You Get What You Pay For

Still trying to get everything back, just-so on the new hard drive.

The good news, Apple's Genius crew was able to retain most if not all my photos and freelance files. Not quite a clean migration, that failed. But they were able to park my User file on the new desktop and let me sort things from there.

Not seamless, but besides the Genius Bar, I had considerable help from Apple's technical support. I've also had to deal with Time Warner's so-called support and I'm still trying to figure out a couple of things with Dreamhost's crew. Dreamhost is pretty good on the tech support front, but Time Warner sucks hard.

The problem was I could get mail but not send it. Despite perusing both Apple's and Time Warner's websites I could not come up with a combination of server, username, password, etc., that worked.



Apple was very helpful, but they needed answers to questions I didn't have, answers that needed to come from Time Warner. An hour on the phone, most of it on hold, passed from one person to another, finally to a third person who knew what the hell she was talking about.

And it strikes me: that extra money you pay for a Mac, this is what you're buying. Support that doesn't suck.

In fact, Apple's support flat out rocks. This isn't my first experience with it. I remember once I wondered if the ram from one Mac would work in the G5 at work, and when I asked, the guy didn't know but he went and tried it (put the same type RAM in the same type box) and called me back to tell me don't do it, it didn't work.

I think I've called Apple five times this weekend at various stump points (I stump easily), and I met with hold times reasonably measured in seconds, courteous, competent people who seemed to really enjoy helping.

Compared to Time Warner, with holds that could be measured in geologic time and people who seem to be just waiting for an opening at Pizza Hut Delivery to come along, wow.