Consumer Reports Research Center surveyed owners of 10,000 computers about their experience with tech support.

"Our survey found the worst ways to get tech support were from their manufacturer's Web sites and e-mail support." said Consumer Reports' Rosalind Tordesillas

Tech support in general wasn't very helpful.

"In our survey, manufacturer's tech support solved the problem only about 60% of the time." said Tordesillas

Compaq and HP's tech support was generally worse. The best by far was from Apple, although it's only free for 90 days. For laptops, Lenovo's tech support was also quite good.

And worth noting...

"With most companies, you can pay extra for "premium" plans that extend both tech support and the repair warranty. But we found they're usually not worth it." said Tordesillas

However, the survey did find an exception to this. With Dell and Gateway, the premium priority service was a lot better than their regular tech support.