There's a time-bomb on my desk

Never mind liquid explosives on planes, I found out yesterday that my laptop is a potentially lethal incendiary device, just waiting to spread chaos and destruction. The arbitors of this diabolical plot are not, in fact, youths in Leeds but Dell, in league with their evil henchmen Sony. What annoys me most of all about this is the rudeness of these big organisations. When you get hold of a computer these days you have to spend hours filling out wretched registration forms and service agreements, all with contact details. Added to this, it's technically the University's computer, and I can assure you that they know full well which doors to kick in during the dead of night when my registration fee is a couple of hours late. Dell and A-Well-Known-West-Coast-Public-University between them could track me down faster than a Dept. of Homeland Security phone-tapper.

So why did I have to find out from the BBC? If you're going to supply someone with a potential firebomb then the least you can do is a brief email, warning them that they may lose their face while knocking up a quick spreadsheet. Even Al Qaeda has the common decency to inform their operatives that they should probably tell the wife not to plan anything special for that evening.

I had a stern chat with Dell last night. Laid it on the line, so to speak. I made it clear that it this laptop could burn down the office, blow my hands off or permanently disfigure me, but if the six months of research on my hard drive gets torched, then they'll have some fireballs of their very own to deal with.

It's looking at me now, you know, I daren't turn my back on it. It says it's on 'standby', but on standby for what I ask? The Luddites were right - these bastards are out to enslave us. iPods are just the vanguard.