Most OBVIOUS strategy vs T800 never used

True.

But remember, the T-800's only purpose is to track and kill, by all means necessary.

In the Sarah Connor Chronicles they briefly touched on this concept, as there was one Terminator that had been around for more than a century trying to track down its target, even using the stars to try to coordinate its position and understand the date/time.

They just never stop until their battery runs out, which is possibly what could have happened. But the T-800 would have just kept searching records for the whereabouts of Sarah, visiting family, checking log books, going to last known locations, etc., or like in Terminator: Lesbian Fate, simply find a dispatch center and monitor calls/cameras to track Sarah's potential whereabouts.

Yep, they could have planted a false lead at the Police station leading the terminator on a wild goose chase. Write it on a big board, "moving Sarah Connor to a hidden location in the Rocky Mountain National Park." Let him read that and spend the rest of his years churning through the mountains.

To answer your question: Not very difficult I guess.

It's possible the writers thought about it but then thought "Hmmm, our movie goes down the drain if we do this... let's do it anyways and f*ck it if some random dude finds it 37 years from now."

Knowing the profits of the movie were about 70 million $ in 1984 (+ the franchise money after it)... I'd say it wasn't dumb at all.

What kind of a movie would it have been if T-800 decided to start assassinating Sarah Connors from the bottom of the list up? He would have got the correct one on the first try.

Also I just noticed that the house he goes to first has a civic address that corresponds to none of the civic addresses in the phone book.

What do you mean, "poor eyesight"? The Terminator series of cyborgs have EXCELLENT vision!

"GIVE HER A FAKE NAME AND A DECENT DISGUISE."

Yeahl, she could've worn a moustache.

To be more serious, there are WAY more serious problems with the story, WAY better tactics and strategies they could've done, and so on, so your post - no offence - is a bit irrelevant. I mean, if you look at all the things I have alrady said, and then conjure up a few more thoughts along those lines.. yeah.

Just for ONE example, Sarah knows her stupid phone calls got her in trouble. Sarah can impart information to her past self via John-Kyle link. Therefore, she could've told John to tell Kyle to ABSOLUTELY stop her from making any phone calls EVER, and tell her that the Terminator can mimic her mom and so on.

Also, tell John to send Kyle 10 or 20 years earlier, so he can properly prepare everything, and make Sarah NOT keep a notebook with names and phone numbers, and and and..

I mean, there are probably eight hundred different things they could've easily done differently to ABSOLUTELY defeat this robot AND Skynet AND make future good, but this movie doesn't make too much sense.

What you are saying is just a tiny detail on the tip of an enormous iceberg, they could've done SO many things SO differently, your suggestion kind of drowns in the sea of nonsense while shrinking in its own insignifigance.

How would she give a fake name to the cops anyway, they can run checks and all.

What _I_ would like to know is.. WHO gave the location information of a sensitive, protected individual in custody to a shady-looking (pun intended, for those that get it) bodybuilder that wears shades (now everyone probably gets it) in the evening, together with a punk leather jacket (that he got where? Why did it abandon its original jacket anyway? Bullet holes? Not that it should care, it's not very careful about 'infiltration' or 'not drawing attention' anyway)...?

I mean, I would LOVE to see that situation..