When I was a kid, I remember my mom having a discussion with another parent about what would be the worst appliance to break down in the house.  They joked that it might actually be the microwave, the symbol of domestic progress in the 80s.

After spending 45 minutes this morning working on restoring internet access to our home computer, I thought about what would be worse… the breakdown of our microwave or the loss of internet access.  The answer is easy — the loss of internet access.

Aside from the fact that internet access seems to be a complete mystery to me — and you can’t just go out and replace it — I still believe that it would be far worse to be without internet access for a day vs. our microwave.  In fact, I think that I’d rather go without the microwave for an entire month before I’d give up internet access for even two days.

The same goes for the dishwasher and the clothes dryer.

That it’s curious that I am not comparing internet access to the TV is not lost on me.  Television is entertainment.  Internet access is far more.  Without it, I can’t look up telephone numbers, addresses, recipes, key dates, get email and am generally blocked to the vast majority of information I generally seem to need on a daily basis.  I work from a home office, so I am fairly “closed for business” without the internet.

So, in our house, internet access ranks right up there with the refrigerator (though if it’s nearly empty, it’s ok to go without it for a day or two), the washing machine (again, unless most of the clothes are clean at the point of breakdown), the furnace (when it’s cold) and the hot water heater.

So, which is more important in your home — the microwave or internet access?