So, I'll admit it. I had a few problems in the past little while that I couldn't figure out with regards to computers. But unlike most "GAH! I HATE COMPUTORZ!" stories, this one has a relatively happy ending. You hear all these horror stories about "OMGZ, I WUZ ON TECHSUPPORT 4 LIEK 3 HOURZ!", but I actually was treated really well.

The trouble started with Samsung. I recently picked up a colour laser to replace my slowly dying LaserJet4, and I was pretty happy with how it worked, I just couldn't figure out how to make it print in monochrome only mode, because we do a lot of text around here and I'd rather not waste the colour toners. Well, I put this off for a few weeks until, yesterday, I couldn't seem to print at all. None of the computers in the house could talk to the printer. They could see it and install the driver, but it had thoroughly bricked itself to the outside world. I spent, oh, fifty minutes with Samsung on the phone, and considering I spoke to three levels of tech support, that's not bad I guess. It turned out to be my router assigning IP addresses to our computers in the 10.2 range instead of the standard 192.168 range, which of course makes the printer all but invisible to the computer unless you're running a network diagnostic tool. They were good sports about it, despite the fact that I'd bothered them for something that turned out to be Apple's fault, and they even told me how to print in monochrome. Score for Samsung.

No idea, however, how the router randomly decided it was going to start handing out non-standard IPs. I fixed the setting in the AirPort tools, but I have to wonder how it got changed in the first place.

Apple was considerably less useful, but again, not their fault. I called them about a drive I'm sharing on my network that keeps going to sleep and hanging my access to it in the Finder, but they informed me the drive decides when to go to sleep, and the AirPort has no control over that, so, basically, talk to LaCie. According to LaCie, my drive doesn't have any firmware, so how it could decide how to sleep is curious business. I'm waiting for an email response from them.

However, I'm still one for two. My printer works, and even prints monochrome. I just need to hear back about my hard drive. It seems that tech support, as long as you know what your problem is in the first place, isn't that bad after all.