Difficult-to-use products: the niggles that let you down

I have a Pure Evoke-1 radio with a 12V power supply and a rechargeable Pure Evoke-3 radio with a 9V power supply that looks almost identical and has the same power connector.

I wonder what would happen if I plugged the 12V supply into the 9V radio.

That’s my nomination for dodgy design.

I have a Sharp combination microwave that I purchased mainly because of the large cavity – passing-on a perfectly good Panasonic combi. Frankly, I am considering selling it off, at quite a loss, and getting a new Panasonic. What drives me up the wall? It is the stupid feature that switches off the display – after only a minute or so of lack of input. After 5 – 10 minutes might be acceptable, but I ask you – How much electricity does a display use running 24/7/365? Certainly not as much as my GEC Nightstor electric boiler takes charging (overnight) for one minute.

A store brand food processor. It does all the things it says it will do, but bloomin ‘eck, cleaning it’s a nightmare.

Also, stopped using my bluetooth earset as it kept falling off my ear.

Also, i keep hitting the caps button instead of ‘a’ on this ipad!

My old and cumbersome Murphy Richards Coffee Machine has sadly almost reached its final days and I need to replace it. I have looked at the new models on display in various stores with some disdain as to me they slightly resemble something I would expect to find in a sci-fi movie so the new purchase has been put on hold for the time being.

However, during a recent spring cleaning session I came across an old Cona Coffee Maker I had kept because of its beautiful and elegant design with its two glass bowls and arced handles I had been reluctant to throw it away. I set about cleaning it up and it now has pride of place on the kitchen worktop and still makes a perfect cup of coffee. Fortunately I had kept the instructions as it is quite complicated and a bit scary to use with its hubble bubble action but it is a joy to watch the whole coffee making process through the glass bowls from start to finish. I doubt very much whether it would pass today’s stringent Health and Safety regulations though.

My disappointment of the year has to be the You View box that Talk Talk persuaded me to have. It promised to do all sorts of things that my Humax recorder could not do. So long as I use it regularly it is OK up to a point, but it will not let me do catch-up on BBC or the commercial channels for more than an hour. And it is so slow to get started. It has to wake up for a start and it is slower even than I at that! Once it has woken up it then takes ages to get “ready”. I have often given up trying to receive channels through the box and reverted to the remote that came with the TV. Do not be talked into having one of these boxes.

I bought my husband a Nokia Windows phone and the writing was so small and in either red or blue on a black background that he could not read it. He hated it. He now has a Samsung galaxy ace,and loves it.