I was annoyed with a problem that seemed to show up in Outlook 2003 after applying the Windows XP SP2 patch to my machine. So, I did what any half-decent researcher would do, I Googled for help. I found a few things at Microsoft, but none were exact matches, and it isn't like you can ask someone there for help. I looked through the results a little more and discovered a discussion of something like my problem at Slipstick.com, a site I had read previously. When I left a question, I hardly expected to get a response.
But what a surprise when I did - direct from Diane Poremsky. Not only that, but the advice was even helpful, and we had a brief email exchange that went into more detail on the problem.
For what it's worth, I have had good luck on various technical forums when I could find a forum that had experts on the topic at hand. In this case, I couldn't find anything that could help, which was why the direct response from Diane was so wonderful.