"The best-backed computer may not be a PC." So sayeth PC World in a recent article pointed out by faithful viewer agent86; guess who they're talking about? Yessirree, folks, PC World polled nearly 30,000 subscribers about their experiences with computer manufacturer technical support, and Apple wound up "rated higher than any other computer maker." Color us the Crayola shade "Surprised Umber"-- not because we have anything bad to say about Apple's support, but because we had no idea there were more than six or seven Mac users who subscribe to PC World in the first place. Apparently we've completely misjudged that publication's demographic; have we been missing something?

Now, we've documented our pleasant encounters with Apple's tech support team in the past-- most notably during the Great AirPort Blackout of 2001, in which Apple managed to replace our dead and hissing AirPort Base Station with a working model in the space of a day. But seeing as none of us here at the AtAT compound was among the 29,953 PC World subscribers who got to answer that poll and we just had an experience with Apple support, we figure, hey, why not throw in our two cents?

So last week it came to pass that our original Blueberry iBook (the one some of you may recall us gloating over in November of 1999) suddenly wouldn't run off its battery. One minute it was chugging away just fine under battery power; the next, we plugged in the AC adapter and foom-- the battery indicator dropped to zero. For the two days following, the orange charging light stayed on, but the battery indicator never budged, and unplugging the AC adapter caused the iBook to drop to black with less ceremony than all-you-can-eat night at a college-town KFC. So we called the AppleCare support line.

Now, see, for us, the best thing about Apple's support line isn't the short hold times or the friendly and knowledgeable staff. The absolute best thing is that we can usually describe steps we've already taken to troubleshoot the problem and Apple's techs will actually listen to that information and use it. Believe us, this is huge-- and a far cry from a lot of tech support lines which are staffed by people reading from a script. We used to have a recurring cable modem problem that kicked in whenever we had a blackout; even though we knew the exact problem and the exact solution (the resetting of a single value on the ISP's DHCP server), every single time it happened we knew we'd be on the phone for at least an hour and a half as completely clueless individuals asked us to restart our computers for the seventy-eighth time. But that's how the game is usually played: you aren't allowed to jump the line.

Not so with Apple, at least not in our experience. We were able to explain straight away that we already tried resetting the Power Manager and we'd already installed Battery Reset 2.0, both as recommended by Apple's online support database. We also mentioned that the Amazing Uncharging Battery exhibited the same behavior whether we used the iBook's AC adapter or the similar adapter from our Pismo. The tech then acknowledged that the problem was almost certainly the battery, although a motherboard problem wasn't completely out of the question; did we want to make absolutely sure it was the battery before he sent a new one out to us?

We said yes, and so he had us trundle up to the Apple Store Northshore on Friday night, where a severely overworked tech kindly slapped a testing battery into our SmurfBook to make sure that it would charge normally. Ten minutes and one quick store-browse later, the service battery had charged up a tick, the tech updated our call status directly from the Genius Bar, and we arranged to have a new battery sent to the compound. We're told it'll probably arrive on Tuesday. And then we drove home, one copy of Jeopardy 2 the richer. (For our resident Goddess of Minutiae, you understand.)

So no, the problem isn't resolved yet, but considering we just called on Friday afternoon, that's hardly surprising-- and given our past experiences with Apple's technical support, we fully expect our iBook will be chugging away with a spiffy new battery no later than Tuesday. By the way, we've said it before and we'll say it again: AppleCare rocks. Our iBook's battery died just a week before our AppleCare Protection Plan expired, and now we get a replacement $185 (!) battery for free. Add that to the $299 cost of our Base Station which died out of warranty (but well within the AppleCare contract, which, much to our surprise, covered the Base Station, too), and the Protection Plan was definitely $249 well-spent.

All in all, happy times. Evidently 30,000 PC World subscribers can't be wrong.