[discostu]

First he should learn to read manuals, I’ve had that kind of TV and it’s easy, the thing just wants to scan your broadcast and figure out where you have channels so then Channel Up will go to the next channel receiving signal, nice in smallish towns where the lower 12 are mostly empty.

Second, it’s not the computer engineers, it’s the marketing guys. The engineers are just doing what they’re told, the marketing guys decided it needed all these features.

[Lancey Howard]

This column expresses my sentiments exactly. Whenever I go to buy something electronic, the first thing I say to the dude is, “Pure vanilla - - I DO NOT WANT any flashers, buzzers, or gimmicks.” They can never find anything like that, for example, a fax machine that just sends faxes and receives them.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

What is the first thing you want to do with any computerized product? Turn it on.

Au contriare.
One does not simply 'turn on' a computerized product.

One must "initialize" a computerized product.

[jazusamo]

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!!

Thanks for the ping, Kaslin.

*PING*
Thomas Sowell

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[reagan_fanatic]

I have a weakness for tech gizmos, so I bought a video/mp3 watch from my on-line computer retailer. The watch works fine, but the instruction pamphlet was a disaster - it was so poorly translated from Chinese that I could barely make out what it said. In addition to that, the watch only shows time in the 24 hr format - there is no 12 hr option.

[Revolting cat!]

I’m waiting for a rotary cellphone before i get one. Laugh all you want. When the client server fashion started making our VAXen obsolete, and the executive row secretaries were given 386 PCs and had to give up, kicking and screaming, their Wangs and Selectrics, and the high school educated data entry clerks were to given those shiny IBM ATs and had to give up their VT100s, our IT VP said, to me, it’ll come back around, just wait and see.

Flash forward to 2007. I’ve got a Dell laptop on my desk, an old Dell desktop running Linux and a twelve year old Sun workstation. One of my engineer pals upstairs has a 21 or more inch screen attached to a dumb terminal, admittedly smarter than a 20 year old VT100, connected to a server in the data center, today’s equivalent of a VAX mini, and he can run all three OS’ on that screen simultaneously.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

To turn my cell phone on, I have to hit the "END" button.

[RichardW]

He obviously struck a nerve here. All of us can sympathize with this craziness. Too much complication. As far as cell phones we recently dumped our contract carrier when the contract expired and got another Tracfone. Don’t take photos. I have a complicated digital camera for that. But I do want something that I can figure out how to turn on and turn off and I can talk to someone with clarity. It is possible to have something both inexpensive, works well and doesn’t confuse more than it illuminates.

Computers are actually pretty simple if one knows how to plug in a few plugs and turn on the on button. However, when one tries to set up network connections and the like it can be daunting expecially routers. But the rest is pretty simple.

I don’t see the point of these complicated cell phones although I suppose there are some who believe they are neat. I guess I am just getting old.

[alexander_busek]

As a professional Technical Editor for a DJ30 company, let me add my 2 cents.

The marketing people certainly bear a large share of the guilt. They view Technical Documentation as a necessary evil, and are constantly attempting to implement cost-cutting measures in the area of TD.

For one thing, they’d ideally like all Technical Instructions to be in pictures, without explanatory text (q.v. IKEA). That’s to save translation expenses.

Secondly, they’d like the product itself to have no explanatory printed language on it - so instead of buttons marked “ON” and “OFF,” you get funny little pictograms which supposedly mean “ON” and “OFF” - and also pictograms for such subtle concepts as “this is the button which you should press when you wish to temporarily (i.e. < 30 min) override the normally programmed nighttime/non-occupancy temperature control program;” yes, didn’t you know that that’s what a “half-moon” symbol means?

Thirdly, the “higher-ups” come to us with demands like: “We want you to write a 30-page manual for this radio-frequency handheld control unit, but you have to make it as GENERIC as possible, since a lot of its features and functionalities (e.g. effective operating radius, size, shape, number of buttons, and yes, even its NAME) are still “up in the air.” So we end up writing stuff like “Congratulations on the purchase of your unit! To turn your unit ON, activate** the appropriate control**.”

*”activate” = PUSH in the case of the models X1001 and XY1002, but SLIDE in the case of the ABC5 and ABC 6, or ROTATE in the case of the models Z100 and Z200. To determine which model you have, unscrew the housing...

**pushbutton, slide switch, or dial, depending upon model.

Fourthly, we’ve outsourced a LOT of our engineering to places like the Czech Republic, Hungary, and, yes, China. And we Tech Writers base much of our manuals on spec sheets which non-native speakers have “penned.” (We often don’t even get to actually SEE the product we are writing about ourselves until it’s already too late.)

[Albion Wilde]

When I had to have a new radio put into my old car, I told the man who installed it, "I didn't go to M.I.T" and wanted the simplest radio to use that he had. Yet even the simplest radio he had in stock came with over 100 pages of instructions -- and nothing on the radio that said "on" or "off." In fact, none of the buttons on the front of the radio had anything to indicate what they were for.

I had this experience lately when trying to buy a radio for a 98-year-old shut-in whose vision was failing too much to read the newspaper any more. I went to every store imaginable, and there was nothing simple enough even for me to operate, much less an arthritis-impaired elderly person with limited vision.

I did find one radio with an old-fashioned dial for the stations and an on-off switch, but it was well over $100. Anything that cost less than that was made in China, had LED lights and all kinds of tiny buttons that you had to push in various combinations to find the stations, or they had aerials that could have put her eye out.

[meadsjn]

(1) most people are not computer engineers, (2) there is no point making simple things complicated, and (3) not everyone is looking for a zillion features to have to wade through to do simple things.

Mr. Sowell has made some good points, but his blame is mis-placed.

Thanks to affirmative action, outsourcing, and importing cheap, unqualified labor, most American computer engineers are working outside their field, selling real estate or some other doo-dads. Most management jobs in engineering and IT are filled with bimbos whose previous experiences were working the pole at the local strip joint. They won't hire qualified American engineers and computer scientists.

[Tribune7]

You'll like this.

[OKSooner]

Mr. Sowell is righton as always. I just had this experience with a new coffee pot.

[sauropod]

good article.

[SoothingDave]

For other things, there is the same coining of new words for things people already understand by old words. Printers can be set for "landscape" or "portrait," as if people had never heard of horizontal and vertical.

Dr. Sowell gets a rare "swing and a miss" here.

"Portrait" and "landscape" are old words. Has to do with paintings. Like art and stuff. Portraits, like people's heads go up and down. Landscapes, like painting a picture of a field, goes the other way.

Not new words. Not invented by computer and printer people.

[Katya]

hahah...I’m usually pretty tech savvy...except for one object....I inadvertently changed a setting on my alarm clock and I cannot figure out how to return it to radio wake mode...I know I should look the instructions up on line...but it’s irritating that I can’t just fiddle with it. It’s probably some idiotic function sequence like push this button twice and then some other button...arghhh

[RightField]

I'm fairly technically savvy, but our living room TV setup can be challenging. We have a TV, an old GoVideo VCR/DVD Recorder combination, a new tiny DVD player to play the DVDs the GoVideo won't recognize, a DVR, and a surround-sound system = Total of 5 remotes.

We keep the GoVideo around because I make a lot of home videos, and it's just so much faster to output a video to digital tape, then copy to a DVD. Waiting for compression on the computer to crank out a 20 minute video makes me crazy.

The TV has to be set on channel 4. The GoVideo on channel 3. Don't even get me started on having to use the new DVD player ... then we have to switch input sources, switch surround channels, etc.

I know I could probably simplify somewhere, but I have this all memorized now and everything works.

But I still can't do a video capture on my computer. What am I missing?