Why, for the love of all that is holy, does my Dell 820 laptop not have a mechanical mute switch? Has it ever crossed the hardware engineer’s mind that maybe, just maybe, I will want to turn on my computer in a crowded conference hall in the middle of a lecture? And that maybe, just maybe, my volume setting in Windows would be 100% because I was watching a video cast (Ultimate Joe) with a poorly recorded soundtrack in my room last night?

And! As if that weren’t bad enough, do you know that there are 2 startup sounds on Vista? One for when the login screen appears and yet another for when you login?

Lastly, did you know that one can set one’s login sound to a recording of Homer Simpson shuddering at the thought of Marge’s sister’s hairy legs?

Well, now we all know.

And laptops should have switches on them so that you can manually (without software) control the audio mute and volume. Christ, do you realize that when running iTunes I have 3 ways of lowering my volume that all rely on software? iTunes has a volume control, Windows sound applet from the control panel or system tray, and the buttons on the keyboard which are bound to volume controls in the OS, not simply within a hardware circuit.

Freakin’ gosh!

Technorati tags: Dell, Laptop, hardware

Share This