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News just in from our correspondent on the front line: on a user-experience scale of one to completely awful, computers are still so far off the map you can barely see them with a telescope.

Microprocessors, we are told, have been doubling in speed every 18 months since they were invented. Let's do some sums then, shall we? I'm going take 1982 as my baseline here, because it happens to be the year when, on hearing that my father was buying the family a home computer, I chirped up with, "a computer? What for, Dad?"

I actually did say that.

Successive doubling - which is what computer performance is supposedly doing - is an example of geometric growth. When you start doubling and doubling again, the numbers quickly become huge, and assuming one doubling every 18 months, then between 1982 and 2008 we've had 17 of them. If the theory holds, that equates to an increase in computing speed of 217, which means computers are just over 130,000 times faster than they were in 1982.

Oh, but wait. In 1982, my BBC Micro booted up in less than two seconds, and I got a lovely two-tone beep into the bargain. The sound of the beep is burned deep into my consciousness, and not just because I was ten years old. That beep meant something. It was a beep of humility and servitude. It was a beep that said, "Hello David, I'm terribly sorry about that little fuss just then as I was starting up. Here I am now, though, all ready to go."

This morning, all I got after exactly one minute of waiting for my 130,000-times-faster

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PC to start was a cloying little Windows jingle, which essentially translated to, "Oh for God's sake what do you want, you idiot, can't you see I'm BUSY?"

Let's not forget, of course, that even the Windows jingle itself is a false prophet. It heralds nothing more than the end of the beginning; a prelude to the real waiting game. A terrible sort of waiting it is, too. There's no definitive end to it, only a wishy-washy sort of trailing off. For minutes and minutes, it looks as if the PC's finished booting up;the desktop is there plain as day, but if I'm arrogant enough actually to try to do some work, the computer will spit in my face. If I throw caution to the wind by trying to click on the Outlook icon too soon - as I have so many times in the past - it will just make the grinding hard disk grind harder, now burdened with what it was doing anyway and what I've rudely asked it to do on top. The whole process will only take longer. Patience is my only ally.

So we sit there, Patience and I, while my PC does what it's doing. Whatever that is. How should I know? I'm only an expert. An occasional, wistful glance at the hard disk light is the single paltry channel of communication that my 25 years of computing experience has taught me to cling to.

When it's blipping only every second or so I knowI can make a gentle nudge of the mouse, by way of letting the PC know that, if it's okay, I'd like to start using it now? Thanks.

A few more numbers: exactly one minute elapses on my system from the moment of power-on to the commencement of the Jingle of Spite.

An astonishing further five-and-a-half minutes go on the process of waiting for the disk-grind to abate to the point where I feel safe clicking on the Outlook icon, then staring at the blank window with the helpful title "Outlook (not responding)" and finally the system becoming responsive enough to allow me to open and start replying to email.

Another 60 seconds elapse before new emails start dropping into my inbox and the hard disk finishes grinding. In all, that's seven-and-a-half minutes before I can start doing useful work.