All this stuff comes with manuals. And I know there are a few translated-Japanese manuals going round, but they're exceptionally rare for anything costing more than £20 or so (if you buy a cheap £2 digital watch, don't moan that it's crap! ;-) So read the manual, and it'll work.

Setting the clock on the video, for example. The manual will say, "Press button 1, press button 2 for the number of hours, press button 1 again, press button 2 for the number of minutes, press button 1 again". You'd never guess that, but any fool could follow the instructions to do it - it's just a shame so few fools do. Even where it's less clear (eg. "button 1=time set, button 2=hours, button 3=minutes"), just play with it for a minute and anyone can work it out. And when you've got no manual at all (eg. borrowing a video camera) then just play with it a bit and see what all the buttons do - again, you'll work it out in time.

I've yet to buy *any* piece of equipment which I couldn't work out how to use completely from the manual. (Note that doesn't mean I've always had stuff working first time - but if you don't pay attention to the manual properly then you lose. ;-)

Havinng said that, I'm perfectly willing to say that there's some stuff that's built really clunkily with bad user interfaces. I hate that, bcos it implies that the designer hasn't put any thought into their work, and as an engineer that gets me annoyed. But it's never stopped me using stuff, it's just made it a little more difficult.

Graham.