Are computers really a "high tech" item any more? Probably not. After all, most people buy them the same way (and in the same place) that they buy a refrigerator or stove-and from people who know about as much about computers as they do about stoves, but that's another column. Speaking of that, why would a certain discount retailer (subliminal hint: Best Buy) put its Customer Service department right at the front of the store, where you walk past it on the way to the computer sales? Ever look over there and see all the people muttering under their breath? Talk about smooth marketing.

Sure, there are high tech things being done with computers, but for the most part they have achieved the role of appliances-annoying and often frustrating appliances, but appliances nonetheless. In fact, many of the stereo and video players in the same stores are more expensive than the computers, and nobody thinks that strange at all.

The other reason for the decline of high tech mystique in computers is that almost everyone who owns one has been forced to become his or her own service technician. While there are some who successfully cling to the position of "I don't know how it works. I don't care how it works. It could be gnomes trapped inside the monitor, writing backwards on the inside of the screen-I don't care. Just make it work," their number is declining. Why? Because, unless you're the big boss and have people take care of it for you (or you're part of a large organization that has someone on staff), you will be forced to deal with a tech service department whose main aim in life is to fix something over the phone, and never, never send out an actual human being. Even if they do have to send a replacement part (or worse yet, for them, a person to install it), it will be after they have made you wait 45 minutes to talk to someone, and then run through all possible other alternatives. So you end up with lawyers editing startup files, and assistants reading off arcane error messages to voices far away, and everyone doing service work.

There is a reason for this, of course. The manufacturers could not possibly sell computers for today's prices if they included real service in the price. Let's face it: You'll pay someone several hundred dollars on a bad day to fix a crashing unit if you need a file by a bid date, or if your child's term paper has disappeared. But you probably wouldn't want to pay that up front to a computer maker to provide real service if you needed it later. So you gamble that things will be fine, or that it will be cheaper to just buy a new one later, or that your kid or a friend will be Bill Gates' clone.

I am occasionally reminded by a colleague of an answer I gave several years back, in a fit of insight, as to why people tolerated the buggy and strange performance of the average PC. The answer: "Because they are amazed that they work at all." Still holds true.

So the mystery is gone, along with the stratospheric prices and the strange guys muttering incantations to the gods of DOS to make something work (actually, the guys still exist; they're just writing computer columns now). For better or worse, a computer has become the equivalent of a smart calculator or typewriter, with the amusement factor of the Internet thrown in. Enjoy.