Kudos to Parallels
posted at 6:15 pm
on Mar. 30, 2010
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Tell me if this has ever happened to you: You have some minor, low-level bug or problem with a piece of software, and you spend a little time messing with preferences and looking up how to fix it and then you just give up and live with it and grouse about it.
Yeah, me too. All the time. And I work with software ALL THE TIME, so there’s a rather large pile of software things that just bother me—like Apple’s Address book’s notes field behavior (don’t get me started). Occasionally, one problem gets fixed in an upgrade or a friend happens to mention a solution or workaround and my life gets 0.75% better.
Well, a week ago I mentioned to my friend Boris via Twitter that I was having problems with running Titan Quest, a PC video game, using Parallels on my Mac. In a nutshell, the 3D rendering wasn’t working properly and my character occasionally would be missing a leg or be attacked by invisible animals that weren’t rendering. So, kinda lame. This issue had been bothering me for ages but troubleshooting was unfruitful (fruit-free?) and the task of getting a several years-old game running in emulation was low on my list.
I didn’t even phrase the tweet as a complaint, I said I’d finally got it working. (Which it turns out was temporary.)
Well, what should happen but within a few hours, someone from Parallels saw my tweet, responded and asked me to contact them directly, to a real person’s email address, with a description of the problem so they could help me. Do you know how AMAZING that is? Tech support contacted ME! No hold time, no what’s your serial number, just—tell us your problem because we want to help you.
So, wrote her, and she tried to help, but it didn’t work, so she told me how to file a more official tech support request with more system info, and from then on it was pretty standard, but well-given, tech support experience. The first two emails couldn’t really solve the problem but the third email exchange ended up with me downloading a hot fix (which they either wrote for me, or figured out enough about my problem to know it would do me good) and with that, my problem was solved and boom, I was chopping orcs like a champ.
So, here’s a company that 1) took the time to contact me when it heard I was having a problem, 2) gave me pretty decent tech support, and 3) actually solved my problem and improved my life 0.75%.
Well, I’m impressed. And I thought I’d share because lord knows I’ve done my share of complaining on this blog. If you’re looking for a way to run another OS on your Mac, I think Parallels is a pretty decent company to help you do it. Now, I’m off to play Titan Quest.
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