In 2006, let's break the cycle of creating more complex, less reliable, less usable software and agree that less is more. I encourage the software industry to take a lesson from Gmail and other successful thin, good-enough applications. Do we need Longhorn/Vista and a new 3-D graphics engine-driven user interface with so many lines of code that it will be a challenge for even the most brilliant programmers to maintain?

We need the Toyota Prius of software -- "Google Office With Ajax for Linux" or "Microsoft Office Lite" -- and not the Hummer.

-- John D. Halamka is CIO at CareGroup Health System, CIO and associate dean for educational technology at Harvard Medical School, chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network, CIO of the Harvard Clinical Research Institute and a practicing emergency physician. Contact him at jhalamka@caregroup.harvard.edu.