After the excitement of buying my first pair of jeans on the net (designersdirect.com for those of you who haven't heard about it), I reverted to type on Sunday and went into a real shop with real clothes hanging on real rails.

The freakiest thing of all about this very non-technological venture was the shop - Marks & Spencer. I haven't bought anything there since a selection of underwear and an emergency pair of tights sometime last year. (This excludes the foodstore which, if you remember, got a chunk of the Christmas domestic expenditure, but not enough to prevent the downturn in profitability).

The reason for Sunday's visit was to check out the new Autograph range which is being heralded as the saving grace for M&S in the future. It hasn't been much help so far, since the shares have been bumping around 230p again following their flirtation with higher levels early last month when takeover talk was in the air. But, according to some of the fashion pages, the new range of specially designed clothes has been walking out of the stores in the UK.

If that truly is the case then maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel for the retailer - even if some of the designers thought it might be the end of their careers. Although there were those who were happy to be named as working for M&S, there were others who thought that taking the chain store shilling would lose them all of the street cred that they had built up over the years and therefore wished to remain anonymous. The store itself doesn't, of course, label any of the clothes with a designer name, they're all simply tagged as Autograph.

And did the Autograph range walk out of the shop with me? Amazingly, the answer is yes. The clothes are definitely a cut above the rest of the M&S lines and price-wise they're pitched about right (although leaving the sterling price on some of the garments isn't exactly a good idea as the request for additional cash at the till doesn't do much for your enthusiasm. However, this was an aberration, or so I was informed by the helpful assistant).

The shopping experience in the Autograph section is good too, with sizeable, well-lit changing rooms and an ambience that's far from the usual chain-store feeling. So, almost top marks all round, though whether or not it's going to be enough to haul the stock back towards the 300p mark is another question altogether. But it's a step in the right direction - with this range M&S can compete a little better with the likes of Debenhams, Next and the rest of the high street retailers.

However, it's only a small drop in the arid desert for M&S at the moment, and some shoppers prefer to have the designer's name on the label, but I might yet give Autograph another blast - never let it be said that I don't research these columns as thoroughly as possible!

What with the Autograph ensemble and the Calvin Klein jeans and a pair of shoes from one of the very few shoe shops in Dublin that caters for people with size three feet, I then reckoned I needed to do a little checking of the bank balance.

If you recall, a little while ago I bemoaned the fact that neither of my banks had marketed an Internet access service to me. Well, one of those banks responded by sending me details so I went online to get myself registered, delighting in the opportunity to be able to access my account and make all sorts of transactions while sitting in the comfort of the home office.

Unfortunately it didn't work out like that. Us Mac owners may still look down on PC users as a somewhat lesser breed of home computer owner, but the bank didn't see it that way. The software it uses to allow access under its secure system is not compatible with Macs.

According to the courteous guy at the other end of the phone it was easier to develop something that worked with PCs because its own software was all PC based. And, he said, it wasn't worthwhile to develop anything for the few Mac users that might be interested. Oh dear. Is it time to change my computer or time to change my bank?

And since so many people have asked me - the computer is doing well since it's accidental over-ingestion of the CD a few weeks ago. I have to admit to a certain nervousness every time I insert a disk these days, but I now know where the little hole that I can stick a paper clip in to regurgitate it resides, although it took the guys in the lab nearly five minutes to manage that with their precision screwdriver.

And, even with that horrible event, plus one or two other scares along the way, I know that my blueberry duos are far more aesthetically pleasing than a grey box on my desk. Owning a Mac is an emotional experience as any of the computer magazines will tell you!

Apple Computer is managing (at least at the moment) to hang on to much of the gain that the shares have made (currently they're trading around $120/$125), courtesy of all the iMacs and iBooks it's selling despite hiccups in the Nasdaq (and despite the software of Irish banks). There has been a lot of debate over the last week about the falls on the Nasdaq and the subsequent buying of old blue-chip stocks.

Obviously my colours have been stuck firmly to the mast in believing that many tech stocks are overvalued. But I'm not rushing to decry the entire sector yet. Most individuals still feel that the right technology stocks will still offer more than any oldeconomy one. And, at the moment, they're probably still right. Even in a falling market the company with something real to offer can do well. But the Internet should provide a platform for forward looking non-technology companies to thrive and prosper too.

Except that they will have to remember that there's a whole breed of people who bought fruit-flavoured computers who want to use them for everything. If I can spend money as easily as a few clicks on the Net, I sure as hell want to be able to check my bank account just as easily. And telling me that "for security reasons" the bank in question can't deal with me isn't exactly customer friendly!

Financial shares, good value or not? If you're developing an Internet banking facility they should be. But not if it excludes a whole raft of potential customers.

Author Sheila O'Flanagan is a former fixed-income specialist