 that the solution I needed was buried. It turns out a shorter search string found the answer more quickly.
Table 1. Searchable support sites by overall score.
|
Site |
Overall |
Design |
Found Q1 |
Found A1 |
Found Q2 |
Found A2 |
|
Google |
98 |
100 |
100 |
93 |
100 |
100 |
|
TechSpot |
95 |
100 |
75 |
100 |
100 |
93 |
|
Google Groups |
76 |
93 |
100 |
25 |
100 |
98 |
|
5 Star Support |
75 |
43 |
75 |
93 |
75 |
75 |
|
D-A-L |
68 |
100 |
100 |
88 |
50 |
25 |
|
Help With Windows |
65 |
98 |
75 |
75 |
25 |
50 |
|
Help.com |
58 |
75 |
25 |
25 |
75 |
88 |
|
MS Expert Zone |
42 |
75 |
38 |
25 |
25 |
50 |
|
MS Knowledge Base |
37 |
100 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
|
Windows Networking |
37 |
100 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
|
Tech Support Guy |
33 |
75 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
|
PC Mechanic |
29 |
50 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
25 |
The sites whose search tools are easiest to find and use are Google, Google Groups, and TechSpot. Not only were the proper search boxes visible at the top of each page, the sites accepted the search syntax I used without complaining.
One site, Help With Windows, gets brownie points for simply ignoring terms it found too short or common. The site went ahead and gave me results without those keywords but explained what it had done.
On the negative side, the sites MS Expert Zone, 5 Star Support, and PC Mechanic had more than one search tool, making it confusing to figure out which one to use for a specific type of search.
Explore other options for free support
It's only fair to point out that the scores for these sites might have changed significantly if I had posed different problems or chosen different keywords. Since all these sites are free, you don't have to limit yourself to just one. If the answer you need doesn't come up right away, surf on over to another site until you find the elusive solution.
Start by searching sites specific to your hardware or software. For example, if Firefox is misbehaving, take your search to the Firefox support page. For more generic issues, consider a site such as Broadband Reports for troubleshooting problems with Internet connectivity (you may need to find another network link to access the site, of course). Likewise, Fix Your Own Printer can help you diagnose printing problems.
Finally, think creatively. If a site describes a solution for a different product or another version of Windows, it may get you thinking about a solution for a parallel problem in a similar product or Windows version. Success isn't just about finding perfect answers but also about deduction, my dear Watson.
Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the Here's How section of that magazine.
Free electronic research assistant
Subscriber Ernest Perez writes "Gizmo, you may be interested in a great new kind of Web information service now available for free use. It's called I tried researching four topics and found it quite iResearch Reporter [1]. The system can save you something like 75% or more of the time and hard work needed to do a good job of Web for research." Nice find Ernest. This is a kind of meta search across multiple engines combined with some "intelligent" filtering and sorting. Like many of these things, it is not a substitute for human based research but rather a useful tool to assist your searches.useful on two and a bit of a waste of time on the others. That's not bad though, certainly good enough to encourage me to use the service again.
[1] http://iresearch-reporter.com/
Get directory assistance for free
Here's an alternative to paying your Telco for 411 directory assistance. Google is now running a free service using voice recognition technology that allows you to locate a business in a given locality and then connects you directly without additional charges. See the 90-second Google promotional video here [1]. At the moment it's only available in the USA and Canada. Thanks to subscriber Keith Richmond for the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN0q8SvlQAk
Get all your Web info from one site
Here's good news for those who aren't yet into RSS. At this site you can read the latest feeds from Digg, Del.icious, Furl, Youtube, Fark, Slashdot, Wired and more. It's a lot to digest but it's convenient to have it all in one spot. Thanks to subscriber David Shortman for the suggestion.
http://popurls.com/
New Google services
Google has announced new additions to its seemingly never ending product array. Perhaps the most interesting is Google Trends [1] which adds a trend timeline to Google Zeitgeist. It looks very useful for research. Try a search on "spyware, spam" and you'll see what I mean. Also of note is Google Co-op [2] which allows users to subscribe to third party services that provide annotations to Google search results. For example, I subscribed to the Digg service so now when I search I see Digg listings for that search term at the top of the Google search results page. Also new is a Widget service [3] similar to Yahoo's Konfabulator. It's available as part of an upgraded Google Desktop V4.
[1] http://www.google.com/trends
[2] http://www.google.com/coop
[3] http://desktop.google.com
Advanced Google
Google can do much more than search. For example to convert 150 Euros to US dollars just type in "150 Euros in USD." To see some of Google's other amazing capabilities check out this cheat sheet.
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
Free reminder extension for Firefox
When ReminderFox was launched last year, I thought I had at last found the reminder program I had long been looking for. Alas it was a disappointment. It was a good idea but lacked even basic features such as the ability to create periodic and recurring reminders. This has all changed with the latest version and the product is now very usable. ReminderFox is not a full-fledged calendar system, but is designed to manage standard reminder needs and handle basic "to-do" list requirements. As a result, it is very simple to use with all the features you really need and avoids the unnecessary complexity of products like Outlook. Also having a reminder program in your browser makes perfect sense. Almost everyone uses their browser daily, so why run a separate reminder application? Much to like here though I do wish it had an audible alarm for reminders rather than rely just on visual alerts. The product is being actively developed so maybe this will appear soon. Freeware, requires Firefox.
http://reminderfox.mozdev.org/
Huge bundle of free goodies from Google
Google Pack is a customizable package of free software now available for direct download from Google. This is made up of a bundle of Google's' own software products such as Google Desktop, Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, Google Earth, Picasa and Google Pack Screensaver plus third party programs such as a lite version of Norton Antivirus 2005 with 6 months free subscription, Firefox V1.5 with Google Toolbar, Ad-Aware SE Personal and Adobe Reader 7. Optional components include Trillian and GoogleTalk IM products, RealPlayer Media player and GalleryPlayer - a program for displaying artwork and other images on your HD screen or TV. The pack also includes an automatic updating utility. Overall a nice pack of quality products though there is not much new other than the free 6 months Norton AV 2005 trial. None-the-less, a useful timesaver when setting up a new PC. Free, Windows XP, size varies according to options chosen.
http://pack.google.com/
Search engine allows tricky queries
I'm a great fan of Google but sometimes I need to make a search that's too complex or tricky for Goggle to handle. For these kinds of enquiries I've been using the French search engine Exalead. The advanced search feature is very comprehensive; heck, it even allows the use of regular expressions! Results are presented very nicely with web page thumbnails of every hit and embedded RSS feeds listed as well. With 2.5 billion pages indexed, it's also very comprehensive.
http://www.exalead.com/search