Ward; I, too, wanted to do business with my friendly local Mac dealer. So, after much looking at catalogs and listening to my Mac user friends, I ordered my first-ever computer from Mark H. at The Complete Mac. There were several delays in the store's receiving the merchandise; eventually the computer itself was shipped to me from Indianapolis (the new owners).
I then went into MacTown to pick up the other pieces I had ordered. I bought the new top-of-the-line iMac, pus an Epson Perfection 2450 Scanner, an Epson Stylus Photo 890, an extra 512MB of memory, a book about OS X, and a few other little things like a Norton System Works package.This was over a period of a few weeks during March and April, 2002. I later even took a class there in beginning with OS X, which was also postponed for many weeks. Everything was wonderful while I was making purchases.....then all I could get from MacTown were pretty much brush-offs. My scanner wasn't able to be used except on the Classic mode until a couple of months ago, when I broke down and upgraded to Jaguar (there was a driver for that). My printer wouldn't work except in Classic, though I got a driver for that much more quickly. When I called Mac Town about the uselessness of my Epson machines on OS X, I was just told that they would work fine/ that Epson didn't know what they were talking about. Mark even told me that he had the same machine (I believe that was the scanner) and his worked great. There were no other directions, suggestions, etc. to be had. I had been warned that I would not get much tech support from The Complete Mac... my friends were right on that score. I feel some resentment that I was allowed to spend that much money and received so little follow-up service. My confidence level in MacTown is zilch. Therefore, when I bought copies of Jaguar for myself and my Daughter, when I've bought epson ink cartridges, a power strip, papers, more computer books, phone-jack filters, CD's, Jewel Cases, or whatever, I have gone elsewhere. I also ordered the i-Photo, Illustrator, and InDesign package from a catalog. If I go to any further classes (which I should do) I anticipate going to Ivy Tech. So, Ward, I'm one of those disgruntled customers you folks need to win back. You made a start with the free CD about "Getting Started with OS X". And I enjoyed our short chat. I don't know what I would have done to make any headway without the able assistance of Jerry Yeager. I agree with Bill Holt that you need to have people who are able to deal with the elementary crowd, of which I am a member. We're not stupid; we're just starting from square one.... there's a lot to learn! Thanks for letting me rant. I hope those days will soon be history. Mike | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be January 28. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
