One of my family members decided to buy an iPod video. It was partially a gift, so it was opened more than fourteen days after it arrived. I called today to say it wasn’t working properly and ask if it was possible to return it. I got disconnected after waiting about ten minutes. No person answered and spoke with me.

I called back — I wait another ten minutes. The first person told me the answer was no, you can only return it within fourteen days. Swell. The battery shows dead immediately after you charge it and you cannot turn it off. Seems like a defective product to me. They say sorry the best we can do is have you talk to tech support. They transfer me and I wait again. Eventually the guy picks up and laughs (after taking the time to get my name and so forth which takes a couple of minutes) because he is in the computer division. He has to transfer me again. I wait longer this time and eventually some lady I can understand, but only if I listen really carefully to talks me through a powerdown and reset. She says that should clear the battery problem and the problem with it turning off is that I don’t know how to use the thing. In fact I don’t know how to use the thing, but the family member who bought it does, and they tell me that it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t — which is also what I told the lady.

After all of this, she sends me two email links with a “no-reply” address. And now, after the call is over, she tells me oh by the way, this was your one free support call and if you need us again it is $49 per call or $59 for two years. This is a new defective product — the hardware may not be bad, but the software definately had a glitch or she wouldn’t have been so concerned to check the version of updates before having me reset the machine it seems. Why should I pay anything for that. I called to ask about returning the thing. And if it was my one free call, perhaps they should have told me before, not after the call.

Let’s just cut to the chase: the Apple product I never bought — and I was just thinking I might actually like one of those things — is the last Apple product I plan to buy anytime soon. Good-Bye Apple.

I like the support of many other companies (Best Buy Customer Care excluded, they suck too). I should probably not depart without giving kudos to some good companies. I always buy LinkSys products because the support is so solid. I have Earthlink high speed because the support is so solid. It is time for people to support people with support.

Microsoft has decided to release the Windows source code to licensees in response to continued criticism in the European Union that they have not fairly permitted third party programmers to implement successfully certain Windows Server communications protocols because of insufficient information.

Brad Smith, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel said in the press release, “The Windows source code is the ultimate documentation of Windows Server technologies. With this step our goal is to resolve all questions about the sufficiency of our technical documentation.”

Customer Care seems to be the newest buzzword out there. Microsoft is on board today as they revamp the framework on which they deliver customer care to do many things, including … to help you help yourself. The last “customer care” experience I had at Best Buy led me to conclude that they left out the word “don’t” from the phrase. They took my complaint and said they were sorry. They were then happy and satisfied, but I was not. I hope that Microsoft’s move to streamline customer care is successful and that the cost savings they hope to generate will translate to more affordable products and not just better share returns to investors.

Continuing to lose market share of MAC browser users, Microsoft is throwing in the Internet Explorer towel. Do it now, if you use a MAC, dump IE. It has not had an update of consequence in three years anyway as explained here on C-Net.

An Anti-trust ruling from Korea again asserts that Microsoft has unfairly tied instant messenger and media player software to the Microsoft operating system. The last time this happened, Microsoft had to release a copy of it’s software sans the media player. That software known as XP – n, sold very poorly. We’ll see how this one plays out.

Ironically, you must use Microsoft Internet Explorer to obtain updates for other Microsoft products such as your operating system. If you visit, for example, using Mozilla Firefox, you are greeted with the following:

Thank you for your interest in obtaining updates from our site.
To use this site, you must be running Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or later.
To upgrade to the latest version of the browser, go to the Internet Explorer Downloads website.

Problems with Internet Explorer are regular and pervasive. It is time to force Microsoft to permit you to update your operating system without requiring you to use it’s own faulty browser. For example, what if you have been the target of a browser hi-jacking? Should you not be able to install updates to your operating system without having to use the hi-jacked browser?

Yikes, the United States Copyright Office requested comments on whether requiring users to utilize Microsoft Internet Explorer to pre-register commercial copyrighted material would pose any problems. Well duh — of course it would because it would mandate that individuals and companies boot up a security hazard.

This is what the request for comments said:

The Copyright Office is supplementing its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on preregistration of copyright claims, issued July 22, 2005. That notice proposed procedures to preregister any unpublished work being prepared for commercial distribution that is in a class of works determined by the Register of Copyrights to have had a history of pre-release infringement. Today’s notice seeks information as to whether persons filing the electronic-only preregistration form prescribed by the Copyright Office will experience difficulties if it is necessary to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser in order to preregister a work.

Fortunately Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, is once again advocating for open source – vendor neutral standards, especially from the United States Government. He filed a comment that is posted at W3C and was filed with the Copyright Office before the August 22nd deadline.

Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT), part of the United States Department of Homeland Security, established in 2003 to protect the nation’s Internet infrastructure, has itself recommended against the use of Internet Explorer as recently as June of 2004. Indeed just this month, CERT published yet another security alert regarding Microsoft Internet Explorer security holes.

Come-on Copyright Office, get a clue!