OK, my 2 cents on this one... to using Absolutely. The problem is that today's culture is such that people expect to just dive right in and be able to do something without actually knowing anything about what it is they're doing. You don't get into a car, having never driven in your life before, and head straight out onto the motorway. Same as you wouldn't expect to be able to run a power station without reading a few manuals first! Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft as much as anyone else, but fair dues to them for trying to bring computers to the masses. In my opinion they're going about it in totally the wrong way though; don't throw together a lot of buggy, bloated software the looks nice and on the surface is easy to use - instead build a robust, logical product and provide good documentation on how to use it. Expect your users to have to actually *learn* something in order to harness its potential. survives computers, 1972 like nicer that Yep. My Triumph turns 30 next year, and it's so much nicer than any modern car. A car is there to get you from A to B in a reasonable amount of time and comfort - and I'll add that it should look nice, but it would still do its job even if it didn't. You don't need lights that fade rather than just go out, electrically adjustable mirrors, heated windscreen washer jets and all the other garbage that people pile into new vehicles these days. I'd also argue that you don't need airbags and side impact bars and all the rest of it - I mean, human beings are not immortal (and never will be) and if they're going to chuck themselves around the country at high speed then what do they expect!? It's the same with the fridge example that someone else came up with. A fridge is there to keep cool food; that's its job and it doesn't need to do anything else. I suppose given peoples' desire for the latest-and-greatest thing which is more feature-packed than ever before - and better than what their next door neighbour has - one of two things will happen: a) people will gradually see sense and start to buy products according to how functional they are.* b) people will continue to buy according to unnecessary features and marketing hype. I don't think case a) is too likely, at least not for many years - but maybe as far as the computer inductry is concerned we're seeing the start of that with the recent downturn in .com investment? And if case b) holds out then there's nothing we can do to change things anyway - just let it take its course and stop worrying about it! :-) * I'm not saying we should all buy things which look like big, dull, grey boxes :) But a product can be functional as well as reliable, cost-effective, pleasing on the eye etc. - current trend seems to be to ignore function over all the other things. I believe that's only a recent thing (last hundred years or so) that's come about with increase in global communication and wider markets - presumably because if company X can make a product that looks nicer than company Y's offering - regardless of how well it performs - they will typically make more money and therefore survive. Hopefully it'll come round full circle eventually and people will start taking some pride in the things that they produce again. Anyway, enough off-topicness for one day... and it was probably way more than a 2 cents opinion. And I probably made no sense either. :-) cheers Jules