I'm keen to pass on details of any good web sites I find that can help you with club meetings. One site I found recently deserves to be bookmarked by anyone who uses a PC but especially by all club members. It's www.buildyourown.org.uk and, as the name suggests, it is completely devoted to helping you to build your own PC from scratch. It takes, as its starting point, the premise that you have no prior knowledge of building a PC and begins by explaining in great detail all the tools you'll need to collect before you can begin. It then offers this helpful advice in the Precautions section:

"Before you take the plunge and begin to build your new PC, be sure to take note of the following precautions and advice we offer (often as a product of a painful and/or expensive experience!)" It goes on to offer electrical safety advice (presumably the painful experience) and handling the components (the expensive experience) as well as 'connections' and 'cleaning'.

You are then taken in the logical steps through the process of building your computer. Step one is the PC case, next is the boards, then the CPU and RAM. Step four is the drives, then the internal cables and external cables, followed by final testing and, of course, finally step eight, troubleshooting.

Once you have build a PC you can be proud of, the final stage is the installation of the operating system which in this case is a choice of Windows 95, 98 or Me. This is a very useful addition as too many times the instructions given on building a PC finish with putting in the last screw. Adding an OS can sometimes be the most troublesome part. Full marks to the owners of this site for adding these comprehensive instructions.

The site itself is full of hints and tips, warnings and useful advice and is illustrated with clear photographs and diagrams. One novel idea is the ability to download the entire site with all its instructions and pictures to view offline. This means that you can keep going back to the instructions and re-reading them rather than having someone at your elbow saying "What on earth do you think you're doing now? It doesn't go there, it goes here!" and "Do you realise how much this is costing in us in phone bills?" Even I feel as though I could build a PC after reading this.

Sue Williams