OR 14 years, computer users who bought software by Dantz, a manufacturer of backup programs, received unlimited free technical support by phone or by e-mail. No longer. Earlier this year, Dantz began restricting its free assistance to just 30 days after purchase. Customers who buy an upgrade of a Dantz program get no free help at all. Depending on the product, both types of customers will have to pay either $39.95 or $69.95 per incident to talk to someone who can help solve their problem.

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Consumers had better get used to it. As more and more features are tacked onto software programs, other fundamentals are falling by the wayside. Printed manuals? These days they are a rarity. Free phone and e-mail support? Maybe, but don't hold your breath — and keep a credit card handy, because paid-help plans are spreading like a virus.

Intuit, a maker of such popular financial software as Quicken, shifted to tech-support fees in 1999 and now charges $1.95 a minute for live tech support by phone. A support call to Symantec, the company that makes the popular Norton diagnostic and antivirus software, will be billed at $29.95 if you dial the 800 number, or $2.95 to $4.95 a minute if you wish to jump to the head of the line by calling the priority-treatment 900 number.

To be fair, Symantec says, it still provides free, unlimited e-mail support to those who can afford to wait a couple of days for an answer. But other companies, like Dantz, now charge for e-mail help, too, just as they do for phone support.

Microsoft seems to be bucking the trend by promising unlimited free support for most of its PC games and two free "support incidents" for many of its biggest software packages, including Office XP and Windows XP. But the company says customers who buy individual Office components like Word or Excel must pay $35 for any tech-support phone calls that go beyond simply installing the program.

Julie Heck, a spokeswoman for Dantz, conceded that some longtime customers were unhappy with the policy change. Still, she said, the move was inevitable. "If we want to stay in the game, we have to pay attention to our competitors," she said. "They now charge for tech support — often more than we do."

Ms. Heck pointed out that Dantz, like many companies seeking to steer users from phone calls to Web-site searches, had recently improved its online tech support. Frugal or proudly self-sufficient customers can search for troubleshooting tips in a special knowledge base on the Web, and it won't cost them a penny. The site also has forums where users can ask questions to which other customers or Dantz staff members reply. That is a free service, but Tony Barbagallo, vice president for marketing, said his staff may not get around to posting an answer for three or four days.

Considering the free tech-support alternatives, Ms. Heck contends that the industry's shift to self-service assistance is not unreasonable. "As we all become more familiar with the Internet, consumers are going to be more comfortable checking out online resources before picking up the phone," she said.

If an article in the current issue of Consumer Reports is any guide, however, technology companies have little margin for error. The magazine's Web site polled 4,600 subscribers about support experiences with hardware manufacturers like Dell, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard and discovered that overall satisfaction was declining.

Recent research by Gartner, a technology consulting company, corroborates that finding. A Gartner analyst, Tony Adams, said that the most recent satisfaction rating for software support providers was 4.8 on a scale of 1 to 7, down slightly from last year. Mr. Adams argues that it is fine for a company to charge for support as long as exhaustive troubleshooting strategies are available free on the Web.

"Consumers should have options," he said. "Surveys show that people don't want to pay extra upfront for tech support that's included in the price of the product. They'd rather get the product cheaper to begin with. So it seems fair that companies recoup their cost from those who require personal support. All the more so because otherwise, customers who need no help at all end up paying for customers who need lots of it."

Not surprisingly, some people bridle at the notion of paying for tech support.

Judith Trotsky, a freelance writer in Staten Island, bought a Hewlett-Packard scanner a year and a half ago but was never able to make it work flawlessly with her PC. The people who wrote the manual and the online help files "are fluent only in technospeak," she said. "So I'm still struggling."

She did call the company, Ms. Trotsky said, but could not get free help and hung up. "I absolutely refuse to pay these companies," she said. A company representative says its scanners come with either a 90-day or a one-year warranty (including free tech support), depending on the model; after that, the company bills callers $25 per incident.

Paying for assistance hardly guarantees a rewarding experience. Peter Cook, instructor of computer and information science at Temple University, wanted to configure a network router at his home about two years ago but couldn't get the Windows operating system to play along. He called Microsoft for help. "The tech support person turned out to have no networking experience and failed to answer my question," Mr. Cook said. "I eventually figured it out on my own."

Nonetheless, his next phone bill showed a $35 charge, courtesy of Microsoft.

Denise Rundle, a manager of support services at Microsoft, said that the company has been investing heavily in improved tech support and added that callers whose problems are not resolved may be entitled to a refund of the support charge. "We look at it on a case-by-case basis," she said.

For his part, Mr. Cook sees the move to self-service tech support as a travesty. "I don't think it's right and I don't think it's ethical for them to make a product and let us figure out how to use it," he said.

Most industry experts do not believe that tech support departments will be money-spinners anytime soon. "For the most part, they're just looking to break even," Mr. Adams of Gartner said. He said he had noticed that few companies volunteer revenue numbers for tech support and that he suspected that the reason was "they don't want to be seen as making money on support — there's a certain onus on that."

Mr. Barbagallo at Dantz, based in Orinda, Calif., offered figures on how expensive the hand-holding of customers can be. It takes an average of 2.8 calls before a customer's problem is solved, and the average call lasts 18 minutes, he said — "so, given salaries and overhead, one support incident can easily cost us $45 to $60."

Other companies give little thought to breaking even on the tech support part of the business. At Sophos, a maker of antivirus software whose American branch is based in Lynnfield, Mass., offering free round-the-clock support is seen as having great public relations value. "Once you've helped a customer out of a crisis, they'll tell their friends, plus they'll remember you next time they want to buy a product," said Richard Jacobs, the company's technical director.

Visionary Computer, an independent Apple reseller and computer consultancy in Lakeville, Conn., recently began charging its customers $6 for each support phone call.

"As computers are being used increasingly by people who are not into technology, they default to the easiest solution as soon as they have a problem, which means they pick up the phone," said David Maffucci, the company's founder. "Now I charge a few bucks, and it's not exactly a moneymaker. But the fee is enough of a deterrent that my customers will look in the manual or on a manufacturer's Web site" instead of automatically calling him.

David Munn, for one, takes such developments in stride. "All of us are becoming more and more part of a self-service society," said Mr. Munn, president of Itsma, a technology marketing research firm in Lexington, Mass. Two decades ago, people laughed at automated tellers, he said. "Anytime you move the apple cart, folks get upset," he said. "But you know, it's just the way the world happens to be changing."