Guess I'm just unlucky. Bought the boards (UNO and MEGA) from reputable UK Supplier and both of them work on my windows 7 laptop and on an old Windows XP laptop.
Just a pity that they wont fire up on the desktop. I'm sure too that the arduino is a brilliant system. It's just that after several hours without even getting started its a bit frustrating for an already grumpy old man. (Edison and Faraday were in short trousers when I started in this game !)