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Buying PCs online is not just for time-short types. It’s also for

those of us who’ve spent weeks - or even, whisper it, months - flicking

through magazines and loitering in Currys by the computers. One evening

though, enough was enough, and I resolved to buy one that very night.

Perversely, computer magazines’ frightening talk of motherboards persuaded

me to play safe.

A clever budget machine was my target. Clever because it wouldn’t matter

so much when its cheaper 400 MHz Celeron processor was past it. But with

no budget machines in the January sales, I changed tack. Far from lying

submissive under the crushing wheels of time, I became fleet of foot and

ran from the bastard. I decided to get an all-singing, all-dancing Pentium

III 500 MHz.

The monster was in Dell’s January sale, and as I read about its DVD-drive,

its 17” monitor and its 13.6Gb hard drive on this most functional of

sites’ home page, my discount juices flowed: it had #150 off. The price

was #749, but without VAT. Factor that in, plus the delivery charge - oh,

and the VAT on that as well - and I was looking at #937.

That was more than I wanted to pay, but after typing in the above criteria

on other sites, I realised this was a good deal. The Dell site felt solid

and trustworthy, although it was a wrench to buy from a company that still

can’t spell millenium (sic) correctly.

I like talking to people before shelling out a grand, but with the site’s

”call-me” button dormant during out of work hours, I could only twiddle

with the configuration. Then, hoping a V90 modem meant 56K, I bought the

thing.

Paying by Switch was easy, and the site said I’d get an order number

within three business days, but not how. I did get an internet receipt

number, though. On dialling a phone number for online orderers, a genial

Irishman congratulated me on my choice. On Monday, a delivery company rang

asking if I’d be in during a four-hour window the next day. Fine, but then

at the lastmoment I rang up Dell to change the delivery address.

No problem. Dell’s customer service is superb - and childish wranglings

with my local Dixons branch over a video have given me some context for

that - so it’s a shame the thing didn’t work when I took it out of the

box. It needed another Dubliner to talk me, Mr Technophobia

sausage-fingers, through taking the back off the tower and fiddling with

some wires to get it going. Somehow, he succeeded.