The newbie A500 user. I started using computers with the ZX81, Progressed to the Sinclair Spectrum, which was second to none, Kept on going with the QL, VIC20 and TI99, Many more besides until that fateful day in '89. Well, I put my hand in my deep pockets to count what pennies I had got, It added to enough with what I'd had in my plant pot, To get my first AMIGA, which I still use every other day, An A500 tool which has hacked more than I can say. I set it up with great care and proceeded to switch it on, I looked with much amazement as all I saw was this ICON Of a hand holding a disk, I thought "what the f**k is this", Appearing on the screen to ruin my hour of bliss. Like a spotty geek, I rummaged thro' the box with what I'd seen, To find the book of how to rid this hand from appearing on my screen, It said, ~Take the Workbench 1.3 disk and put it in the drive~, And wait a while for it to boot, then you'll be working live. Confronted with a bar along the top of the screen of my TeleVision, With a picture of a disk stuck in the corner gave me a mission, To click on it with a frenzy, not knowing what it would do, Luckily it ~opened~ with a window filled with piccies in it too. It'd got this thing they called a ~mouse~, not like ANY mouse I know, It was clunky and dis-jointed and also bloody slow, So back to the book to find out why and behold it it said to me, ~Click on Preferences~ to change this item up to number 3. But where was this file to be found, that had put me to the floor, Consult the book and find it is in something called a ~Prefs~ drawer, After several attempts of SINGLE clicking on this place, Only to realise to open it up, DOUBLE clicking is the case. This ~drawer~ now opened for all to see, and now to my surprise, ~Preferences~ was in there, so the book was telling me no lies, Remembered to double click it, as I would've been there all day long, And voila, there it was in front of me, in all of its full song. SINGLE clicked this box as it said, to get from 1 to 3, Is this confusing, single or double clicking, or is it just me?, Like a bolt of lightning the pointer shot across the screen, "What the f**ks happening now, have to tentatively click the mean". Next came the colours of the default bootup screen, Who decided on those colours wanted a good kicking in between Their legs to wake them up as they are hideous to look at too, White, Black, and sickly orange, mixed with sickly Blue. Proceeded with the problem of coping with the sliders, To change the colours to make them visually pleasant to outsiders, After many minutes of dithering about messing with the shades, It ended up looking worse like the colours of the everglades. Changed some other bits to ~make this computer work much better~, Sticking to the book, single clicking ~Save~ right to the letter, Alas my first error report, ~The disk is write portected.~ Read the book yet again and make the disk now write selected. There I was ready to use my brand new purchased tool, Getting really cocky now, feeling that I was nobody's fool. Open up the Utilities drawer to find a command called ~Say~, Type in naughty words and phrases, and laugh at the sounds that play. Fast becoming an expert at using this new GUI front end look, I decide to read more thoroughly the AMIGA 500 book, When I saw with my own eyes of something I'd done wrong, OH NO, I sighed, I should have checked this f***ker all along. Early in the book it says, ~Duplicating Your Disk...~ Once done keep your originals safe and do NOT take the risk, Of WRITING to these masters as corruptions could be had, TO EFFING LATE NOW, I've written to these sods and made me hopping mad. I could write many more lines of many a humourous event, With my A500 and all of the time and money I have spent, But I reckon we have all been here on this our very first day, Of owning an AMIGA, which means IMMEDIATELY WANTING TO PLAY.... (C)2005, B.Walker, G0LCU.