My Q1 Support Experiences

There are a few plusses to cutting edge devices. Namely, not enough have been sold yet, so support lines are answered quickly and by people with more than average knowledge. Hopefully the vendor wants the early adopters to have a good experience.

I've called Samsung support twice now on the Q1. Both times the phone has been answered promptly by people with some knowledge and who were more than competent in English. Both times, the reps went above and beyond.

In my first experience, something trashed my sound drivers and I called Samsung as the last straw. I ended up having to rebuild but they spent a good 1/2 hour on the phone with me trying things. Really trying. Being creative. NOT following a stupid checklist. By the time I call a vendor I've usually worn out a Google server with searches and I'm nearly bald from frustration. I don't want a "is the computer on?" set of questions.

This time, my battery life on the internal battery has gone south. I've gone from 2 hrs and 15 min. to 1.5 hrs at best and 1 hour most of the time. This with the Q1 set to max battery and the backlight set to 1 bar and off half the time. My 1/2 hour commute in to work with windows media running and the backlight off is burning up 1/2 the battery life and the other day on my hour commute home, it didn't make it and I had to switch to the external battery. Wifi is on but not connected and bluetooth is off. These same settings would get me 2+ hours a month ago.

I'm still drawing between 9 and 11 watts (from Notebook Hardware Control) with these settings and that's consistent with what I got a month ago. No significant changes in usage. So, I called Samsung.

The units are so new that they don't have a process to determine if the problem is a battery or the unit. So what did they do? They offered to send me out a new battery. The didn't have a process for what to do, so the rep improvised. Kudos! Terrific! Since battery is the most likely and easiest option, we're going there first. If that doesn't work, I call them back and we'll talk about the unit.

Samsung gets an A- for support from me right now. Why not an A? The 7-14 day ship time seems like a long time for a battery!