I dare say there are a lot of people expecting, hoping for or even praying to find a gaily gift wrapped computer on their pillow this Christmas.

It's very much THE must have object of the nineties and it won't be too long before the Bill Gates' prediction that every household would one day own a PC comes true.

Then that old fashioned way of communicating with funny pointy things scratched onto paper will be outlawed and everyone will be sending e-mails to one another providing they can remember e-mail addresses, which they usually can't, which is why people puzzle over messages on their computer which read 'Dear Jean, thought you'd like to know the dog has got over his mange and we've managed to sort out the problem with Uncle Walter without involving the police. Love Sandra."

Ah well, such is progress.

If you do get a computer for Christmas will you take my advice and leave it sitting in its box until at least Boxing Day. Otherwise the season of goodwill and felicity could go straight out of the Windows 98.

There could be nothing less conducive to a peaceful day of eating, drinking and warm family camaraderie than someone shrieking down the stairs every five minutes 'what's the thingy on the end of the long bit of wire called again?'or worse still taking up the entire dining room table with bits of machine and then moaning because someone spills gravy on the mouse mat.

No, Christmas festivities and computers don't go together, so leave it until all the Great Aunts and the grandchildren have gone home - especially the ten year old grandson who has already demonstrated that he knows far more about computers than his granddad ever will but doesn't yet know the meaning of the word tact.

My holiday this year was somewhat marred by my son and daughter trying to load a disc from a German Internet provider onto a computer bought in Britain (so therefore probably American) with the aid of a helpline situated somewhere near the North Pole.

Each night I could hear either side of the conversation getting more and more heated, the helpliner usually ending up by saying 'well it shouldn't do that' which is computerspeak for 'I don't know what the hell's the matter.' Each morning I fully expected to find the computer in a small smashed heap languishing on the edge of a dustpan. What I usually got over breakfast were the 'if you hadn't pressed the escape button then it would never have . . .' recriminations.

It's not that I don't like computers. I do. In fact I'm writing this on one, and very good it is too. It's just that I don't believe they will solve everyone's problems in one go.

They're a bit like microwaves. When they first came into general use everyone thought meals could be made in moments and an ordinary cooker was to become obsolete. I had one in April 1976. By May 1976 I had narrowed my microwave use down to heating frozen rolls, warming cups of coffee and re-heating gone-cold meals when people came home from the pub. By 1999 I have added a few things to the list - they make great popcorn and they can, with care, melt chocolate without the need to suspend it over boiling water. Hardly a total release from domestic cookery.

The world of computers is a hugely complicated one - dozens of companies making the machines, thousands of people making the applications and programmes which go into them, oceans of shops selling them. It's a world which involves computerspeak which has been invented by people who wanted to be able to indulge in oneupmanship on a grand scale. You'll be into the realms of bytes and nodes, suitcases and formats, ROMs and RAMs, and little gems called half-duplex transmission and hardwired logic. For instance my computer dictionary says that the meaning of the word 'hash' is useless information present within a storage medium. Hash can be data that is no longer being used, or serves as a filler for fixed length blocks of data or is often synonymous with garbage after use. The second definition given separately for hash is 'same as garbage', whereas hash total has three definitions one of which says it is a total that is meaningless except for verification control. And from the ridiculous to the sublime a 'fault' in computerspeak is a problem that causes a device to fail or not work at all, and a fault sporadic is the same as an intermittent fault while a fault permanent seems to be bad news. There are about 200 pages of this sort of stuff, and you've not even bought the machine yet.

Computer people point out that they have tried to make computers easier to understand by giving bits of it logical names - so therefore there are files and documents, menus and wastbaskets. They even have a sense of humour by naming one of the main controls a 'mouse' because it looks a bit like one. This causes problems when you want more than one of them because you either ask ungramatically for two mouses please', or say 'mice' and have everyone laugh at you.

I wouldn't dream of advising anyone on what computer to buy, or where buy one. I will say however that it isn't advisable to go into a large computer shop and say 'I want to buy a computer but I know absolutely nothing about them'. You will be like a little naked new born baby lamb with a large vulture which hasn't yet had its breakfast circling overhead.

Take someone with you who knows about computers and keep your mouth shut and let them do the talking. Computer companies just love people who come in and say 'I'll have the nice shiny blue one'. When you buy one try to get someone who knows about them to set it up for you. Ignore your husband (or anyone else) who says 'It can't be all that complicated'.

Following on from this, do realise that all males think they know about computers, and will happily wipe your hard drive in the blink of an eye while they are just 'tweaking'. They are the same people who insist on adjusting your television picture even though it looks perfectly fine to you and ever after you have to watch your favourite programme through a strange foggy wriggle in the middle of the screen.

Bear in mind that if you let anything liquid into a room with a computer it will eventually be spilt over the keyboard. If you need to ring the helpline do check the obvious first. I speak as one who spent an entertaining 20 minutes on the phone to the Sky helpline until I noticed that the light which usually indicated the video machine (through which the Sky network was coming) was on, was off, and the light which indicated the iron on the adjacent ironing board was on was on.

Computer helpliners always tend to look for the most difficult electronic solution first - but then they can't imagine why anyone would need to sprinkle Jacob's cream cracker crumbs into the keyboard and jam the letter 'k'.

Ah yes, a word about computer manuals. These are written by people who know all there is to know about computers and are totally unable to understand that there are other creatures alive who don't. They are therefore totally incomprehensible to most of us, especially those who refer to most parts of the machine as thingys - ie the cursor as 'that little pointy thing' or the moving tool as 'that dear little thingy which looks like a surprised hedgehog'.

The one thingy I can say for certain about computer manuals is that in the section marked 'trouble-shooting' the problem you have will never be amongst the various ailments listed. There is certainly no mention of Jacob's cream crackers in mine.