Brent's Two Cents

Three Wishes

I like living in Canada, except for three things we can't get here: TiVo, NetFlix and the iTunes Music Store. It's such a shame that these companies don't see the opportunity here in Canada, or maybe they do see the opportunity, but the business environment here isn't favorable. I don't know. I keep hearing rumours about iTunes being available here soon. Here's hoping the other two come around soon.

Lexmark Support Fails the Turing Test

Everyone knows that the customer support function is generally filled by well-meaning but incompetent rubes. Here's my latest conversation with Lexmark about my venerable X83:

I said this:

I have an X83 that I am using on Mac OS X 10.3. When I try and scan an image at high resolutions (9600 dpi or more), I get an error message saying that there is not enough disk space to complete the scan. I have 140G free on my boot disk, and I'm only scanning a small portion of the image, so I think the error message is wrong.

Is there any way to fix this problem? Why do you provide high resolution scanning options if it's not possible to use them?

The response was:

Thank you for contacting Lexmark. Check the following:

As the Mac OS 10.3 is a new operating system, currently the drivers for Panther are not available. I apologize for any inconvenience that may have been caused to you. We cannot give any specific date regarding release of drivers. Updated drivers will be available on the Lexmark website www.lexmark.com. However, you may use the following information to install the printer driver.

... followed by a description of how to add a printer to my OS X system. You'll note that I didn't mention the word "printer" in my email message, and they didn't mention the word "scanner" in their reply. Sublime.

I think my email was concise and to the point. It would have been easy for anyone familiar with the software in question to verify the problem and either confirm that it exists, or throw the ball back in my court. I also asked two questions, one of them slightly rhetorical. Neither was answered. This is why you don't want to buy anything from Lexmark.