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Are you planning to buy a computer soon? Thought you'd bargain on a second-hand machine, did you? Stop right there.

Just think about this carefully. A computer is a very delicate piece of hardware - don't mess with it. By its very nature a computer, whether straight out of the box, or off some acne-infested geek teen's desk, will inevitably fall apart with one problem or another.

The thing you don't want to do is to intensify this risk by buying from some back street and shady used-computer salesperson. As soon as he enters the picture the chances of you wanting to toss this unruly piece of equipment from the balcony of your third floor apartment, will just sky rocket.

Take it from me, a victim of the second-hand computer dealer who was caught in the thick of a torrential mess that would drag on for three months, a total of six visits and set me back a couple of hundred rand.

They conned me, demoralised me and broke me down until I handed them fresh, gleaming R100 notes, begging them to do anything they could to fix my technological impediment, because when things get ugly in this business, they get damn mean ugly.

Thinking back now, it was somewhere near the end of this vulgar saga that I suddenly realised just how far in I'd gotten myself. It was a lovely autumn day and there I was like some demented scene out of a Monty Python movie, running alongside the source of all my troubles, Riaan, the manager of this slimepot second-hand dealership. What was happening?

I was with an inconsonant moron and we were giving chase to a boyish thief whom I had no idea about. Turned out later that the thief had seized a whole wad of cash and cheques from a business right opposite the used-computer shop.

For our bulky store manager, this was just like a normal day. Later he related how all he really wanted to do was catch the guy so he could bash the hell out of him. "I'm from the Free State and when I worked in a bottle store up there, I used to pray that some guy would steal something so I could pile into him."

Why was I helping this agro-obsessed simpleton and letting him waste my time? It's people like him that get drunk on weekends so that they can waste innocents like myself for fun.

The problem bottom line was I was dealing with a bunch of idiots and my regular appearances around the place weren't helping to quell my homicidal thoughts of blowing away the lot of them.

Finally salvation did arrive. It turned out they were also getting a bit irritated with my presence. That's when they opted to fit me with a new system. They slotted my old hard drive into the new pc box and Davin, the assistant who was tall and thin and looked like a schoolboy, opened his mouth for another of his goofy renditions: "Ja, I'd like to format your hard drive just because I think it's better like that with your new system."

Okay fine, all my important information had already been backed up onto disks, so no problem, let's get this over and done with. So he finishes. It's a Friday and Riaan and the kids are keen for their weekend jol. After all, Riaan was pretty uptight. Moments after the thief disappeared into the surrounding houses, Riaan, armed with his gorilla lock, had sped off in his white bakkie and spent almost the entire afternoon stalking the neighbourhood in search of his victim.

Now I was about to lift up the PC box and middle finger the place goodbye, when Riaan jumped up from his seat and rushed over to us. "Davin, what Windows 98 did you put on the customer’s system?"

Goofy spluttered back, "The one from our disk."

Riaan's face began to slowly contort, the muscles packing up against his eyelids, as he panicked and blurted uncontrollably, "No, no, we can't give the customer that, we'll get in trouble with copyright infringements from Microsoft."

"What, so I can't take the computer now?" I pleaded like a helpless infant in need of a pacifier.

"Well unless you're prepared to pay one of these guys R200, that's what I pay them overtime. Or you can buy the Windows license which costs R300."

I thought to myself, "What is wrong here? Why am I forking out loads of cash for a problem that is essentially theirs in the making? Why can't they just fix it, finish the job off and give it to me now?"

But rather ashamedly I backed down and was forced to return the following day. Now I'm thinking, these half-brains aren't that stupid as they appear to be. Here they've actually found a really smart way of getting around big old Bill and the boys from Microsoft.

Riaan and his people, you see, don't have Windows 98 licenses. So what do they do? They buy second-hand hard-drives which already have Windows installed on them, so they're not really pirating anything, just sort of buying other people's operating systems which ironically may already have been poached before arriving at the store.

Now finally the thing works and Riaan and co are, for all I know, still alive. I didn't turn psycho on them. I didn't quite get my revenge, but you never know — when you are dealing with a computer and a one-year guarantee the worst may still be coming.

Oh, and if you're anywhere near the window with your second-hand PC in your hands, ready to fling the thing onto the tarmac below; calm down, take a breather and then get a sledge hammer — it's far more rewarding to destroy something that way and hey, at least you’ll get a workout while you're doing it.