James,
Well, yes and no.
The original board/s I bought (two of them) were Freetronics boards.
They both worked.
One was their UNO equivalent and one was their Ether TEN.
The third board was also an UNO equivalent but was a different board. It has prototype area on it.
It doesn't work.
All the other boards in the shop (from Freetronics) didn't work. They also have different connectors on them. So that eliminates the cable.
I then tried the board on someone else's computer and it didn't work.
Now I have bought a Genuine UNO and it too doesn't work.
It is strange that at about that time other people started getting the same error.
To me that seems like a bigger bug than it being the board I bought, or my PC/s.