Gallery: 10 most annoying hardware headaches

A bonus, No. 11. The worst sort of annoyance comes from necessary, exciting technologies that are badly implemented. Yes, we want universal broadband wireless access on the move. No, we don't want it provided by something that looks like a bar of soap danging on six inches of string, and is just as convenient to deploy. No, we don't want it courtesy of a steroidal pack of gum sticking out of the side of a notebook, where it inevitably catches against the side of your coffee mug. There are a hundred better ways of doing this: a decent standard internal expansion socket is one, or something that neatly clips out of the way with a convenient connector in just the right place. Or simply make mobile phones easy to set up as access points. It's not rocket science: it's barely more complex than a paper airplane.