Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch
This month I’m going to rant, rave, criticize and complain just a little. About a year ago, before I moved to the Baton Rouge area, my wife and I were in one of the home improvement stores. I thought that it would be a good time to pick up a new water filter for our refrigerator. I went over to appliances and told them I needed a new filter for a Whirlpool. He immediately asked me which of the nine filters I needed. Of course, I didn’t have the filter number memorized. So I found our refrigerator on the sales floor and told the salesman, “One to fit that model.” I got home and found that it was the wrong size filter. When I went back to exchange it, I found out that a different model year almost always uses a different filter. What does all that have to do with computers and electronics?
It got me to thinking about some things I hate about technology. I’ve probably got 10 or 20 different USB cables in the junk box in my computer room. Every time you buy something that is USB supported, you get another cable. Why is this? It’s because many manufacturers have their own proprietary plug. They have to include a cable because none of my other 20 cables will work with the darn thing. I recently got a new cell phone. Same manufacturer, different model. You guessed it. I’ve got another USB cable in my collection. Wouldn’t it be nice if everything had a standard plug and didn’t have the cable included? Think of the money that could be saved. Wait a minute! Then they couldn’t sucker people into paying $20 for 3 dollars worth of wire.
Another thing that makes me mad are End User License Agreements (EULA). I’m one of the few people who research them before installing anything on my computer. My complaint isn’t the fact that lawyers write them. I can use the internet to explain the legal terms. My objection is that I have seldom found a EULA that can be read full screen. Instead, they write them in a little window that usually covers about a tenth of my monitor. I think this is done to discourage people from reading the agreements. Just get them to click “I agree” and get it over with.
I can live with SPAM (I usually don’t even see it). I don’t mind getting bombarded with internet advertisements (I can always go to other sites). What I hate it when websites pop up a window asking for information that they will likely never use. For instance, there is a website that I won’t name that wants to know my age, sex and country. They then store the data in a cookie on my computer. When I tell them that I‘m 28‑year‑old female, I get the same advertisements as the dirty old men get. Why do they waste my time?
I also dislike software that isn’t user‑friendly. Some programs have windows that can’t be resized. I’m getting older and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. If I can’t make the window bigger and read the font, I likely won’t use the software. Then there is software that won’t let you choose where to install it. I don’t install all programs into “program files”. Many times, I don’t even install them on the C drive.
I wonder if Microsoft will ever fix one little thing that has bugged me for as long as I remember. When you use file explorer to copy, move or delete a list of files, Windows estimates how long it will take. If you’re doing an operation on a lot of files, the estimated time will change every time you check it. On older systems it can be even more aggravating. Wouldn’t it be nice if the estimate was close once in a while?
Hate might be too strong of a word, but I’ve always disliked how companies will use a proprietary document format. The perfect example is word processing. Why must each program have a different extension? Is it good for a business to make consumers remember “.doc”. “.odf”, “.wps”, “.docx”, “.odt”, “.txt”, “.rtf”, “.abw”, “.abi” and hundreds of others? Almost all word processing software has a save as feature to save files to other formats. They can’t be that much different. Why isn’t there a standard where all programs save in a standard format? After all, this idea seems to work pretty well for HTML internet files.
That’s enough ranting and complaining. Next month I promise to write something useful for the newsletter. By the way, did I mention that the two water filters had two different prices? Does that remind you of anything else technology related?
Keep on clicking and thanks for reading.