The Jeff Pulver Blog: Question of the Day: What do you think is the most complex technology in your home, and how difficult is it for you and your family to deal with?

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May 21, 2007

Question of the Day: What do you think is the most complex technology in your home, and how difficult is it for you and your family to deal with?

Back when VCRs were popular, I am pretty sure that I was not alone as an owner of a VCR that always had a flashing 12 in the display. I believed that this said a lot about myself back then.

These days the cable boxes in my home have an accurate clock on them and the DVR functionality is integrated into an active program guide. This means that even lazy people like me do not have to make much of an effort to record a few shows.

Which leads me to today's Question of the Day: What do you think is the most complex technology in your home, and how difficult is it for you and your family to deal with?

--
(If you have a suggestion for a future question of the day, please drop me a line.)

Tags: Question of the Day, Jeff Pulver

Posted by jeff on May 21, 2007 05:37 AM | Permalink

Additional resources: #140conf events | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos

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I have no idea how the heating system of our house works...

Posted by: Hans Persson at May 22, 2007 11:21 AM

Our washing machine.
At my wife's request to do just part of a cycle, I tried to figure how to do it.
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Posted by: Moshe Maeir at May 21, 2007 05:22 PM

Strangely enough it is our water heating system. When we put an addition on our house we put in solar heating with a big tank backed by a gas furnace. However there is also radiant heat in the floors and we have a small pool (ok it's a mikvah) that is heated by the same furnace as it flows through pipe for filtration. The devices for adjusting the water temperature (and I think a few other settings) (one for the pool one for the hot water storage tank) are these boxes with 3 buttons and a digital display (Like a digital clock display only 2 digits/characters). One menu button and then an up and a down button. To set you hit menu, scroll through the menu to find the right option (I _think_ it is SP) and then hold something and then adjust the temperature. I keep having to relearn how to use it. That and you have to reach behind the hot water storage tank to reach it. The technology is very efficient, but the interface leaves a lot to be desired.

Posted by: Goldie Katsu at May 21, 2007 02:16 PM

Trying to decide whether it's worth the hassle to spend $99 on a printer router or just buy a new printer that works wirelessly with everything else in the house.

Or, Learning the finer details of our new cell phones, when we're still used to the old ones.

Posted by: whitney hoffman at May 21, 2007 01:44 PM

As an alphageek, I'm always playing with a lot of cool new toys. But in order for something to graduate to household technology, it needs to be reliable and dead simple to use like our Tivos, Harmony Remotes, voip lines, etc.

My current #1 "most difficult" technology problem is iTunes/iPods. We have three iPods, four Macs (plus a mac mini running OS X Server). I can't seem to make a centralized music library that propagates iTunes purchases between all the iTunes client libraries

Posted by: Lance Weber at May 21, 2007 01:32 PM

Without doubt the standard PC is the most perplexing for the average home.

The problem is that everyone reading this blog cant remember the learning curve - go and teach your 50 year old mother why her photos are now permanently lost to learn why this is an ongoing problem.

It continues to perplex me why a "set top box - cable delivered - secured web tv computing OS isn't available".

I want a set top box using the TV display with a infra red keyboard that allows people to browse, web mail and store documents in a single central location (eg in the network - not on the local hard drive).

All of the favourites, photos, messages etc are stored off box.

When a screw up or some other catostrophic problem occurs...the user... (your mother) simply hits the big blue button on the top of the box and everything goes back to normal.

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Posted by: Dean Collins at May 21, 2007 12:55 PM

I still have trouble navigating the On Demand menu from Comcast... This explains why I rarely watch TV...

Posted by: Justin Kownacki at May 21, 2007 12:40 PM

Microsoft Windows-based PCs. No doubt about it.

Posted by: David Young at May 21, 2007 12:15 PM

Clearly the laptops that are in daily use.

The small form factor PC that sits without monitors or keyboard in the storageroom shelf and acts as our media server and torrent downloader is easy compared to machines in constant use.

The router is complex, but not difficult as it has been stable after configuration.

Posted by: Gudmann Bragi at May 21, 2007 12:00 PM

I made it to convince my future wife to deal with computers and that was a hard one ehe....now I think our PPCs are the most difficoult to figure out...windows is not popular for making things easy...but in the end it works....

Posted by: Erik Stripparo at May 21, 2007 11:38 AM

For us it is probably the media center / home networking setup as a whole. We have 2 media centers, an xbox, a backup server and 2 laptops running at any given time. Most are wireless with a couple hardwired. The media centers share shows and the xbox connects up to one of them. Surprisingly it actually works well for the most part but every once in a while things just dont act quite right. Thats when the reboots begin (router, cablemodem, media PC, laptop, whatever is affected). Sometimes that fixes it, sometimes not (which is where my wifes troubleshooting ends). Lately our new wireless N router has been dropping its settings which adds a whole other fun layer as it typically has to be hard reset and re-configured. It is truly a great setup but definitely not for the faint of heart.

Posted by: Jesse Chenard at May 21, 2007 11:21 AM

The tech that gives me fits is not my PC (licked that back in '03...for XP, anyway), not wi-fi (finally figured out the ins/outs of that back in '05 when I worked out service creation, firewall settings, and port-opening whatnot), and certainly not my VCR (VCR? What's that?)...no, the tech that drives me bonkers in 2007 is my new so-called Universal Remote!

Rass-a-frassin' punch in one code for such-n-such infra-red-enabled device to get such-n-such buttons working to do such-n-such thing for such-n-such device, but only when such-n-such button on the remote is pressed and such-n-such red light indicator comes on, etc. etc. etc. ARG!

Posted by: K² at May 21, 2007 11:05 AM

It's in the driveway. The Toyota Prius uses technologies that I need to look up, like CVT. That's a lot of complexity. It also explains why the extended warranty/maintenance plan is so expensive. Is the car itself difficult to deal with? The GPS and Phone interface could be a little simpler, I still can't find the volume switch for the voice interface, and I have no clue where the microphone for the bluetooth phone interface is actually located in the car.

Posted by: Christopher S. Penn at May 21, 2007 11:03 AM

Basic computer networking causes my family grief. I swear, it just turns on. But I get more calls from home from that technology than any other. I don't have a lot more high tech in my house that isn't Apple, and all that just works. : )

Posted by: Chris Brogan... at May 21, 2007 10:11 AM

My desktop PC.

Posted by: Ziv Isaiah at May 21, 2007 09:31 AM

Hmmmm. Probably the home stereo system.

If we want to watch TV?
Turn on the TV.
turn on the VCR.
Turn on the stereo.
Put the tuner box on Video 1 input.
Put the TV on Channel 4.
Use this remote to change channels.
Use another remote to control the volume.

Playing X-Box? There's a different 7-step process.
Etc...

Posted by: Michael Bailey at May 21, 2007 08:46 AM

WiFi router, no doubt. It goes in and out depending on what wall you are behind, it is relatively old so setting up a VPN through it can be difficult. Just ordered a powerline adapter so hoping that eliminates some frustration with the signal capability.

/kff

Posted by: Kyle at May 21, 2007 08:40 AM

I have a set of wireless cameras and they walk on either my Skype router or my FON router when installed. So you could say my wireless network devices provide me with the greatest amount of frustration in my gadget-laced home.

Posted by: Bernie Goldbach at May 21, 2007 08:20 AM

Depends who you talk to. Me: Wifi router.
Wife: Windows (can you blame her?)

Posted by: joe c at May 21, 2007 08:13 AM

May 21, 2007

Question of the Day: What do you think is the most complex technology in your home, and how difficult is it for you and your family to deal with?

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