One of the unfortunate facts of these things (the devices I mean) is that they
are pretty technical, and they require a certain minimum tolerance of jargon in order to do anything beyond what the designers planned for.
I know that folks who don't want to mess with jargon and such don't like to hear that, but it's the way it is. The
good news is that the Reader is extremely jargon-free to use as the designers intended, and it's only when you get off that path that you run into the technical stuff.
As for the long threads and not wanting to read them when a simple answer is all you need, I know how you feel: I have
exactly the same feeling every time I have to go back to an old, lengthy thread for some bit of information -- and I participated in a lot of them at the time!
But bear in mind that what you may be effectively asking other folks to do is go back and read that same thread
for you and distill an answer out of it. It's also possible that the question you're asking is addressed in a very similar form somewhere in that thread.
Of course if something is unclear to you about the information you find there, asking for clarification (something like: "hey, I don't understand what this part is referring too: ....") will likely get you an answer.
It's tough, sometimes, for us "old-timers" to wade back into things that we haven't thought about for quite a while, and we're much more likely to respond (to be
able to respond, really, time constraints and so on) to a
specific question, rather than a request for a general overview.