I surround myself with technology the same way that some people surround themselves with friends. And just as we might have that one friend who, without even trying, can be somewhat irritating, certain technology I encounter every day can have that very same effect. In some cases, I can even grow to hate it. I usually try to ignore these tech mites and move on, but sometimes the stress is too much, and I need to let off a little steam. This column and list is my own Old Faithful jet of tech acrimony.

Ringtones

I struggle to understand why anyone would want their phone to warble, "Don'cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" in the middle of a crowded train, or why they'd want Michael Bolton to plaintively cry, "How am I supposed to live without you?" while they're in the bathroom. Yet, people do. People love personalizing their mobile phone ringtones. They even customize sound rings. (My son created one where each call is accompanied by the phone crying out in pain. Don't ask.) The worst part is that the crummiest songs are often the loudest. Wait, I take that back. That's not the worst part. What really gets me is that these people don't answer their phones right away. So that Michael Bolton ringtone can get all the way to, " now that I've been loving you soooo long?" before they actually answer the call. Please, people, can't we just return to good old-fashioned rings? I've heard a few iPhones that ring just like phones from the 1960s. That's something I can live with.

Earbuds

Audio analyst Tim Gideon rarely spares a harsh word when it comes to earbuds: They're the in-ear headphones that usually have either a thin rubber ring on the outside edge or are completely covered with foam. Our resident audiophile says that they routinely sound awful. For me, they usually sound okay, but my hearing isn't all that good anyway. Here's why I hate them, though: They never, ever, ever (did I mention never?) stay in my ears. I think my ears are pretty average; there's nothing remarkable about the shape or size of them. In fact, I think I could be an ear modelif you like the hanging earlobe type. Still, whatever pair of earbuds I use consistently slip out of my ears. The second major issue I have with earbuds is that when they're not slipping out of my ears, I'm accidentally yanking them out. The two earphone wires, which meet in a "V" somewhere below my first shirt button, invariably get caught on something. Oh, and they always do this when I've finally gotten my earbuds to stay in my ears. This means I catch and then painfully yank them off my head. These things should be banned.

RPTVs and RPTV Tech

While virtually all companies that have been producing rear-projection TVs have exited the business, I still find a few for sale at consumer electronic stores. Perhaps these are inventory remnants. Still, the models are new, and the salespeople are insistent that these RPTVs are thinner and better than ever. Right. They're still at least four times as thick as the fattest plasma or LCD HDTV, and they will never achieve their viewing-angle ranges, even with LCD technology. HDTVs are now big enough and cheap enough for everyone. No one should buy an RPTV ever again.

3D VR Glasses

When movies come out in 3D, I still go to see them in standard mode. As an eyeglass wearer, putting another set of lenses over my own glasses turns me into that kid who was called "four eyes" back in high school. Putting on 3D goggles that give me a 3D view of a gaming environment or movie fed to me by a PC is even worse. Also, it's never worth the eyestrain I feel. However, I've seen people who are already intensely immersed play video games without any special visual technology. 3D goggles are useless gadgets that will never find their way into the mainstream. If they do, you won't see them in my home. And no, it's not okay to call meor anyone else, for that matter"four eyes."

Laptop Batteries

I just finished reading a review of a laptop that promises 8 hours of continuous battery life. This is amazing and wonderful. Users can now work in the airport and then the entire way on a cross-country flight. And they won't have to worry about screen brightness or whether any of the system radios are on or whether the hard drive is spinning during the flight. That should last them about 12 months, after which battery life will be cut in half. Four hours isn't bad, mind you, but now they'll have to be a lot more careful about their in-flight power consumption. Six months after that, they'll be down to 2 hours. You know the rest of the story. It's one all of us have lived through with virtually every laptop we've ever owned. Rechargeable batteries lose performance faster than you can say, well, "performance." I've had laptops with batteries that lasted for 3 hours, which 2 years into their lives, were down to 20 minutes of juice! The really frustrating thing is that I know laptop manufacturers are working to optimize laptop battery life, but they seem to have little concern about longevity. It's time to build enough smarts into laptops to let them do all the battery rundowns and recharging in a way that doubles the true, usable battery lifespan. Until that happens, I will continue to hate all laptop batteries.

Cell-Phone Cameras

Perhaps "hate" is too strong a word here, but I do have a severe dislike for cell-phone cameras. Generally, photo quality is still average to bad. They're unbelievably slow. Whenever I take a shot, I first try to hold the phone real steady since these cameras lack image stabilization. Then I press the button, which almost always shakes the camera a tiny bit. That's okay, though, because I'm still holding still. But wait. No, seriously, wait. The camera has yet to take the shot. There's an unbearable delay because these stupid cameras are so slow. I know that cell-phone cameras are getting better and more powerful all the time. They're even responsible for some truly historical shots (), but those are the exceptions, not the rules. I wonder if things would have worked out better if we had instead started with a digital camera and added in phone features.

