I write for a living. As one might guess, this means I'm one of those people who actually needs my computer. Unfortunately, my PC was hellbent on breaking. Several times. Lemme tell you all about it.

See, this was supposed to be a Super Computer. It was comprised of the best parts available at the time it was custom built, which was 3 years ago. Well, guess what? It started screwing up pretty quickly. Every day a new compatibility problem arose. It actually became inaccessible a few times, showing only a blue screen.

The stupid thing had to be taken apart and put back together – several times.

In the summer of ’06, it broke entirely. And I do mean entirely. The sucker deleted everything I had on my primary hard drive, and it killed the two secondary drives. I was very fortunate to have backed my writing up just before this happened, but I did lose tons of photos that I will never be able to get back.

When the computer finally came back, it was as though I’d just bought it. By this, I mean every setting – even my administrative name – was gone. Oh, I tried to restore it. Nothing doing. I was screwed. But, I was still relieved that it was working. I reinstalled all the programs I needed and started over again. Until last week, when it broke again. This time, it actually came on ok, showed the Windows flags, went to the desktop – and then went black. I could click with the mouse, but I couldn’t see anything. Now, I could have had a tech come here, take it apart and set me back up.

• Viruses and Spyware: This is the big one. I’m so frigging tired of having to worry about viruses, trojans and other malware. Why is this my problem? It’s not my fault so many people hate Bill Gates and want to do everything they can to mess with his junk. I have better things to do than spend all of my time changing passwords and removing infected files.

• Added Costs of Anti-Virus Programs: Which, by the way, don’t do jack most of the time. I’ve used Zonelabs, AVG, Norton, Symantec – they all let viruses through. It’s probably a conspiracy. As if these guys aren't super rich enough already!

• Forced Internet Explorer Usage: I read ebooks with MS Reader most of the time. If you want to install this, you can click on the link via Firefox – but once you are on the MS website, it tells you that you have to use IE to view anything. Not very friendly!

• You MUST Keep Your Crap Updated: What a chore this is, especially if you’re not naturally techish. I mean, yeah, it’s reasonable to expect me to maintain my computer. But it’s not reasonable to assume I will always get it right when I have no background in computer engineering. And with Windows, you might have to update new patches, etc. every freaking day! I know, I know there’s the auto updater. But in the past I’ve had problems with that as well.

• You Can’t Properly Get Rid of What You DON’T Want! PC’s come with so much crap you will never use. You can try to remove much of it, but many times this creates errors and bizarre messages, setting you up for problems in the future. Which can screw everything up, and often does.

Not to mention you can't completely remove Internet Explorer - go on, try it! Yeah, I know, some of you have never had problems with your PC and have no idea what I’m on about. I hope you never have to find out, either, cos once your PC turns on you, it’s all downhill from there. Just take my advice – if your PC goes mad, go get you a Mac!

xx Isabella