14.2: A2.1 The First Step

Here’s something that should be obvious but often isn’t: When you run into a problem you can’t easily solve, you should read the documentation and online help. Over half of the “bug reports” we get for ERPLAB aren’t bugs at all but are simple misunderstandings. These misunderstandings typically arise when someone starts using ERPLAB without spending the time to go through our tutorial, when someone tries to use a complicated feature without first reading the documentation for that feature, or when someone encounters a common issue but hasn’t consulted our Frequently Asked Questions page. In tech support, these are called RTFM problems. Google RTFM if this is an unfamiliar term and you’d like a quick smile.

Here are the main sources of EEGLAB and ERPLAB information:

• EEGLAB: Online Documentation,  Frequently Asked Questions
• ERPLAB: Online documentation, Frequently Asked Questions, Tutorial

You can also often find solutions by typing something like ERPLAB binlister or EEGLAB ICA into Google or some other search engine. You can also post questions to the email list for EEGLAB or the email list for ERPLAB. But please don’t send me a personal email—I don’t have the bandwidth to provide individualized tech support for everyone who uses ERPLAB. However, if you find a problem with this book (e.g., an error, a missing file), please send me an email so I can fix it.

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