Graphic Search Representations

Most of what Google has added to its Search in recent weeks has been welcome and useful. The Options column, which you can hide and show at will, provides just enough control to help you get more out of Google's increasingly cluttered search results. But what's with the Wonder Wheel? This graphical representation of your primary result and related topics is pointless. I did a vanity search and it came back with DL.TV, Cranky Geeks, Ziff-Davis Publishing, Tech Podcasts, and software integration. No PCMag.com? You can follow each connection in the Wonder Wheel, which then sprouts its own set of spokes. I quickly lost my place. I've seen other tools like this before and can say, unequivocally, I never get anything out of them. Please, Google, don't waste our time with this stuff.

MicroSD Cards

Isn't it wonderful and kind of amazing that we can now buy 32GB microSD cards? You slip them into your phone and you now have as much storage as the most expensive iPod touch. Remarkably, these tiny cards are no bigger than the tip of an average-size pinky. And that's why I hate them. The other day I was moving one from a Sansa Vue when I dropped it into my lap. I stood up because I couldn't see where I had dropped it, and then it was lost on my gray rug. I crawled around for 15 minutes before I discovered it perilously close to one of the wheels of my desk chair. Cell-phone manufacturers don't help the situation. For every conveniently placed microSD card slot, there's another where you have to open the phone up and remove the battery to insert the card. I'm not sure I'd even want to take the chance. We're well on our way to microscopic storage, and when that happens, I'll probably never touch storage media again.

Business Laptop Speakers

I'm glad laptops now have stereo speakers, and some manufacturers are even smart enough to put them on the keyboard side of the system. (I remember a few that put them on the base, so you'd have to put your head on the desk to actually hear anything.) Sadly, most of these sound systems are still too low. I can turn the volume up as high as I can, and it still sounds like the music is playing through a paper bag. I get that not all laptops are like this, but I have never been impressed with even the best of laptop sound configurations.

Proprietary Power Jacks

Open any drawer in my home and you'll find a half-dozen power supplies for various computing and consumer electronics products. We have them for laptops, speakers, handheld gaming systems, cell phones, hard drives, rechargeable power tools, old cordless phones, you name it. Unfortunately, most of these wall warts do not list the device that they work with. If I'm lucky, they feature the same manufacturer name as the parent component, but that is not always the case. Sometimes, I'll have two power supplies that both provide the exact same amount of voltage, but they're still not interchangeable, because the ports and plugs are different shapes and sizes. An entire industry has sprung up to address this problem, but power-supply adapters, like the iGo Juice universal power system, work only when you have the right port adapters. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. Why is it that so many similar products need to have different voltages? Can't manufacturers build some sort of power cleaning and normalization scheme into the tiny motherboards? There must be a way, but they won't do it because it makes switching to a competitor's product way too easy.

Proprietary Keyboards

I really do like my new BlackBerry 8310, but I can't say I'm enjoying learning a whole new set of typing metaphors. It took me a day to learn that I could get a period not only by hitting "Alt" then the "M/period" key, but by hitting the space bar twice at the end of a sentence. That's nice, but my old Treo 700p let me simply type a period, which had its own key. On the Treo, I could Caps-lock or Alt-lock by hitting each key twice. I still haven't figured out how to do that on the BlackBerry. It's not that one way is necessarily better than the other, but why should anyone have to learn a different way? This is basic stuff that should be consistent byif I had my waylaw.

Sneaky Toolbars

A while back, I was looking for a good English-to-Klingon dictionary (what, you've never needed to know how to say "funny" in Klingon? It's "tlhaQ," by the way). I found a great, free dictionary from a company called Babylon (the company makes a bunch of translation software and free online dictionaries). I installed the software, found the word I needed, and then moved on. A bit later, I launched Internet Explorer and found that I had a new toolbar from Babylon. I figured I must've forgotten to uncheck that option on the install. I uninstalled Babylon and the toolbar disappearedfor a day. Now, every fourth or fifth time I launch IE, the bar is back. Worse yet, it unnervingly doesn't respond to first clicks. So I click once on the close "X" on the toolbar and nothing happens. On the third click, a box appears asking if I want to remove the Babylon toolbar. I click yes and nothing happensuntil the third click. "Hate" is not a strong enough word for what I feel when this happens.

There you have it, my utterly incomplete list of tech I hate. Why don't you tell me about some of the tech that drives you crazy. Come on, vent. Trust me. You'll feel better.