Two lovely young men have just installed my ADSL modem, splitter and cables, set everything up and by the time they were finished, I could kiss them...and I am ever so happy that I decided to get the professionals in because as it turned out, my worst nightmare did come true and the splitter the provider had sent me appeared to be defective. Now had I not rung for assistance, I would never have known this and, having failed to get a signal, would undoubtedly have proceeded in taking out my frustration on the computer itself, by dropping it from a very great height. It's what I do when technology baffles me. I smash the offending item to bits. I can't tell you how many Walkmans have suffered this fate, simply because I failed to remember to exchange the batteries, and couldn't work out why the bloody things wouldn't work anymore.
Anyway, YAY! for the Internet! I'm finally on it!