Over the past couple months I have had to deal with tech support from 3 different companies. Usually I hate having to deal with tech support, but I had to do it and it went fairly well each time.

Apple: I purchased an Apple MacBook in November of 2006 and I love it. A couple of months ago I noticed that regardless of if I had the MacBook connected to A/C power or the battery the status in Mac OS X would not change from 76%. I would always see over 4 hours remaining on the current charge, which as you can imagine made it extremely hard to use for any length of time off the battery.

So I decided to post my problem over on the Apple Discussion boards. I got a couple suggestions, including to make sure I had the MacBook/MacBook Pro Battery Update and then to reset the SMC. Neither of these solved my problem so I had to give Apple a call. I was on hold for only a couple minutes before I got a live person, from India of course. I gave her my serial number after which she informed me that my free tech support time was up, but I explained that my problem was with my battery and since the warranty was extended to two that they should take care of it. She said no problem and had me test a few things after which she got my info said they would be shipping out a new battery right away. They did make me give my credit card info in case I did not send the old battery back. This was back on July 30^th and I received the new battery the very next day. The new battery came with return shipping labels, so all that had to be done was pack up the old battery and drop it off at a DHL drop box.

I am happy to report that all is well with the new battery. Overall I am happy with the service from Apple. My only minor complaint is the tech support person was at times hard to understand. I really liked the fact that I did not have to ship out the old battery then wait from a new one once they received the old battery.

Logitech: On my PC I have been using a Logitech G7 mouse and I have been really happy with it, well until a couple weeks ago. I noticed that when I would single click on the left button it would decide to double click on me. This was extremely annoying when moving files around, moving windows and working in Photoshop. It wouldn’t always double click, but the frequency at which it happened was increasing. I attempted to find anyone with a similar problem on the Logitech Forums. I wound up having to get a hold of tech support. Unlike Apple I easily found a way to just contact them by email from the Logitech website. The first response had me to uninstall the Logitech software, but that did not fix the problem. The next email asked for my receipt, since I bought the mouse from amazon it was easy to look the old order up, in order to see if it was still under warranty. I didn’t realize that I mad bought the mouse way back in 2005, so I figured there was no way it’s under warranty still, but it turns out that they have a 3 year warranty on their mice. Once I sent the info he requested he said they would be shipping out a new mouse, but the only problem was the G7 was currently on backorder. One nice thing was that I did not have to ship my old mouse back, which means I can keep all of the old batteries. Luckily the wait was only a few more days before they got some more in and shipped one out to me. Unlike Apple they shipped via standard Ground instead of overnight. Not a big deal, but the fast shipping is always a plus.

I got the new G7 mouse a week or 2 ago and it is a redesigned version of my old one, a much improved design if I do say so myself. My main complaint with my old mouse was that it was that it was completely smooth. The new design has a rubberized grip and a carbon fiber look on the top.

Once again I am happy with the support I got from Logitech. It only took about a day or so to reach a solution and the fact that I did not have to worry about sending my old mouse back was a nice touch.

OCZ Technology: I have been getting fairly frequent Blue Screens of Death on my PC, so I decided to run MemTest86+. After running the program I got quite a few errors from my memory, the OCZ EB DDR PC-4000 2x1024MB Platinum Edition Dual Channel Kit, which is very high quality memory. So I contacted OCZ on their forums to RMA the memory. They promptly responded and began the RMA process. I had to fill out a form online with my info, which they then approved and sent me the info to send my memory back. Since I bought a dual channel kit I had to send both memory sticks back together.

I have shipped the memory back via FedEx and they should have it this week. Once they receive the memory they will rush some new sticks to me. Hopefully it won’t take too long because my PC is pretty much useless right now. I have a pair of old Corsair XMS 512MB sticks, but my motherboard does not seem to like them very much and I am currently unable to even boot into Windows without a BSOD.

Well there you have it, I have been pretty happy with the tech support I have received over the last couple months. Hopefully this trend of my equipment faily on me stops.