10 Tech Things... that are always satisfying

For all of life's everyday frustrations there are those few things that however irrelevant at the time, can actually bring a little smile to your face.

Most of our most memorable experiences with tech involve things going wrong; phones sodden with toilet water; keyboards with bowls of cereal tipped over them... tech can be a cruel mistress on a daily basis.

But not everything is determined to screw us over with such almighty vengeance - sometimes there's even some satisfaction to be gained by nailing a techy task.

1. Seeing a film at the IMAX

No matter that you're picking and eating popcorn from your body like a preening monkey, your skin has gone that “Pete Doherty with the flu” colour and you forgot to take off the 3D glasses. The excited feeling you get as you exit the super-sized cinema on a rainy day and speed away in your car having adopted the character of a planetsaving action hero is untouchable. Why we always have to kill it with a sly Big Mac in a McCar-park afterwards we'll never know. There's no time to dwell on it, though – quick, to the drive-thru, Batman!

2. Passing through airport security

Jacket and shoes off, iPad out, deep breath and now stroll nervously through the metal detector… You don't set off any beeps, your bag isn't searched, YOU MADE IT, MAN! Even though you're carrying no contraband, you still imagine you're Johnny Depp in Blow, smuggling 20 kilos of Colombian nose ointment across the border. The fantasy only subsides when the guard barks at you to “put your belt on elsewhere because you're holding up the queue.”

3. Mastering the “reply all” joke

Once a year, everyone should send a reply-all gag to their colleagues that hits such a perfect measure of satire, pith and wit that you actually hear a few people LOL, turn to smile at you and ask why you haven't been asked to appear on Have I Got News For You. It almost makes up for the infamous, “accidentally racist” reply-all you sent last summer.

4. That foot measurement thing in Clarks

Remember when you used to get your school shoes fitted by having a huge, electric metal box slowly entomb your foot like the rubbish compactor in Star Wars? Epic. Now you just order cheap trainers online that turn out to use the Chinese sizing system and only just about fit on an Action Man.

5. Scoring with the goalie in Fifa

Nothing cures a bad day at work like getting home, setting Fifa to “amateur” and sprinting your lanky number one all the way down the touchline to smash it past the opposing keeper repeatedly. It has the same thrill as treating yourself to all the weapons in GTA V, setting up camp behind the hospital reception desk and unleashing hell, but please don't tell the Daily Mail we said that.

6. Taking the racing line

Ignore the fact you're in a Daewoo Matiz on your way to B&Q; when you slip into second and take the perfect racing line through the chicane in your village, gun it down the slip road then slipstream the old couple in the Volvo, you're sure you could make it in F1. Or at least top the leader board on Top Gear. Or at the very least beat that dick from Jamiroquai.

7. Fixing someone else's gadget

All you did was turn it off then turn it on while holding down all the buttons. Even so, you can't help strutting around like you just rewired the entire internet.

8. The healthy shopping basket

You're meandering around the supermarket, insouciantly swinging a basket containing an avocado, puy lentils, spinach, an iPad user manual and a pack of bay leaves. By chance you bump into a colleague/acquaintance/ex whose basket contains a DVD of Twilight, a packet of Basics mini pizzas and a 35cl bottle of Smirnoff. The smugness this induces is almost enough to put you off online shopping for life.

9. Listening to a physical album

As soon as you sit in your “man chair” and place the needle on the wax or shine the laser on a beloved disc, snapping your leather-padded cans on your ears, you become Rob from High Fidelity. Except a) you don't look as cool as John Cusack and b) Call of Duty seems to be in the Blood on the Tracks case.

10. Finding the perfect volume on your car hi-fi

Loud enough to drown out the engine roar without distorting. Usually around 12 or 14, but not 13. Never that: 13 means you will inevitably crash and die.