I have had no formal training in the computer field.
   I have been using one for the last 9 years. and have gained my currant level of knowledge by trail and error, (mostly), reading , asking advice, on line tutorials and spending tons of time over the years building and using my system. which started as a 286 system, 14"tatung monitor with a 80 meg hard drive and 4 meg of ram, 3.5 and 5.25 floopy,  and have upgraded my system over the years, step by step, to a 386, then a 486 with 2 - 240meg hard drives and a hp 120 tape back up, to a 486DX4/133 with 24 meg of ram and 2 - 1.28g hard drives, HP1000 tape bk/up, 4XCD/16bit, Diamond Viper video card, Altec Lansing speakers w/sub, to the present system which is a PENTIUM 120,with 48 meg of ram, 3 hard drives, scsi and ide,3 internal cooling fans,  hp4000 tape , 8XCD / 32 bit, Diamond Stealth Video card w/4mg mem, 2 printers, APC-UPS440  with powershut software, Bose speakers w/200watt subwoofer, flatbed scanner. and (my pride and joy) a ViewSonic21PS monitor and Microsoft Win95 keyboard. All of these systems I and a friend or with my brother have built from scratch. and have worked out all, "ALL" of the problems encountered along the way. Which have been many. I am going to refer my brother to your page since he is a "WIZ" with computers and went to college for CAD in electronics, and is working in the aerospace field, using CAD and writting programs for it.