Slashdot Mirror
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."
The Mac startup sound has always been mandatory. Don't like it? Plug in your headphones for a second... The stuff that makes front page these days *sigh*
The problem with this is that it means that mobile users will be less likely to restart their computers - or power them up, for that matter - in meetings, etc., where you don't want to draw attention to yourself with an annoying startup sound. Now, I'm not sure if there's still an option for turning ALL windows alert sounds off, including the start up sound, which might mitigate this a bit. But on some computers, especially many laptops with softkeys for volume, you've got to ALREADY BE IN WINDOWS to turn the sound off. So say you were using your computer with sound on, say, gaming, turn it off, and boot up 2 hours later in a meeting - you'd have NO CHANCE of disabling a loud and annoying sound that draws the kind of attention to yourself that you REALLY don't want drawn to you.
It all just begs the question "why?" was the code that they have to turn off the start up sound now SO BADLY WRITTEN that they decided not to migrate it? C'mon guys. And also:
They've been working on this project as the "#1" priority in their group (past updates, etc.) for over half a decade now. I'd REALLY like to think that they'd have most of this kind of stuff decided already. Did somebody buy everyone in the Windows dev team an Xbox and then an XBox 360? Is that why its taken them 60 months to put together about as much of a feature upgrade as the OS X dev team usually puts together every 18 months? What have they been waiting for? Are they tailor-making Vista technologies to run Duke Nukem Forever? Is that the reason for the delay? Because I really can't find much of a better rationale anywhere else... other than maybe they've cut so many features of Vista in the past few years that no one left working on the project has any idea what code they're actually supposed to be writing.
Oy.
Tim
Well, not to rain on your parade, BUT:
:)
I worked for a non-profit when Windows 2003 was released to manufacturing. They were donated two new dell servers and two boxed copies of Win2k3 Standard edition for the purpose of running two databases that previously were hosted on one box that was seriously overloaded. Decent servers on the high end at the time - hot swap power, hot swap drives, dual proc, etc. These boxes are Internet facing (not for database access, that requires an IPSEC connection at the firewall level) and hosted at a big name co-lo facility. The database is Oracle 9i.
I remember well the day that I hardened them and finished the deployment. It was May 1st, 2003, a Thursday I believe. Win2k3 had just become available the previous week. Oracle had released a big set of patches for 9i not long before.
I still check in on those boxes. One has 994 days of uptime, and the other has, as of last week, 1190 days. The longer running of the two - DAEDALUS - runs close to 75% load from 6am-6pm, 5 days a week.
The only other box I have running that beats that is a Netware 4.x box. But that barely counts as a usuable OS
thats not even the point. On my brand new Dell latitude D620, the XP start up sound plays before my mute button is registered. Trust me i've tried, when ive been in places that require silence and i find myself having to muffle my speakers physically.
Since when does being a Socialist mean 'someone who has a different opinion than me'?
If it's like the other 'system sounds' in Windows, they'll be recorded at full volume, unlike your music which is at -20 dB average. So you've got your computer connected to a nice sound system, you set your volume so the music (movie, etc.) is audible, and the system sounds will be loud enough to wake the dead.
At least the systems sounds can be shut off.
Please Microsoft, copy Apple's Sounds control panel which has a separate volume setting for system sounds.
Here's a no shitter.
TIME: Post-9/11.
Location: Major Metropolitan airport
Me: I just purchased a new LT that was about 3 days new to me. Being on the road I didn't have much time to 'play' with it. I arrive at the airport, get my tickets and proceed to my terminal. I'm early. I decide to sit and have a look-see at what was preinstalled on my LT. I sit next to the check-in counter. I open windows explorer. yadda yadda yadda, I open the windows folder and find an executable named 'clock.avi.' I double-click it.
The face of a clock take up most of the screen. It begins to Beep. LOUDLY. The clock is counting down. From 10.