I was having a heated discussion with a technologist yesterday. She insisted that I just didn't appreciate the delicacy of today's computers.

"That's exactly my complaint!" I retorted. "They're incredibly wimpy."

For instance, I was in a rush the other day, so instead of scrolling to the shut down menu as I was leaving the office, I made the calamitous error of taking a short cut. I pressed the "on" button until the machine lumbered to silence.

Little did I know that was the last gasp for my hard drive, which by the way, is a misnomer. There is nothing hardy about hard drives. They destruct way too soon and way too often.

Which brings me to my point.

Computers should be just as strong and tough as a good refrigerator, and why not?

They're APPLIANCES, not messengers of the Almighty!

Does your refrigerator get "buggy" after a while, and require a software upgrade merely to maintain or restore its functionality?

I've been told it's not good for the hard drive if you shut down your computer, repeatedly, so it's better to leave it on, allowing it to eat electricity.

Has anyone ever suggested, for other than dietary reasons, that you not open the door to the fridge too often, lest it will forget how to cool your food?

We expect a decent icebox, as they used to be quaintly called, to last at least a dozen years or more.

Try getting more than a few years out of a laptop.

Lest you think I'm a Luddite, please note that one the the great pioneers in computing, Andrew Grove of Intel, went on record several years ago saying it is shameful that computers take so long to boot up. He asked, why aren't they more like TV's?

When was the last time you had to boot up your fridge?

Isn't it time manufacturers figured out a way to automatically back up our data so we don't run the risk of losing it? As I recall, this was the claim to fame of Tandem.

Why hasn't this architecture been adapted to the PC? Why doesn't every PC come equipped with two hard drives, one of which is simply there to continuously back up the other?

Or, why isn't our data regularly streamed to a secure online memory cache that is awarded to us at the time we buy or lease a PC?

As consumers, we're way too quiescent and passive about pushing for significant improvements. It's time to tell technologists we want computers to be as solid as other appliances!