Just think what Bill Gates got us into when he produced the personal computer - a world of stress, conspicuous consumption, and planned obsolescence. I thought I had arrived when I exchanged my electric typewriter for the perfect home computer. But it was only then that the technology tantrums began.

My monitor lit up with letters and numbers and this message: Shut down your computer and unload all your software and reinstall it or you will lose all the data you have stored. Then a box pops up reminding me that my virus software has expired. After clicking what the computer tells me to click and filling in all the blanks including credit card number, visions of someone stealing my identity comes into my head. But never fear. The virus protection company is prepared to sell every form of identity protection and special ways to remove cookies. For this cookieholic to want to get rid of cookies is unbelievable.

Just don't call customer service like I did. Click one if you want English, click two if you want hardware, click three if you are purchasing software, click four for customer service with a warning that you may have a long wait so why not access the website. Finally someone with a thick accent comes on the line in such a muted voice that they must be answering from India. I thought this was a joke until my daughter informed me that most companies outsource their backup assistance to India and other places around the world. Not only can't I understand their computerese talk but the accent makes anything they say unintelligible. One thing I did understand was this advice from a real person that I finally accessed, "Have you tried smashing your computer with a hammer?"

Then comes the problem of storing important documents. Did I store it in my family folder or friends folder or club folder? Even when I find the folder I thought I filed it in, I now can't remember what title I put on it.

I have begun to wonder if the time I spend upgrading hardware, installing software, learning how to manage it and suffering through computer crashes is worth it all. Authors who say they still write longhand really are saving themselves a lot of grief. All they have to worry about is keeping paper in stock, the occasional writer's cramp, and running out of a supply of pens.

My last experience with a computer "expert" ended up with this advice: "Buy a new computer because finding the problem that we haven't been able to find as yet might be much more expensive." Now I understand why we have so many computer disposal companies. They take your tired computer and send it to Asia where little children dismantle it at the risk of toxic contamination. Then we buy back computers that may have some of the parts that once belonged to us and we start all over again with visions of the technology tantrums yet to come.

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who has just co-authored WWII Liberator's Life: AFS Ambulance Driver Chooses Peace with her husband Norman C. Kunkel. More information at gnkunkel@comcast.net