Falling short of the mile

I've discovered I'm a fairly simple computer user. I need my computer to write, to get information, to download files, and watch the files I download. I also need my computer for an occasional bit of artwork I like to do. While I can do all of those things with my machine, sometimes it's frustrating to use computers.

For example, last night, with the typing of a few lines, I completely upgraded my operating system. My computer found 1000 things to download, upgrade, and install, and all I did was click a button and go to sleep. This morning I had a new operating system sitting on my machine and I didn't have to look for a CD to burn or format my drive.

All of this worked flawlessly. My machine is running an operating system I installed in my sleep. I replaced a kernel in three minutes time and didn't even need to reboot. It's insane.

Just one thing is wrong. I can't save pictures into the three formats I need to. No .jpg, .gif, or .png will work when I try to save them. That's all I need when I save pictures. Not being able to save pictures is a major setback. If I want to save pictures in some esoteric format that I've never encountered before I could flawlessly. It's only the three most useful things for me that won't work, as if this bug was tailored to piss me off.

All that work, all the time, and all that effort on the part of so many people to make my machine run well, and it falls apart when I need to do something incredibly simple like save to an established format. I'm sure there is some simple, obscure reason it doesn't work. I would never, ever be able to find such a reason. I've put out a request for help on the appropriate forum and can only hope that it gets answered, but that's all I can do. I'm at the mercy of power users dignifying my problems with a response.

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