Annoying hardware: a rogues' gallery
Summary: Hardware may be less 'in your face' than software, but it can still ruin your day. We've listed our main bugbears: let us know if you agree.
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Hardware Hell
Bad software is annoying because it's in your face. Bad hardware is more subtle in its evil: annoyances that seem trivial at first can build over time like a pebble in your shoe into an eternal shaft of dismal misery. You'd hope that after quarter of a century of PC design, the worst excesses of thoughtless engineering would be behind us. You'd hope wrong. Here are just some of the mishaps that continue to take the shine off the technology that changes our lives.
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Talkback
Styluses are even worse...
You hold phones in your hand. You maybe use two hands, squirrel-like, when you want to text. So why do some phones insist that some operations need you to pull out a toothpick from the phone, and poke the screen with it? At the same time? How many hands do they think we have? And where do we put the phone while we're doing this?
And while we're talking about USB...
As well as the normal connector, there's another kind for printers, and at least three smaller versions. I have devices on my desk that need all of these, so that's four USB cables I have to keep in a drawer.
Add in the fact that, for most phone manufacturers, none of these is good enough, so I also need to keep USB cables for Nokia and Sony Ericsson in the drawer too.
The one I want is always borrowed, lost or impossibly tangled.
Is it any wonder the IT industry nurtures impossible dreams of cable-free UWB?
Now I know I'm getting old
Annoying hardware: a rogues' gallery
"Touchpads migrate to the side of the screen"
Great
but there 1 or 2 items that I use and find usefull
but in general I agree 100% in your observation
as you say annoying...cordless keyboard for e.g.
gathering dust.. use the mouse to charge my batteries
the god dam thing was too unresponsive!
anyway good article
enjoyed it
Rog :)
Texas Heatwave hmph!
A Texas heatwave is a cool breeze compared to the heat that blows out of the back of some quad cpu equipped servers I know. And yes I know Texas heatwaves, been living here since 1966.
For me the IDE cable is the one
Then you also have the technique of starting the removal process on one end which means you have bent pins. So to reinsert the thing you need to start with the same angle you removed it with. Or you can take a screw driver to the pin and hope that you don't snap it, trying to straighten them. The joy! Thank god for SATA!
re: bigfootman
Yus Phone companies annoy me..