I have written about the problems that I have experienced with my Dell laptop ever since I bought from Curry’s last December and how, after two visits to the shop and three phone calls to Curry’s helpline, they finally took it away for repair (see Progress of a sort). The date for its return was a week later on May 12th.

Tigger kindly lent me her computer in the meantime. As this is the same model as my old computer, I had fun renewing my acquaintance with it. For the first few days, though, I kept catching myself expecting the cursor to misbehave!

May 12th (today) arrived at last and Curry’s confirmed by text that the computer would be delivered between 9:30 and 13:30. The text also had a tracking link though this isn’t very useful. At about 11:30 my phone rang: it was the delivery man telling me he would arrive in about 10 minutes.

He arrived, opened the sealed box he was carrying and presented my computer. There was nothing to sign though he did hand me card with his name on it, asking me, if I would be so kind, to give him a good score when I received the “How did we do?” text. I promised I would

During the week, I had said to Tigger that my experience of Curry’s so far had left me without any confidence that they would locate the fault and deal with it though I was willing to be pleasantly surprised. Now was the moment of truth.

When I ran the computer, I was relieved to note that, as far as I could see, everything was as I had left it, though I must remember to change the login password as I had had to give them this for them to access the computer.

On lifting the lid, I found a report sheet. It includes their diagnosis of the problem. Here is the relevant paragraphs:

The diagnosis

Going by this, then, I should be pleasantly surprised as they reckon they have found the fault and put it right. And I am pleasantly surprised, though still with a touch of caution: so far, the cursor is behaving itself but the problem always was intermittent – periods of normal behaviour alternating with incidences of “fluttering”cursor – so it will take a while before I am finally convinced that the problem really has been resolved.

In the five months that I had struggled with it, I had come to hate the computer and to use it as little as possible. I hope today marks the beginning of a new and far happier relationship.