New Era (For me)

Here’s a use for AI not everyone might realize. Tech Support. For the last 5 years my Brother printer has performed great. Printing 100 to 250 page mixed page documents without breaking a sweat. But last week it stopped being so great. I could print all legal, or all letter, but when it was mixed, I received an error message referring me to Adobe Customer Service. Anyway, to make a long story short, after spending an hour with Adobe, then another hour with a Brother technician, both of whom just had me check settings that I had already checked and rechecked, I decided to ask Copilot. From the beginning it explained what the problem likely was. and though it took a few trial and error attempts, over a couple of days, solved the problem. (Turned out Windows was blocking the Brother Print driver and forcing a Microsoft driver into the picture that didn’t support mixed page printing.) The nice thing about AI, was that I could leave for a while and when I came back it would pick up where we left off. It actually served as a rooting section, saying things like: “Don’t give up Michael. I know it’s frustrating, but we’re almost there!”. Anyway, it’s my new go-to Tech Support. You can reach it with a single click, and it never puts you on hold

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@michaeljhooven :partying_face: Great! :partying_face:

Thank You for the detailed information.


:swan:

What were the instructions to fix the issue?

It was not a quick fix,but basically involved removing all Brother drivers and their remnants from the computer, downloading the new Brother driver package, disconnecting the computer and printer from Wi-Fi so that Windows would not hijack and hide the Brother driver while installing it’s own. It involved a lot of edits in the Windows registry, something that I’m not that familiar with and normally stay away from, but the instructions were so detailed and step-by-step, it didn’t seem that difficult. I had tried multiple PDF readers and a Brother Printer Support App from Microsoft that was supposed to address the issue but nothing worked, The nice thing about Copilot was that it explained things very rationally, why it was taking the steps it was taking and when something didn’t work, explained why it didn’t and was ready with the next fix.

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I, too, discovered Co-Pilot quite a while ago. Overall, I’d give it 94%, but the 6% it messes up will drive you nuts. You have to be very careful and precise in how you word a question because once it starts solving your problem, it tends to stick with its original idea, but may have misinterpreted the question. i.e., the scanner on an old 4-in-1 was giving me a hard time moments after I’d successfully scanned something else. It suddenly was giving me problem messages on its screen. Asked Co-Pilot and it decided to fix what was a ‘printer problem’…and we almost went down a rabbithole to fix something I never do with this ol’ printer that I haven’t printed on for years! A quick whoa, there–don’t want to PRINT…pivoted it to the SCANNER & problem solved in 30 seconds. Be careful. But it scores about 99.9% on providing accurate copy/paste Excel formulas that I’d never find–much less do properly on my own.

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AI is truly great. Anyone who doesn’t like it must really be stuck in the stone ages (or back in the 1970s) :grin: .

I agree that you have to word the question carefully to get the best answer. I’ve been amazed at the detail with which it answers some questions.

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AI has helped me a number of times in a LOT of situations! Glad you figured that out and there wasn’t a huge disruption to your business!

Best solution I found was to dump Adobe Reader for for Foxit. Free and works great!

That was actually one of the first things I tried. That and about 3 other PDF readers, but for my problem it didn’t help. But I’ve heard several people say they like Foxit.

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