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Vista Startup Sound to be Mandatory?
Toreo asesino writes "There has been lots of debate in the past few days over Microsoft's plan to make the startup sound in Windows Vista something that can't be specifically silenced by changing the sound settings in the control panel. Users would be able to avoid hearing it by manually turning down the speaker volume, but then they would have to turn that volume back up to hear anything else."
This is a typical case of product-focused vs. user-focused thinking.
Has it occured to anyone that a user might just wake up early morning and wants to turn on his/her computer without waking up sleeping family members?
For this very reason one of the first setup steps I always do on a new machine is to turn off the startup sign.
Seems the least of our worries, we'll just await the first hack that makes sure the sample doesnt play.
Do they seriously think annoying the users who care enough about their systems to turn off the Windows startup sound in the first place is really a good idea?
Sunwalker Dezco for Warchief in 2016
Here's the bottom line: If you have to ask the question, "Should the user be able to change this?" then the answer is: YES.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I try and try not to be ovelry criticize Microsoft, such as wasting shareholder dollars on Zune, but mandatory startup sounds for Vista? Talk about branding for the sheer point of making people associate your brand with irritation. Manually turning down the volume each time, say in a library or lab, is the work around? Huh?
At least the article references Ze...
I think the fact that Microsoft considers this a feature worthy of pushing shows how trivial "enhancements" to Windows have become at this point. They're not bothering to fix what really needs fixing.
It's my freakin computer, you better let me silence it if I wish. Maybe I don't want to irritate people in a cafe, lobby, waiting room, whatever with noises coming from my laptop. Maybe I just don't want an "I'm ready to be used" noise. Maybe I don't care if you think it's convenient. Maybe I dont care if you think it's cool or pretty sounding. Maybe I just want the stupid thing to be quiet.
And Xbox or Playstation are not good excuses, those are for a different market. There's also a number of people out there using mod chips to regain control of those things if they don't like some decisions from the manufacturer. Just because my Xbox makes a startup noise doesn't mean that I want it to. And just because some Engineer at Microsoft or Sony decided their toy for kids should make a startup noise does not mean I want to hear it on my laptop, tower, or anything at the office in the morning.
File?
c ementLayer\{0092-02D1-26E5-0990}\Security\Initiali zationProtocolIsTrue to 210 (decimal), then making sure never to install any patches.
No, I imagine it'll involve subtly hacking a grafted-on Windows 2000 version of NTOSKRNL.DLL while fending off the frothing-at-the-mouth system-file protection and changing HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SystemEnhan
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
This shows how disconnected from the real world Microsofties have become.
Imagine being in a large university class with 100 or 200 students and half of them boot their laptops at the beginning of the class. The sound will be played 50-100 times, how much more annoying can it get!
Wonderful. This will be a real plus in seminars, as people can't turn on their damn laptops without making a stupid noise. Or on an airplane. Or any other situation (with the kid sleeping in the other side of the room, for example).
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Unbelievably dumb. A massive triumph of marketing people over reality. How can this can be presented as a 'I see both sides of this fascinating argument' in the article? The argument that lots of other systems do this too is irrelevant; currently, you don't have to do this in Windows - why start making this mistake now?
Is the startup sound on Macs customizable? I don't think it is. You turn on your computer and...
"BAHHHH."
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
It's just a marketing exercise.
Quite smart, really - you generate a lot of hype about something absolutely trivial and get the user community, blogs, forums etc all hyped up. Then you implement the trivially pointless feature you've managed to convince people to really want, and proudly announce that you're responsive to your customers needs.
Then you can get quietly back to locking them out from their own data with proprietary formats and DRM.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Has it occured to anyone that a user might just wake up early morning and wants to turn on his/her computer without waking up sleeping family members?
Just today I walked into the "Maximum Quiet Study Area" for our univerisity's library, and popped open my laptop and turned it on. My gkrellm instance sounded my "alert" sound (which is actually very rare, the load was too high from the boot apparently), and I rushed to hit the mute button.
The startup sound on Vista would be before any multimedia keys are registered if it's at all like XP is, and that wouldn't have worked. Laptop speakers don't have volume control!
If Vista does require this, and I hear someone turn on their laptop with "welcome to Windows Vista!", I'm going to throw their laptop out a window, no pun intended.
