The article mentioned, among other things, an Internet Washing Machine and an Internet Refrigerator. When I heard about these items at the time, I thought they were amusing, expensive toys for the hopelessly technology addicted who had no lives and thus could afford them.

I may feel the same about the tech addicts, but I am no longer laughing. Right now, I’m in a pretty bad mood because I want to watch my T’ai Chi DVD, my husband is out of town, and our television setup is so complicated that I can’t watch pre-recorded media until I have punched the right buttons on three remote controls and uttered the proper incantations.

My husband is incredulous at my lack of  video equipment savvy:

I returned the favor recently. I bought a coffee pot he couldn’t operate. At $150 on sale, down from $200, my Cuisinart Grind and Brew Thermal was a majestic tower of stainless steel and black plastic that looked magnificent sitting on my simulated wood countertop. It sported a stainless steel thermal carafe that was not only unbreakable, but was touted to keep coffee hot for hours.

The height proved a problem: it was too tall to fit under my kitchen cabinets. Luckily, I had a wall at one side of the counter where it would fit without danger of being knocked off. The cord was so short that it had to be run straight across the counter, cutting off access to any items in the corner — like our coffee mugs. But we were willing to endure a few inconveniences for the sake of a good, strong, hot cup of coffee.

Since we could pre-program the pot to grind the coffee and brew it, I could set it up at night and be ready to pour first thing in the morning. Since my husband gets up earlier than I do, pre-programming would ensure that he wouldn’t have to mess with the pot at all. The manual, however, recommended warming the carafe by filling it with hot water before brewing. Who was going to warm the carafe before the brew cycle started?

We didn’t have to worry about the cold carafe. I programmed wrong start time, setting the automatic cycle to start at 6:30 PM instead of 6:30 AM. I learned later that when setting the time, the system doesn’t tell you when the hour is associated with PM. It just indicates AM. In the world of programmable coffee pots, PM is the absence of AM or, depending on the whim of the manufacturer, vice-versa.

Setting the time was a challenge that shouldn’t have been. Directly below the digital time readout, clearly marked buttons indicated “hour” and “minute.” I had a similar system on my bread machine, or so I thought. On my bread machine, all I have to do is press “hour” until the hour is correct, then “minute” until the minute is correct. On the coffee pot, pressing the “hour” and “minute” buttons did nothing. The manual instructed me to hold each button two seconds until the time began to flash, then cycle through the numbers until the reading was correct.

Why they required me to hold the buttons in order to set the time is still a mystery. These buttons were not in a place where I would accidentally press them. The pre-programming function required the simultaneous pressing of the “Program” button to activate the pre-set time. If you’re not holding down the Program button, the only functions served by the “hour” and “minute” buttons are to set the current time. The only function that the two- second delay serves therefore is to befuddle the user. The Program button also refuses to respond until held down for two seconds, again, for no real reason.

Twenty-four hours after my first fiasco, I had managed to set the pot for the correct brew time, but when he got up, my husband still had no coffee. The user manual, it seems, forgot to tell us that after you set the Program Time you have to press the “Program” button (the one that the guide constantly calls the “Program Set Button”) again before the programming takes effect.

We did manage manually to make a couple of good, if rather messy, pots of coffee. We like our coffee strong — it appears we like it too strong, because with the volume of grounds we used, the filter holder overflowed, dumping grounds into the carafe and water reservoir.

The carafe had to be upended before the coffee would pour. If we weren’t swift enough, coffee leaked from under the cap and dripped down the side and bottom of the carafe.

Cleaning the pot was another challenge. I couldn’t fit my hand inside the carafe to wash it. I never figured out how to remove the coffee grounds that got into the coffee reservoir. The grinding apparatus is easy to clean but its housing requires a set of pliers to open if you’re not on steroids.

If we used pre-ground coffee, the pot still required the grinding apparatus to be in place before the coffee would brew. After brewing, we had to open the housing to allow steam to escape from the unused parts.

We’ve bought Timex watches, Maytag washers, Honda automobiles and HP printers and felt we got a bargain no matter what the cost. All of them do what they were designed to do, they do it well, they do it for a long time and they are relatively simple to operate. A coffee pot made by Cuisinart that costs a hundred and fifty bucks should do the same.

Since it didn’t, we returned it. We were still determined to get a better coffee pot, so this time we bought a Mr. Coffee, paying sixty dollars (still steep for a coffee pot) to get the requisite stainless steel carafe.

I was prepared to be happy with my simpler, less cool-looking Mr. Coffee if it did what the Cuisinart could not. First: operating simplicity. Programming Mr. Coffee was every bit as difficult, if not worse, than the Cuisinart. In its favor, it did have a nice lighted clock readout.

Second: does it work? The coffee would tell. The first pot was weak, lukewarm and tasted of industrial chemicals. So did the second and third. Around the third pot, the carafe began to leak like the one from the Cuisinart (must have been designed by the same engineer.) The fourth and fifth pots overflowed, flooding the countertop with hot coffee. So much for doing it well.

Since Mr. Coffee failed the first three tests, time was irrelevant. It went back to the store yesterday. This morning had a wonderful, hot, strong pot of coffee compliments of my electric hot pot and my ten-dollar low tech French Press coffeemaker. To keep the coffee warm, I wrapped it in a kitchen towel.

My fervent wish is that my existing kitchen appliances continue to work for a long time. Who knows when I’ll get hold of another appliance full of “gee whiz” features and totally bereft of common sense?

I blame the economy. The recent downturn in the technology industry flooded the employment pool with thousands of unemployed engineers and programmers who must have been picked up at cheap rates by the home appliance industry. There, they have applied the same mindset used to create your computer software and equipment. Why else would you suddenly need a manual to make a cup of coffee?