A new toy

I finally cracked. My computer is about 8 years old and actually not in too bad a shape, in the scheme of things, but it hangs and becomes unstable a bit too easily and something fundamental is broken because it won't show videos. I'm not talking about 'special interest videos', as Chris W calls them, but You Tube stuff, news clips et al. I could probably change this but it needs stripping back to the metal and a clean install of everything to get it back into shape. Given that an up to date copy of Windows would costa plenty and I don't want to spend the rest of my life updating software and, even more importantly, If I attempted to do it myself it would probably leave me without a machine for days. These things are never straightforward. As much as I would like one, I can't afford a Mac. So it's back to Dell. In the past I have bought three Dell machines and been very pleased. They do what they say on the tin.

With Dell France you used to be able to order on-line, in France, for a UK spec machine. Not anymore. If you try to order on-line in the UK you have no choice but to input a UK address. In the end, and after a lot of frustration because I could never get through on the 0844 sales line, I called Dell head office in the UK and they put me through to a chap in India.

I ordered the machine on Monday, it was built on Tuesday and left Limerick in Ireland today, Wednesday, with UPS. So far so good.