Sir, - I recently bought what I thought was a mobile phone, but find myself in possession of a computer. It diverts calls which I aspire to answer, deafens me with music, blinds me with science, and generally leads me a merry dance. And all I wanted was to be able to make and receive phone calls, like in the old days, without first having to memorise a set of incomprehensible manuals the size of a small telephone directory.
Clearly, the new millennium will be no place for the over-25s. One can, I suppose, look forward to a day in the distant future (2002, or thereabouts) when one inadvertently starts a nuclear war by getting the button sequence wrong on the toaster.
When will the masters of the IT universe realise that (a) many of us are over 25, and (b) a huge market opportunity surely already exists for products that do only what the buyer wants them to do, rather than frightening him or her with outlandishly confusing and annoying gimmicks and gadgets. - Yours, etc., Kieran Furey,
Woodview Park, Donaghmede, Dublin 13.