This is a summary of another critical incident I encountered while in computer class this morning. In this case, a beginner to computers expressed intense frustration after typing out her materials, saving it to a USB flash drive, and then seeing only part of the work had been saved once she opened it on the class PC.This critical incident, as well as the previous one, suggest the need for more support for learners.The question is: what kind of support do learners require? What changes do I need to make to address these perceived gaps in support?I think all students, whatever their level, need ways to cope with loss of data, with computer slowdowns or with ambiguous instructions in textbooks or in the student guide.Quite often, students are faced with issues concerning using their computers while at home. The software is different, the configuration of a network PC is different from a home PC, for example. So it is not really realistic for me as an instructor to be expected to handle issues with PCs students have at home. I can discuss the issues, but in the one case I am referring to, this student has OpenOffice, and saves the documents as wpd files. She needs to take additional steps to open up these files on MS Word 2007, steps she would not need to take if she had an earlier version of Word on their system.She also seemed to be confused about the concepts of her My Computer and the networked PC's My Computer directory. In the interests of security, I ask students to save documents to the virtual student drive, not the My Documents directory, as the contents of the My Documents are wiped each day.I will talk with students about a number of coping strategies for using the PCs, and share stories of how I coped with data loss and systems slowdowns.