What a Tangled Web I Wove

And it proved to be true! It worked! I loaded and installed ZoneAlarm in minutes! It is, as the intern said, like an "iron curtain," not letting anything in or out without my approval.

What a revelation: Four programs -- one a firewall and three to combat spyware -- I downloaded FREE worked better than one I paid through the nose for. Why would anyone create these terrific programs for free? Often, as in the case of ZoneAlarm, they hope people will like the product so much they will buy an upgrade or, in the case of the spyware, pay to subscribe for upgrades.

That's fine with me.

As for now, I plan to update my Windows and all protection software once a week and do checks for problems just as often.

Glenn and I explained our problem to executives at Symantec and asked if the company knew about the problem. It did! By now it was a relief to just know we weren't crazy. Kraig Lane, Symantec's product manager for consumer Internet products, put it this way: "We have an unknown incompatibility problem between our firewall software and the software of another company."

He said installation complaints like mine haven't been numerous enough, though, to enable the company to pin down what the offending software might be, or which company makes it. There have been enough complaints, however, for Symantec to know that if customers update their Windows application, then reboot and try to reinstall the firewall, it usually works, even if it didn't in my case.

Computer techs will tell you that, like fingerprints, every computer is configured differently. That's why highly complex software like a firewall, regardless of who makes it, may work fine on one machine and not on another. The truth is, many if not most popular software programs have unfixable errors embedded in them, though most go unnoticed until some unlucky consumer stumbles on one, only to be forced to plow through pages and pages of obscure material to find the small print saying that it's unsolvable.

My recent experience, besides taxing my time, my patience and my pocketbook, confirmed my general disdain for overly complicated gadgets like cell phones and computers that have many more features than I will ever use. It gave me solace to know I'm not alone in feeling I have a machine at home that is fast requiring me to have a second, full-time career learning how to operate it.

But it also gave me a tiny glimpse into the wild world of computer programmers, where, like the never-ending point-counterpoint struggle in Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy," a battle wages daily between hackers and those who try to stop them. In 20 years of reporting, I've never written a story on a typewriter -- I've always used a computer. So it's not as though I don't know how to use technology or have a mental block against it.

Quite the opposite. I love technology. But I like it to work.