Mountain Hardware

I will admit to being a big fan of this company even before this experience. I really like their gear. Every article seems to fit, work and better yet has some well thought out extras. My wife also looks good wearing there stuff and that is always an advantage in my book.

Having said that I recently purchased some gear on close-out at the Yosemite shop on a trip out to west last year. The material it was made from was not the best and had a tendency to snag easily. It wasn't that the shirts weren't well made, they were. The material or blend used though was easily snagged. Both shirts, one collared and the other a regular Tee were made of the same material. I wish I had saved what it was, so I could warn each of my faithful readers what it was, but I didn't.

I tried to wear the clothing even after the snags appeared, but they kept growing until finally despite how much I liked the two shirts I found that I couldn't. Knowing that Mountain Hardware has a lifetime warranty I contacted them for an RMA.

I include the link to the warranty here. I sent an email to them and shortly after I was contacted by Kent Laak issuing me an RMA. Having never sent any clothing back to a company I wondered about my chances of having them either replace or repair as is listed in the warranty. You did read the link didn't you? :) About a week later I contacted Mr Laak again and low and behold he informed me that I had a credit at the Mountain Hardware website for the cost of the articles and this is how I am to claim it.

Sure I can get snarky and say that I have to purchase it at MSRP, but they also gave me MSRP as their part of the replacement. Another company that stands by their product AND has excellent customer service. Kudos to Mountain Hardware. Any chance Mr. Laak you could consult with Adobe and help them out?

Apple Just Works

I know this will sound like a Mac fanboy post, but sometimes the truth makes us sound like a fanboy, when we aren't

I just switched to Mac this year. Now I'm the type of person who built his own computer for years and just plain got tired of Windows not working. I will admit that XP was a quantum leap forward, but still I couldn't get my computer to stay on without crashing for a very long period of time. Now some would say that it was the parts and that was the issue. Well through 4 company laptops only one of which Standby worked the way it should have of, well I don't think it was me. Windows just wore on me.

Now onto my Mac. I went with the Mac Pro. I did it for photo processing mainly, I went a different route than most. I was VERY hesitant. Gratefully my wife volunteered as a guinea pig to see how I would like it. We purchased a Macbook for her to use. Problem with that is I never saw it, she enjoyed it too much! Since I do photo processing mostly on my computer these days, not much into games and the aforementioned company laptop carries the business load. I researched how to make the "crossgrade" what Mac I would want to purchase and how I could/would change. Crossgrading was easy. I think there was one minor program that I used that wasn't a Mac native. Most had serial numbers included or the serial number was the same. Now crossgrading with Adobe is ridiculous. If you give up your right lung to them, well they ask for the left. I still have effectivly found a way to crossgrade my Photoshop license.

I still wasn't set though. Since I didn't want to plunk down $2500 without some assurance that I would really like this machine. I went towards a Hackintosh. Now I know that's not legal, but it was a perfect transition on my part. I got used to the interface, started looking at transitioning my programs and became comfortable with where to find applications. That made it a whole lot simpler. Now in my case the Hackintosh crashed more than it was up, but I knew if I purchased a Mac that issue wouldn't be a problem. So I didn't hold that against the OS. So I with a little trepidation plunked down the money for my Mac Pro and brought it home. Well the Mac just works.

A few months later I purchased old Powerbooks for my two children and now just recently because I travel alot for work I went out to Ebay and got myself a deal on a Macbook Pro. We are now totally a Mac household. Well except for that company laptop.

Well when the Macbook Pro arrived I found that the battery didn't work. The computer just had an X where the battery was, I thought Oh no, I'm going to have to deal with returning this. That was a little scary with many of the stories you read about on Ebay. I haven't had an issue yet, but I was nervous. I did some research and it looked as if it just needed a battery replacement. I wasn't looking forward to purchasing a battery though when I had just spent money on the laptop itself.

My wife works near an Apple Store and she brought the battery into the store. She carefully outlined the problem to the genius bar. I found out that you should call them in advance to set up an appointment and things would go more smoothly. Well they looked at the old battery, put it in their machine. They found that it didn't work. The same issue that I was having was on the sales persons machine. The person there kindly looked at her and said, "next time make an appointment" and slid her a brand new battery!

Wow! I guess what they say about customer service from Apple is true. I'm now happily typing away on my new Macbook Pro...With a battery. Thanks Apple.

Datacolor to the Rescue

Put Datacolor among the companies that I would do business with in the future. I really enjoy dealing with companies who stand behind their products. Though I have not blogged about it Adobe is not one of those companies. Because of this I make it a point to try and find any alternative to Adobe Software. So far I have been successful.

For Datacolor though I had the opposite experience. I purchased awhile back Spyder2Studio. This had in it's very nice looking box a Spyder2 Colorimeter and PrintFix2 Pro which has a Spectrophotometer. The later is where I will concentrate this blog on. Not only is this suite cost effective, it makes very nice Printer profiles at a fraction of the cost of the high end products! As some know I made the switch to Mac earlier this year. Just recently I went about updating my printer profiles since I forgot to transfer them to the Mac from my windows machine.

Well guess what, PrintFixPro 2 didn't work. In these instances Google is usually your friend and so I used him/her. Not finding anything I went to the Datacolor site to see if there was any info well...ahh, there. I didn't find anything that resembled my problem, but I did find an update to the PrintFixPro 2 software. They were up to a Beta version for 3.5. Now most companies charge you to upgrade your software. Nope, no charge. Even after the upgrade though, no love from my spectophotometer. So I emailed Datacolor.

I will say they don't answer their emails very quickly, about what I normally get from a tech support department though. A day later there was a response and we worked through a series of solutions, most I had thought of some I hadn't. None worked. Just as I was expect that I would have to trash this one, they email back and tell me that they will replace it FREE!

About 4 days later a Brand New Spyder3Print shows up at my door. That is not a typo, it was the newer model. I will say after doing some googling again it appears to be exactly the same one I had, but just re-branded. So I'm now off to profiling and every grateful that Datacolor more than stands by their product.

Friends, don't try this with Adobe.