Simplicity

I don't get it. I recently bought a new keyboard and a new mouse. Both of them came with a CD full of ... god knows what ... but also with an array of complicated features I TOTALLY DO NOT NEED.

This keyboard is littered with keys that mean nothing to me and I suppose if I had installed all the junk on the CD, that would have enabled them to ... do something ... not sure what. The buttons have cute indecipherable icons on the key and then subtitles (obviously required because the icons are so meaningless) to each key that say the following things:

F LOCK
EMAIL
MESSENGER/SMS
WEBCAM
MEDIA
ITOUCH
SEARCH
SHOPPING
FAVORITES
MY HOME

Not one of these fuctions requires its own key. I can do all of these things without a key.

They were so busy adding these keys I didn't need, they gave the CAPS LOCK, NUM LOCK and other keys I really need short shrift and I can barely find them.

The unfortunately flawed assumption on the part of most developers of both software and hardware that a "feature-rich" product merits a higher price and can generate more revenue is the downfall of this industry. "Feature-rich" means overly complex, pointlessly complicated and lacking in efficiency and simple elegant design, if you ask me.