ASKING TECH SUPPORT QUESTIONS

•Ask a specific question

•Give complete information about your setup

•Describe the steps you've taken

•Do your homework

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Ask a specific question:

"How do you make this software work?" is not an easy question to answer. "The notation window doesn't work" is not enough information to be helpful. "When I try to input a note in the notation window after selecting a quarter note, I can't place it properly" is easier to deal with.

Give complete information about your setup

This is important when dealing with tech support, and also if you are communicating with the list about your gear at home. "I'm on a G4/400hz with 1 gb of RAM, running DP 4.1 on OS 10.2.6" is good info. If you don't know this information, it's OK but makes it harder to answer.

Describe the steps you've taken

"I rebooted the Mac, ran Norton, zipped the PRAM, rebuilt the desktop, and fixed permissions and the application still won't start" is more helpful than "my Mac is broken."

Do your homework

Tech support doesn't like it when it's clear you haven't checked the manual or website. Make a real effort to solve the problem yourself.

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A good tech support question might have a form something like this:

"I'm on an eMac 1 ghz running DP 4.1 on OS 10.2.6.

I'm in the tracks window, trying to change the patches using the Default Patch column. I have four tracks labeled Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 and I want a different patch on each track.

When I change the patch on Tracks 1 and 4, I don't have a problem, but when I change the patch on Track 2, the patch on Track 3 changes, too. I can't figure any way to make the two patches different.

I read pages 31-34 in the DP manual, but it doesn't address this problem. I also searched tech support on the website, but didn't see anything relevant.

Any help greatly appreciated."