>I have another kind of approach than Jamie's, but anticipating on another kind of problems too.

I think the difference is more style than substance. I agree whole heartedly with "have the user write down their problem" indeed most of my suggestions are based on the principle that the user enters in the problems themselves on an interactive data entry screen-- probably on a web site. There are, of course, environments and situations where that won't be accepted by the users. My favorite being an ISP that had all of its service requests handled over the web. If you can't get on then well... its not their problem.

I do believe that there are good programming and project management strategies that reduce bugs, good design strategies that reduce training, and good documentation techniques that reduce help desk requirements (although only for serious committed users, not day trip software users or aussendienst). I also know that a good error reporting and tracking system will allow problems to be more quickly analyzed and improve relationships with users.

Remember the original question was about hardware & software: is your help desk doing all maintenance for 2000 windows PCS? That, in of itself, would require a significant help desk even if they were only running solitaire on their computers!