![\"\"](\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/tech_support.jpg\")
\nCartoon by ChatGPT 5.4<\/em><\/p>\n
Here’s a use for AI that everybody could use from time to time: tech support.<\/p>\n
A few days ago, I noticed that anything I attached to an outgoing email was being converted to a proprietary Microsoft format. The person I sent the email to, unless they were using a Windows computer, would see a file named “winmail.dat,” and there’d be nothing they could do with it.<\/p>\n
I Googled to try to figure out what was going on. Apparently this is something that a Microsoft mail server does when it encounters an email written in rich text (RTF) format. My email is hosted at GoDaddy. They use a Microsoft Exchange server for handling email. I’m on a Macintosh.<\/p>\n
I called GoDaddy tech support.<\/p>\n
I was on the phone with the first GoDaddy tech support person for 40 minutes. She said she’d never seen this issue before. Eventually, after putting me on hold for four times, she said she was escalating me to the next level of tech support.<\/p>\n
While I was on hold waiting for the next person, it occurred to me to ask Claude what was going on. Claude immediately and accurately told me what was causing the problem and said that GoDaddy or Microsoft had clearly changed the defaults on their Exchange server. The fix, Claude said, is about 672 levels deep (I’m exaggerating) in my email configuration at GoDaddy. Many people had been affected by this GoDaddy (or Microsoft) mistake, Claude said, and GoDaddy had put out a memorandum on their support site.<\/p>\n
This second person apparently understood the problem, but his English was poor. He couldn’t understand me very well, nor I him. After ten minutes of his trying to help me navigate 672 levels deep in GoDaddy menus, I finally gave up and said that I’d run out of time and would work on this later.<\/p>\n
Then I turned to Claude. After five minutes the problem was solved.<\/p>\n
I learned my lesson. Hereafter, if I need tech support, I’ll ask Claude first. Any time you have a problem with your computer or need to figure out how to do something new, an AI can probably help. I’ve been using Claude rather than ChatGPT for technical matters because I think Claude is a little better at that. Keep in mind that both Claude and ChatGPT can interpret screen shots if they need to see what’s happening on your computer screen. And it’s not just computers. Claude also answered some questions about a new Bosch dishwasher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cartoon by ChatGPT 5.4 Here’s a use for AI that everybody could use from time to time: tech support. A few days ago, I noticed that anything I attached to an outgoing email was being converted to a proprietary Microsoft format. The person I sent the email to, unless they were using a Windows computer, … Continue reading “AI as tech support”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33230"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33240,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33230\/revisions\/33240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}