Introduction

Warning

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KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid

I'm a techno-geek from way back, before PC's had hard drives, and one of the knocks that PC's have gotten over the years, and perhaps deservedly so, is that they are overly complex. At first, it was the software that most people complained about, because text based interfaces were not all that easy to master for people, especially given the complex nature of the DOS syntax. There was only a few companies that really made PCs, so there was a great deal of uniformity at that time.

Now, some 20+ years later, the same can certainly not be said. It seems that there are more varieties of hardware than we have ever had before! Computers are much more than single-purpose tools, they have transitioned and evolved into diverse, multi-function devices that allows users to do everything from playing hardcore 3D games, creating and listening to large music libraries, creating your own custom audio and video disks, watching DVD movies in full Dolby 5.1 digital sound, responding to a flurry of Email and instant messages and surfing the web for hours on end.

What it all boils down to really is that you want the machine you poured all of that hard earned money into to keep its mouth shut, put its proverbial nose to the grindstone and get the job done. Unless you are a total masochist, you don't want to have to spend endless hours tweaking, adjusting, resetting and researching just to get the thing to work the way it is supposed to. In theory, computer, peripheral and chip manufacturers should have figured that out by now, but if you have paid any attention to the market over the last few years, you know that they are just as clueless as you might expect them to be.

What exactly am I talking about? Put in a little time and read the following pages and I'll try to fill you in...