Technology is racing forward at a phenomenal speed, which should ensure a spectacular crash when everyone, including me, finally gives up trying to figure out things that should be dead simple by now.

High-tech and consumer electronics companies around the world are failing us. As far as I'm concerned, every stinking gadget and piece of technology that's supposed to be easy to use and able to be used together simply isn't, and can't, and I'm sick of it. I'm here to stand up for every sorry bloke who bought the productsand the hypeand is now sitting on the floor surrounded by gadgets, wires, remotes, game controllers, software, and DVDs ready to have a good cry.

These days the buzzword is convergence. I'm all for it. Imagine that everything you own could work harmoniously. Much of my own technology works together pretty seamlessly. My TV and DVR-cum-FiOS TV box have a good relationship. Sure, I still have to program the FiOS remote to work with my TV, and although I have it programmed correctly to work with my display, I have trouble lowering the volume. (I have to hit it over and over again to step it down.) Okay, so maybe this relationship is not seamless.

My PC, which is supposed to be the hub of all my computing and digital media activities, is now quite good at working with peripherals and consumer electronics devicesprovided you have the patience and know-how to make those relationships work. Even then, stupid stuff will trip you up. Here are a few recent scenarios I've either experienced myself or had told to me:

I recently purchased a quad-core HP Pavilion with a 512MB nVidia graphics cards, 3GB of RAM, and more ports than Sean Combs has aliases. Connecting my Sony digital camcorder via FireWire is usually the best way to download digital video, since the bidirectional connection lets video-editing software like control the camcorder. The desktop's FireWire port is easily accessible; what's frustrating is that it's the large-size IEEE 1394 port, not the small one that would match the cable that came with my camcorder. Why in the world must we have multiple cable port styles? Now I have to find an adapter or buy a new cable.

Then there's the new SanDisk Sansa e250 MP3 player that "Santa" gave my daughter. It came with a Rhapsody disc, but since my HP PC came with some preinstalled Rhapsody bloatware, I decided to start with that. I allowed the software to go online and update to the latest version. Soon we were ripping discs and buying songs on Real's rather clunky/crummy music download software. (Does the company even realize that there's no way to select multiple tracks for purchase? I have to "Buy" one stinking Hannah Montana song at a time.)

The other day my new Vista-based HP machine blue-screened for the first time. On reboot, Vista offered to self-diagnose the problem. The culprit turned out to be Rhapsody. After following a few links, I learned that I had to install a Best Buybranded version of Rhapsody. Since "Santa" purchased the player at Best Buy, this made sense. On the other hand, is this at all sensible? Would the average consumer understand what just happened? My guess is that they'd blow $100 on a GeekSquad visit to learn what I just told you.

Let's move on to my son's new Xbox 360. It's a wondrous device that needs to remain in the living room under the HDTV because, as I've spent hours trying to convince my wife, it's really a media extender. Yes, it plays (and judging by my son's 12-hour gaming marathons, with enough heat to fry a robin's egg), and it also helps me view digital content stored in my PC on my TV. Getting this to work requires some patience and, as I learned, roller skates. When I tried to enable this feature through the Xbox 360 dashboard, it showed me a URL that I cannot visit through the 360 (since it has no browser). I went back to my PC, and while the link provided was not actually the one I needed, I did, through some Google searching, eventually find the site and the instructions I needed. For the next 15 minutes, I ran back and forth from the room where my PC lives to the living room, downloading software on the PC and adding codes in the 360. Mind you, I have a wired network. I can only imagine what this process is like for someone who also has to manage SSIDs and encryption.

Video, photos, and listening to music worked rather simply. But the seems to emulate the Windows Vista Media Center interface, instead of altering it to work more seamlessly with the Xbox 360 controller. On occasion, I had no idea which button to hit to get out of a menu selection or section. Also, though I can watch DVDs from the PC on my TV, there's no way to utilize the HD DVD and Blu-ray capabilities of the drive. I assume that's a DRM issue, but XBox, Vista, and Media Center don't tell me anything. There's no error message: It just kind of hangs until I back out to the Media Center menu. The interface just freezes up. I can live with all this, but, again, would the average consumer consider this "easy"? I don't think so.

Here's another scenario for you. A friend of mine told me that he got a webcam for the holidays, and while the driver software installed like a charm, his attempts to add Skype to the mix were thwarted by his PC. He couldn't even install it without getting a scary message about Registry read/writes. My guess is that his security software's firewall was blocking this activity. But why should he have to face that? Do you have to be a tech expert to enjoy free voice and video over IP?

Even Apple

Even Apple, the paragon of design and ease of use, can deliver a bad experience once in a while. This past holiday, I gave my wife an and gift cards for $30 of iTunes music. To speed the process, I downloaded the latest version of iTunes to our PC and even ripped some of her old CDs. Part of iTunes' setup process includes entering your credit card number (so you can buy music, movies, and TV shows). Eventually, my wife got onto iTunes and entered the codes for her gift cards. A couple of days later, she decided to buy a few songs. iTunes immediately brought up her credit card info, indicating that she might be charged. After a while, she noticed that iTunes was displaying a small media-credit-info number in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. I told her to trust that number and proceed with her purchase. Sure enough, the number dropped with each new song she bought. Still, why didn't the main screen on iTunes acknowledge her credit instead of confusing her with the credit card info?

I imagine that this past holiday season was a mixture of joy and extreme frustration for millions of people. Think of all those cool gadgets with inscrutable instructions and loads of primal screaminducing dead ends. How can we realize high tech's promise when we're all busy yanking the hair out of our heads?

I guess I shouldn't be complaining. If any of this ever gets as easy as it should be, I could be out of a job.