A note about hardware installs

Based on your journal responses, I thought I should mention a few things about installing hardware:

• Installations can only go smoothly if you've prepared for the install in advance by making sure that the hardware you're installing is compatible with your computer. How do you know whether it's compatible? Read that manual!
• There's a fairly big mental difference between installing hardware on a test machine (like the ones we're using for your first demo) and installing hardware on your (or even worse) someone else's machine. Once the spectre of damaging something worth real money starts entering your head, it can make that install seem a lot less easy!
• I didn't go over (and don't have time to go over, unfortunately) the 'x-factor' of hardware installs - booting up the machine, and making sure everything is working. Knowing what to do if everything doesn't work can require some fairly sophisticated troubleshooting skills.You may need to install some drivers...and maybe those drivers conflict with something else on your machine. Maybe the hardware is defective. Maybe the moon is in the wrong phase.

I'm not trying to scare you away from doing your own installations, because most of the time, things go smoothly. I'm just letting you know that mostly doesn't equal always.