I have just about had it. Every technical product I own has conspired to make me feel stupid and old.

Yesterday my Nextel phone suddenly started answering for me - my kid told me that I had inadvertently activated the Auto Answer feature. I didn't even know I had an Auto Answer feature . . . and of course I had no idea how to turn it off. My sleek new Motorola Razr has an instruction manual that is 101 pages. I haven't read a 101-page book in five years.

I am tired, tired, tired of products that are smarter than I am and delight in proving how inept I am. I want a whole new set of products. Products for those of us over 50 - with simple instructions, fat buttons and our own help line manned by people over 50 who will not talk in jargon.

Damn it, technology people, we elder statesmen have all the money, we have the time. . . . Why do you continually put in features that we will not use within our (short) lifetime? When will you people realize that we are a major market unto ourselves? I want a logo on products that have been tested by the AARP, that are deemed safe for Republicans, that have Alan Alda as their spokesman.

When you put in all these features that we will never use, we feel ripped off because we are paying for functionality that serves us no earthly good. No, I am not going to record streaming video on my cell phone. No, I am not going to record my favorite 100 songs and no, I am not going to be shooting the remake of "Apocalypse Now" on my iPod nano. Just leave us alone with our dotage and some technology that actually works.

Years ago, I ran a major conference at the Taj Mahal hotel when it first opened. Donald Trump comp'd me with a beautiful room with a sunken bathtub and mirrors on the ceiling. My fantasy - except my eyes weren't good enough to see what was going on. Instruction manuals are written in four-point type so only an eagle could read them. My memory isn't so good, so I have to be retrained every morning on the features I learned yesterday that I will never use.

I have a home entertainment system so complex that I have to have the guy who installed it over every month to show me how to make it work - at $80 an hour. I have remotes for my remotes. And if someone inadvertently hits the wrong button, I am infinitely screwed, as I am 8 ½ miles out of town on a dirt road. You try and communicate with DirecTV, which seems to have its service desk on Mars. How am I supposed to know which satellite I am honed on? And stop sneering at me!