I'm on vacation this week and, yet, I think I'm still spending as much time in front of a PC as I do at work.

See, I got the iPod I wanted for Christmas and the kids got Fisher Price digital music players (call FP3 players) and I've been trying to install the software to use them since....oh' 10 a.m. on Monday.

I've officially given up now and packed my cute little Nano back into the tiny box it came in because I just can't deal with it right now.

I'm no computer programmer, but I'm PC-wise enough to know how to fix most problems. For those I don't know how to fix, I just google the error message and solutions pop up.

Which is what I did when I kept getting error messages when trying to install the iPod (and the FP3 player) software. But, nothing worked. I'd get one message "fileE: \INSTMIA.exe not found" fixed and then another would pop up "missing export NTDLL.DLL:strstr."

The bottom line? After three days of downloading updates and patches and software and drivers and this and that and this and that...it all boils down to this: iPods will not work with WindowsME (Millenium edition) which is what I am running on my 7-year-old, obsolete, ancient, decrepid son-of-a-motherboard PC at home.

So, here I am with my $200 iPod that is now going to cost me an additional $2,000 to use because I'm going to have to buy a new computer ... which will be outdated the day it arrives on my doorstep.

Bah humbug!