"Please wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait ... bzzzzzz"

"Eh, have you tried rebooting your computer. Hold down the control and alt keys and then press the delet..." You hang up.

"Oh, we don't support the disk drives. You have to call MaxGate about them."

"Escalate? What's that?"

"My supervisor? Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

"OK, here's the fix. First you ...." The fix works and you faint dead away.

How many times has the last one happen to you?

This time I thought I'd take on an easy target, so called product support. Also this time, I'd really like your input. I'm going to tell you a little about my experiences both bad and good, but I really want to hear about yours both bad and good. Use the Discussions link at the bottom of this and the last page to say your piece or send email by clicking on my name at the top of the article. I promise to pull together your experiences and put them up in a "Who Designed This Crap?" article written wholly by you. Be sure to tell me if it's OK to include your name or if you want to use an alias or have no name published at all, if I choose your experience. Oh, yea, your experiences don't necessarily have to be related to mobile computing equipment. As you'll soon see, I do not discriminate in this area.

In the next two sections you'll find one of my bad and one of my good tech support experiences. First I talk about my attempts to get a DOA laptop battery replaced. Second I tell you how I got help fixing a serious problem with Windows Server Active Directory.

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