You couldn't do any better than what I got, a Hewlett-Packard desktop PC running Windows XP at 2.3 GHz with 1 GB of RAM. A boat like this guaranteed smooth sailing into the digital future.

Just like the Titanic.

Right off I couldn't get it to recognize the IDE hard drive I tried to install. My Cakewalk Home Studio program also had a fairly minor bug, but outside of that, everything was working well.

Then it was time to get Internet service. There's already one cable modem in the house, so I called Comcast to ask what it would cost to add a line. The only way to do that was to sign up a $150 a month home networking package OR, the sales guy whispered, I could get a router for $80 or so and have an extra connection for nothing! Excellent! I stopped in Micro Center and picked up a D-Link N Draft router and wireless USB adapter.

Here is where the drama began.

First, upon unpacking it I found the router needed a Ethernet connection. Due to a power failure the Ethernet connection on the existing Internet-capable computer had died and I was going USB. So it was another trip to Micro Center to get a Ethernet PCI card.

After a little more sweat and head scratching I got the router and wireless adapter installed. It worked brilliantly, like I had a cable modem right at my ankle. I was so thrilled I wanted to find the Comcast guy and thank him.

The next day the connection from adapter to modem was lost literally every two minutes. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers, rebooting, moving things around, nothing helped. It was exceptionally windy outside and I wondered if that might be affecting the signal.

Maybe so, because the next night it worked great again. Three hours online without a single drop, and I even downloaded a two-disc Zeppelin concert in just 19 minutes. Happy days!

And the next day? Dropped connection every five minutes. Nine reconnects in just an hour. I scanned the Internet obsessively and found others had similar experiences, though still others had experienced only the good part.

I also found that if I tried to boot the computer with the adapter in the USB port, it wouldn't boot up, but if I removed it it booted. I could see the adapter still blinking in communication with the router and modem even while Windows was telling me the connection was lost. Other times the connection would be lost but the adapter was blinking and Windows would say I had a "excellent signal, 130 Mbps." This just wasn't adding up.

I decided I should make sure I had the latest drivers from Hewlett-Packard and D-Link. So I went to the HP site and clicked on the updates for my model. This included a chipset driver update, but I'm not sure I even got that far down the list.

A little DOS screen opened up and the computer started freaking out. The mouse pointer was going really slow, and the CPU indicator was bright green. This didn't look good, so I shut the computer down.

And then...it wouldn't come back on. The power light was on, the DVD-ROM drawer would open and close, but that was it! I tried turning it off and on several times, hoping this was a fluke, but it fluked five times in a row. No doubting it -- my barely-over-a-month-old computer was fucked!

I went to Micro Center where some spiky-haired, abrupt douchebag told me I had probably fried the motherboard by turning it off halfway through the chip set update. They tried resetting the motherboard, but it didn't help. They couldn't order this particular motherboard, either, he said, so I should take it to HP.

I had gotten it from Best Buy Business Online, and the kid at Best Buy seemed 20 times nicer and more conscientious than the turd at Micro Center. He hooked it up to all sorts of diagnostic thingys and ultimately came to the same conclusion, but he seemed to think the motherboard must have been defective, a simple update off the company site wouldn't cause a hardware failure. He also said my computer had a Asus motherboard which he described as "very, very high-end."

So now my computer is on its way back to HP for repair that will hopefully be covered under warranty. There's a 30 second porn clip on the desktop, and a folder with some pics of a Hooters swimsuit competition and flattering pics of Halle Berry. Hope the Hewlett-Packard guys enjoy it.