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I just had one of the most awesome tech-support calls ever. It was truly amazing. (No, there's no phone sex involved.)
My dad bought us a new hp LaserJet 1320 laser printer for Christmas. It's supported on Windows and Mac OS (9 and X), so we plugged it into our Power Mac G5. (It's vintage already--1.6 GHz single processor) It works wonderfully: it prints up to 1200x1200, it duplexes (albeit a bit slowly), and most importantly, it doesn't look consumerish. It's a box, not a big curvy mess like the 1015. Also, as an added bonus, the Mac OS X driver is a Postscript Printer Definition (.PPD) that I can use on Linux.
So I set up CUPS on my laptop, and installed both that printer and my old Lexmark 5700. (It had a habit of deciding that certain ink cartridges were permanently broken, forcing us to buy new ones when old ones were only half done...) Both worked fine. Then I discovered how nicely CUPS detects network printers. I quickly tried printing over the network, and it sorta worked. The basic problem was that the printer would show the "recoverable error" light pattern on the LED's, and if I pressed Go it would work.
So on a whim I called up HP tech support, and after a pleasantly short and communicative session with their IVR system and a 5-10 minute hold I was connected. What happened next amazed me: instead of giving me a cop-out, like "Linux isn't supported", "It's user error", or "Sorry, unless your printer has a built-in coffee maker you don't get support--please pay more money", the agent was extremely helpful. It turned out it was an odd problem: the paper trays are numbered oddly on this printer--1 is manual feed, and 2 is the paper tray. When printing natively, the driver always knew which to pick as the default, but when printing over the network it didn't. So what was happening was that it thought I wanted manual feed, and by pressing Go I told it I was willing to use the regular feed. What I found amazing about this was that there was no "Could you hold for 3-5 minutes while I look into this issue?" (Earthlink does this--their techs often have to look things up in their knowledge base to find answers)--the tech actually recognized a problem involving an interaction between Mac OS X and Linux, two OSes that aren't even in very common use. (Mac OS X is, but face it, including Windows with every $300 computer makes it a little more widespread...)
I really have to commend their techs (or at least this one) for their actual knowledge of subject matter. Earthlink techs (not to bash them, but they outsource level one tech support, and they aren't always helpful when I already know what's wrong) are extremely polite, but a little uptight, and they almost always have to look things up. It's refreshing to see tech support people who just know what they're talking about!
Update: I feel obliged to mention that their support isn't nearly as good when you're out of warranty. See this for details. (Basically, if you're out of warranty, they charge $40 just to help you troubleshoot problems. My problem was that I had replaced the cartridge but left the paper tray empty, and I thought the error light was complaining about the cartridge, not the lack of paper.)
So I've got an hp LaserJet 1320 that's about two years old now. The toner cartridges last absurdly long, and so it only finally ran out of toner about a week ago. It was sitting, blinking the "error" light and shining the "toner out" light.
So I went to Staples and bought a new toner cartridge. I took it out of the package, removed all the plastic strips and covers, and swapped it for the empty one. But the printer's "error" light still flashed.
So I did what anyone would do: I called tech support. I got to talk to someone, and I explained the problem, and he asked for my serial number and product number. I read them, and he said my printer was out of warranty. I said that's fine, I'll worry about that if I need to replace a part. Now, he said, I had some "options" to choose from: I could go to hp's web site, or I could pay $40 to talk to a tech. I explained that I didn't want to commit to repair services, I just wanted troubleshooting help. He said that just to talk to someone, it would cost $40.
I talked to a supervisor, and, indeed, hp wanted to charge me $40 to figure out what my dad figured out within a couple minutes--that the error LED was blinking not because the new cartridge was broken but because the printer was out of paper.
I'm unhappy, because my experience with in-warranty hp support has been great, and I know I was being an idiot, but for a company that seems to put so much effort into creating easy-to-use products for their users, it seems foolish of hp to refuse tech support just because a product is out of warranty.
(Coincidentally, I would suggest that a printer like the hp LaserJet 2420dn, which has a nice LCD display to show messages like "TRAY 2 LOAD LETTER", "TONER EMPTY", or (when I'm remotely controlling it) "GAME OVER" "0 CREDITS" "INSERT $0.25 TO CONTINUE".)
