And there there is Bill Gate’s vision for the future digital home (as outlined in a speech last weekend). It’s a home in which everything is connected and linked to multiple flat screens all around the house.

Sounds fantastic? I’m not so sure, unless they get the simplicity bit right first. Which is unlikely. It more likely the typical technology approach will be followed: add features galore and think about how people will maintain them later. The end result: lots of wizzbang toys that add to the users maintenance workload.

My house needs painting, the windows need washing and I should really do the annual reinstall of Windows on the home computer. And there are 100 other jobs on my list. Not sure I want to add to it.