My old computer burnt out during the hottest june for years and I replaced it with new Dell Dimension top of the range machine which well...er... doesn't work.
I assumed I was the problem and ordered my son home from Scotland, where he is studying computer science.
After many hours of tinkereing and about a thousand hours of talking to their call centre in India the damn thing still crashes and my son declares it to be a hardware problem as he thought from the outset.
Dell, however want me to purchase from them at a cost of 60 pounds($100) another copy of windowsXP and for us to spend further frustrating hours going through it all again.
Anyhow, the boy has declared 'life is too short ' and it is down to me whether to spend half my life at a non functioning computer talking to an incomprehensible half-wit at the other end of a phone line. For his part, he never wants to see a Dell computer again.

I am writing this on my son's computer(which cost half as much as mine). Thanks to him and Google I found you all again. My son is back at Uni in a couple of weeks so I will again be without a computer unless I decide to spend more of my hard earned pennies.

It is nevertheless wonderful to be hearing how you are all getting on.

Mick