Dell may be accepting bitcoin they have a way to go before before bitcoin acceptance filters down to their customer service agents, never mind going mainstream.  I tried to order a computer at Dell.com and pay by bitcoin.  For some reason the order process got stuck in a loop when I clicked 'Submit Order' and it never presented me with a bitcoin address for my payment.  I spent a long time on the phone in a merry-go-round between Dell Customer Support, Dell Order Modification and Dell Credit Card Payments departments (possibly among other departments which I was too confused to comprehend).  Having been passed around from one to the next and back to the start several times one thing became abundantly clear.  None of the  people I spoke to were even aware that Dell take bitcoin payments and had no idea what I was talking about.  In the end, after 95 minutes, with my patience rapidly diminishing, one seriously said: "Bitcoin - is that some sort of wire transfer?".  Then when she offered to send me back to Dell Credit Card Payments (yet again) I pleaded with  her "Don't you have a Bitcoin Department?".  "Yes Sir" she said "I will put you through to the Bitcoin Department right now". 

My elation was short-lived when I found myself straight to the back at the main menu.  Thanks Dell

I have been happily using Electrum 1.9.7 for several months but since yesterday I am not able to start it.  The Electrum background process starts for two or three seconds and then closes with no error message.  I am on Windows 8.1 64 bit.  I have restarted the computer and downloaded version 1.9.8 but it is still the same.  Following instructions from another thread I emptied my ...AppData\Roaming\Electrum\wallets folder and attempted to start Electrum, but still the same problem.  I have the seed if I need to use it, but since I can't open Electrum I am getting nowhere.  Can anyone help?

Update:

I now have Electrum working again.  The first time I tried to delete just the default_wallet file, but this time I renamed the whole Electrum folder to Electrum_bak.  This time when I started Electrum it allowed me to restore from the seed.  Ok, I have my wallet and bitcoins back (and my heart rate is almost back to normal) but what happened to the original default_wallet file?  It would not open in notepad and appears to be corrupt.  I can sort of open it in NoteTab but it comes up with the message: "Warning: 'default_wallet' may be a binary file. 2538776 non-text characters have been converted to '.' (Alt+0183)".  I saw a thread from Eskimo (Re: Electrum not opening, lost seed. Help needed ***Reward***) which looks like a similar problem, but with a less happy ending.  Any ideas what is going wrong?