The title is overly dramatic but a follow-up to my experience hacking my Linksys wireless router. I got to thinking about the other pieces of technology sitting around my house and their respective deficiencies. You’ve got to admit that so many good gadgets could be great if they asked users what they want, have focus groups, fix bugs, and innovate.

Case in point is the Nokia E61. It’s a great smartphone and I haven’t regretted the purchase because there is so much it can do and I’ve hardly tapped the features. But the basic ones, like the built-in email client, are marginal. Support for three email accounts is laughable and the annoying “bug” of turning off automatic email retrieval if no connection is available.

Where does the hacking come in? I bought a (fine) piece of shareware called ProfiMail because a smartphone with full keyboard should have a capable email client. This got me thinking about those two major annoyances from Nokia and do I really need 5+ email accounts let alone buy an extra piece of software to handle it? Maybe I should consider some email account consolidation.

People have this fascination with watching movies on their mobile devices. That’s OK if, like the iPod, it’s an automated process from iTunes. However, the E61 requires (yet more) software to make the conversion and no one seems to know the right combination of codec and settings to get it working right. Strangely enough, Apple’s $30 QuickTime Pro handles it with ease.

And there is the E61’s built-in, and much maligned, calendar. Whose calendar is so complex that Nokia’s offering requires replacement with Papyrus? Maybe it’s time to read GTD and devise a simpler system.

The ability to hack my gadgets is wonderful but I must allude to the 17-year-old with nothing but time on his hands. At 36 I have no such free time to dabble with tools to handle my self-imposed over-complicated life. In rebellion to my own instinct I will defy hacking my gadgets and when I feel the urge and ask myself “is there something in my life I can simplify instead?”

I’m not alone. Shaun McGill at the E61 Blog did something similar by discontinuing use of his PDA because he was devoting more resources to managing it rather than it managing his tasks. I’m happy to hear Shaun reaching this conclusion because I had difficulty understanding why anyone would rely on their PDA to manage their finances.