Helene, I've been following your Dell story with great sympathy! The first computer ( a 486 with 66Mhz CPU,4 Mb RAM) I ever had (Xmas 1995) when I was a complete and utter technophobic newbie, came from a mail order company; Within 3 months I had gone through FOUR hard drives, a faulty monitor and video card, a cracked case after the tower had been damaged in transit, dead battery which caused loss of all the CMOS settings and umpteen other problems. Tech support was utterly useless; I wrote complaints to the Trade Standards Association, all to no avail. However, I was lucky enough to have a genius of a neighbour who helped me patiently through all of my problems and got the machine up and working again. I still have it in use today, same spec but upgraded to 32 Mb RAM, running Win 3.1 and OS/2, and it's the most reliable machine I have -- never crashes, never susceptible to V*rii, and just perfect for many everyday tasks.
The moral of this story is this: If I hadn't had all these problems, I would probably never have learnt anything about the inner workings of computers and the vagaries of software programs. Every time you have a problem you learn something new -- if all goes smoothly all the time, there is nothing to learn. So take courage and learn from all your trials and tribulations. It may be a hassle to keep reinstalling things, but life isn't half as much fun if you never have problems to solve! Another thing I have learnt is that it's better, if possible, not to buy a packaged system. If you build your own, you choose your own components, customise your system with the OS of your choice, learn how everything works, and know what to look for (mostly) if things go wrong. The new parts are all sealed in the manufacturers' packages, so no danger of being fobbed off with refurbished stuff; if a part is faulty it is immediately replaced under guarantee. The only downside is that this is probably more expensive in the long run than buying a ready-made system. Look on all your troubles as a learning experience and before long you will know so much that all your friends and colleagues will call on you for help. It happened to me -- from clueless newbie to amateur "geek" in just a few years (always with the help of our friends from PCWorks!) Virginia Da Costa [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
