Just before we set off on our travels I bought a new computer.

About seven weeks later we arrive in the Philippines and the new boy decides to not communicate over Wi-Fi after being on a few minutes and then causes blue-screens when you try and turn it off.

After unsuccessfully trying the sensible things to get it on the straight and narrow road of reliability I contact the manufacturers [Dell] Support Crew.

They thank me for going through all the steps I have taken so far and suggest that it is time for the nuclear option: A Factory Image Restore.

Now I was hoping that they would have a few tricks up their sleeve, but either I have actually done all the things that are possible or I have been assigned the tech-support rep whose answer to everything is a FIR (Factory Image Restore).

Unfortunately I think he is right but it is still a big decision to make. I can still use the internet by the simple process of connecting the laptop to my phone by lead and using the phone to connect to the internet but if I FIR the machine it is, as the name implies, exactly like it was when it came out of the box:
No programs that I since have installed;
No data;
No updates issued in the last few months - and there was one biggy amongst them.

So away we go, we work our way through the menus and warnings and watch the progress bars crawl across the screen, we re-enter account details, tell it we like the time to be like this, that we love NZ$, Malaysian time and US keyboards.

Then we go through the process of downloading all those Windows updates as well as all the actual programs that you need to do something useful and productive (maybe!) with your life...
...and both the hotel Wi-Fi and your Philippine Mobile Wi-Fi are not only slow but also unreliable.

It takes you days, literally days, to get you working life back to the point where you can continue with it.

Downloads stop in the middle of the night and some will not be persuaded to pick up where the left off. Skinny install programs get bored waiting for your chosen options to come down the pipe and sulk. You decide that you can cope without a few things and then discover five minutes later that you, in fact, can not.

But eventually you are able to write programs, update websites and analyse data to your heart's content and all is forgiven.

Until it throws another wobbly.

And you know it will.