Home Office: Show Your Screen to Tech Support

When the help desk is no help, send them a picture of your screen.

Steve Bass

A couple of weeks ago I talked about getting and giving help--but I left out screen captures, a technologically sharp strategy for making sure people know what you're talking about.

Thousand-Word Pictures

You: "When I open a Note in Outlook, the program crashes and I get a dialog box with about two jillion numbers in it."

Help Desk: "Wow, we've never heard of that before--it sure sounds weird. It might just be your PC. Are you sure it's an error message? Can you read the numbers back to me?"

Of course, the tech support person either doesn't believe you, or thinks it's something you've done. And now they want you to spend an hour reading them assembly code.

One thing you could do is to grab a screen shot showing the problem exactly as it looks and e-mail it to the black hole at headquarters, otherwise known as the IT department. (Not you, Norman; everyone at PC World loves and admires your technical adroitness.)

Free and Okay: Screen captures are easy to do. The crudest way is to tap your keyboard's Print Screen key. Voilà--the entire image of your screen is in the Windows clipboard. Pressing Alt-Print Screen captures the active Window. The advantage to using Print Screen is that you don't need to load a program. The downsides are you can save your captures in bitmap format only, and saving clipboard contents is inelegant: You need to open the Windows Paint applet, paste the contents into it, and save it as a file. Try this and see how it works, then read "Screen Shots in a Hurry" for an in-depth tutorial on using Print Screen in all versions of Windows (even my brother-in-law's copy of 3.1).

Free and Better: A more elegant way to get screen captures is to use the free version of ScreenHunter. You can grab a portion of the screen--say, the active window or a specific rectangular area--then save it to a JPEG, bitmap, or GIF file, or copy it to the clipboard. Play with it and you'll see its value.

Not Free, but Best: For really industrial-strength screen captures, with the ability to edit and annotate the images, you need Techsmith's SnagIt. I've been able to capture screens in all sorts of ways--from specific areas and windows, to scrolling through multiple pages of screens, or even freehand captures. (Why freehand? So I can carve out and grab a picture of, say, a specific bird from a page full of them for my wife's PowerPoint presentation.) SnagIt's been around for a long time, and Techsmith knows what users need. So besides hot keys, for quick captures I have SnagIt icons on my Internet Explorer, Word, and Windows Explorer toolbars.

I use SnagIt for all my PCWorld.com screen captures, as well as the hundreds I have to do for a book I'm writing. Heck, SnagIt's cataloging feature alone has been a terrific help in keeping the book screens organized. The program is fast, flexible, and for what it does is dirt cheap at $40. (Yes, I'm jazzed--it does everything I need.) Go to Techsmith's Web site to to watch a quick promotional video, or download a trial version from PCWorld.com.

Dig This: I really love well-done Macromedia Flash animations. I came across a terrific example, a book metaphor based on Shrek. Yes, it's an ad--for Hewlett-Packard and Linux--but when you turn one of its pages you'll see why I think it's so cool.

Tune Up Your Monitor

A good-looking screen capture is only as good as your monitor's settings, so it makes sense to fine-tune your display. Here are two things to try: First read "Calibrate Your Monitor," a thorough piece by Dave Johnson, our Digital Focus newsletter guy; then try DisplayMate--IMHO, the best product available for adjusting both CRT and LCD monitors.

I discovered DisplayMate in 1991 and have used it regularly ever since. The tool gives me instant gratification because I can adjust my ViewSonic LCD's sharpness, color, and contrast, and it fine-tunes dozens of other settings as well. I'm not the only one who has a high regard for DisplayMate. The PC World Test Center uses it, too: Read "How We Test Monitors" and "Up Front: Rating the Tech Behind the Specs" for details.

The free version of DisplayMate is adequate for most people; but once you start tinkering, you'll probably want the $70 standard version. Heck, just the chart comparing LCDs and CRTs is worth a visit to the DisplayMate site.

Dig This: Do you ever sit at home and wonder what conditions are like along the coast, or how warm the water is in Bermuda? MarineWeather.com can tell you. (Come on, it's better than working.) There's plenty more at this site, enough fascinating stuff to kill an hour. My favorite is the global temperature chart--just in case I get out for a little sailing near the equator this weekend. Want even more info? You could go to the National Data Buoy Center to see how the buoys are doing in Kodiak, Alaska, or check the tide schedule for surf-fishing in Monterey Bay, California.