Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Part 40a: when bloggers call me out

I saw that I had twelve followers. Weird. Someone must have mentioned me somewhere. Well, someone did. In this thread, someone calls me out for blaming a hardware problem on Windows. I'm way too lazy to sign up for that message board, but I will explain why this is, actually, a problem aided and abetted by Windows (or, at the very least, Microsoft):


  1. Windows allows shoddy hardware. Say what you want, but the only hardware which runs Mac OS is, drumroll, Apples. They can be made to run Windows, or whatever else, but Apple has a lot of control over which keys are placed where. And, no, there's no single key I have to hit to turn off wireless (actually, I have to use my mouse). So I never inadvertently turn it off.
  2. Windows does not ask me if I am sure I want to turn off wireless. This is a company who will, when you type "June …" ask if you are typing the current date, or when you type a letter will say "it looks like you are trying to …" (okay, lord be praised they killed Clippy, but still) But when a stray keystroke turns off one of the main features of my computer (since, you know, we live in the internet age), crickets.
  3. It's done in the background, or at least in the margins. There's nothing which comes up in the center of the screen and broadcasts what is going on. Hell, when I change the brightness or even the screen backlight brightness in OS X a transparent image pops up in the center of my screen for a second. The backlight keyboard! That didn't happen on this Dell, because it didn't have a backlight keyboard.
  4. The icon for wireless is decidedly tiny. And if it is off, it appears with an even tinier X through it. Perhaps Apple copyrighted their empty pie icon, but, come on, Windows. It looks like it's clip art from 2002, too.
  5. There's no way to disable the key. If there were, I wouldn't be writing this. Maybe I could have just, you know, pried it off the keyboard. "It looks like you are trying to disfigure your keyboard. Can I help?"
Just for fun, here's the unbelievably funny clip about Clippy from Wait Wait, don't tell me.

And, no, Mr. Thepcguy, I'm not a Stupid User.