You mean everyone doesn't delete all the M$ noise files at the first boot? Find a winbox that I haven't deleted the media files from, I looked and there aren't any here.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Here are three major OS on the market:
OSX: built around experience, this OS is made to be simple to use, easy to market, look shiny and tie well with its accompanied Apple hardware. Apple's credo is that they are amazing as hell, and their users will be wowed at whatever they throw at them. As such, OSX provides features such as mandatory startup sounds, mandatory "hardware", mandatory skin and other mandatory "tuned to be kewl" stuff. They have some success, but their market share is still decreasing (currently at meager 2%) because they don't realize that unlike iPod, a PC is (yet) not just another consumer device.
Unix / BSD / Linux: it's made for professionals, for tinkerers and and people who like control over their machines. Those OS have their share of attempts at eye candy, but the main point of the OS is the ability to go down to the bone and tune it just like you like it, without excess fat and trash around. It doesn't have much adoption with casual folks as a desktop OS because the distros are rarely consistent, require low level knowledge of the underlying system to get the maximum out of it and hardware software doesn't target it a lot.
Windows: is sitting in the perfect spot. It's easy to use, has a lot of software written for it, works on commodity hardware, and is practical for business, entertainment and more. It's not perfect, and in fact was quite flaky when the consumer branch was based around the 9x core (for legacy reasons). These guys however get a lot of criticism that they are not enough like Apple and not enough like Unix. Windows has no cult status among its users, while *nix and Apple does.
I have no idea whether it's a complex or lack of confidence in their own strategy, but sometime around XP, Microsoft decided they wanna be more like OSX and Unix, which are dwarfed by Windows on the market of desktop OS. They are just doing it, for no apparent reason, they are not losing market to their competitors on the desktop market, but feel the urge to copy them and be "more like them".
XP and Vista are trying hard to build a branded experience much like OSX, while other projects like Channel 9, the new power shell, and tons of other admin-related utilities and technologies are targeted to the Unix crowd and appearing more opened.
Some of this has positive effects on the users of Windows, but some of it, is just plain stupid (like the glassy look of aero.. it's not easier to use at all, it's one of those gadgets you show off in the PC shops, like OSX's scaling icons on the dock bar). Their desire to preserve their "perfect" branding by locking and hardcoding everything in place is just a symptom of this much deeper problem.
I wish Microsoft would just accept its position in the market, keep the right balance between flexible and preconfigured, and swallow the criticisms, which will come no matter what, versus try and copy whatever fads come along.
But Apple can do no wrong here on /., so the point is moot.
There. I fixed it for you.
Look, this is either an idiotic thing that should be an option controllable by the user or it's not, and whichever it is, it is regardless of how many times somebody might reboot their computer.
It never ceases to amaze me how many excuses people here can come up with for why their double standards aren't double standards. I expect no less than 5-6 more in reply to this post.
About the only laptop manufacturer left that still includes an actual potentiometer volume control is Toshiba, AFAIK, for all their models. All the others are using software for volumes, dedicated volume key or not.
I have no idea why no other brands do this, but having an actual volume control is extremely useful. I hardly ever touch windows' horrible software volume control and just leave it at maximum.
So it's similar to Vista then? You need to mute the computer in order to not hear the chine, and then un-mute it again?
I don't know about rest of you guys, but I find the Mac startup-chime _annoying_. And the user should be able to disable with zero hassle, and in such way that it does not affect rest of the system!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Mod points? Since when did Anonymous Cowards get mod points?
I do it because having some corny sound play every time I reboot is just too much to bear.
What really bugs me is that Scoble says he can "see both sides" of the issue. What kind of workplace culture does Microsoft have, where they'd even consider imposing such an obnoxious feature?
This isn't going to happen, of course. The "you have got to be kidding" emails must be already pouring in. But the fact that this is an issue says nasty things about the Redmond mentality.
The last thing MS (or anyother proprietary software company) want is for anyone to read (or hear) the EULA.
If people knew what was in them they might object.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
What you've said, in essence, is "turning off sound turns off the sound". Of course it does. But that's not a solution in the slightest. There is absolutely no reason why we should not be able to disable a sound like that.
Although if it's the POST beep equivalent, that's another matter, I suppose...
Unless, of course, they tag it for WFP. That means, whenever you change it, Windows promptly changes it back and then displays a dialog telling you off for being such a naughty boy. In current versions of Windows, it's possible to disable WFP, but there's no particular reason why that should remain true.
They're currently talking about whether or not to do something like this.
computershave "forced" the start sounder for like 20 years and I have never seen a complaint, why is it ok for Apple and not for Windows?
So apparently, whoever thought this up doesn't ever, ever, ever use their laptop/computer in:
1) Schools, Colleges, Universities
2) Offices
3) Libraries
4) Home use at night
5) Conferences
6) Broadcast applications
7) Confined areas (trains, planes, wifi hotspots, cafes)
8) With an amplifier
Apart from the obvious waste of MY money that I gave MS with my purchases, which they have spent to hire someone to make a sound that I don't want and will never want to hear (no matter what MS say), this is a mind-trick.
Soon, the execs will "realise" that their customers have concerns and provide an off switch, thus putting into people's minds that they "listen to their customers". They were thinking that all along, it's just another way for people to continue talking about Vista that they will "remedy" by the time it comes out. It stops people thinking "But is it secure, is it easy to use, is it cheap, is it compatible?" and instead make them think "Well, they solved the worst problem, that stupid startup sound can be turned off". I don't want an "experience" with an OS. I would want to get some work done. I don't want it all to be integrated and matching - I would want it to boot fast, get on the Internet securely and not get in my way.
I turn off ALL sounds, no matter what the OS. And I usually have my speakers off except when I'm anticipating an IM and have turned its notification sound on, or when I choose to have sound (DVD's, MP3's etc.).
This is what used to wind me up about Windows - I have little to no control over the OS without bundling it full of freeware to do the job. I don't WANT Adobe Acrobat pre-loading at startup - I use it on less than 5% of my boots. In order to GET ASKED whether I want it to happen or not I have to install things like Startup Monitor from www.mlin.net. And still Adobe insists on re-trying every time I update it. I don't WANT it to, ever, at all, in any way, but there's no option for that.
I don't WANT program X to access the Internet - at all, ever, under any circumstances. It might be a game that has absolutely no need to, or that I only use on the LAN, or it might be trying to act as a server all the time, thus giving me an instant security hole. But it's going to take until Vista for me to get a choice of whether or not I will allow it unless I install ZoneAlarm or something similar (which I've been using for this purpose for many years now).
I don't WANT program X to install itself under some silly subdirectory - I really don't. Program Files is possibly the worst organised folder on any Windows drive because everything that ends up there chooses it's own structure - by company name, by product name, by some weird abbreviation - I don't WANT that. I CAN and WILL choose where this stuff goes, given half a chance. I have systems that differ from the software authors idea for a good place... I have categories - Audio/Video, Internet, Games, Graphics, Hardware, Utilities, all of which I have a perfectly clear idea of what should be where - I can organise my start menu in this way but rarely do you get a choice of where a game sticks its icons. Even rarer is the program that lets you CHOOSE where you install on the hard drive.
I also WANT to be able to move any folder without breaking anything and having to regedit to fix it (if its possible to move it at all). I don't WANT My Documents or My Music or My Pictures or anything My, I have a perfectly well organised file structure myself and don't want every program creating a "My" directory and putting its stuff in there.
I don't WANT to have to use five-thousand user-land applications that all put an icon in my system tray that I cannot remove without breaking stuff, cannot hide without a load of freeware and do not ever WANT just to use a poxy mouse or a hotkey or a wifi card. I don't WANT stuff to Auto-Update without my say-so, no matter how important someone else deems it is - I will choose WHEN and WHAT updates I install after carefully readi
What really bugs me is that Scoble says he can "see both sides" of the issue. What kind of workplace culture does Microsoft have, where they'd even consider imposing such an obnoxious feature?
I'll guarantee they've contracted work to some "user experience" guru who says some crap about how sound is a more primal sense than sight, and that to properly brand Windows you have to associate it with a sound, and that this sound must always be associated with Windows.
Of course, what they haven't thought of is that you don't want to associate your OS with a reboot these days. So this might backfire on them.