Fifteen Classic PC Design Mistakes

Harry writes "Once upon a time, it wasn't a given that PC owners should be able to format their own floppy disks. Or that ports should be standard, not proprietary. Or that it was a lousy idea to hardwire a PC's AC adapter, or to put the power supply in the printer so that a printer failure rendered the PC unusable, too. Over at Technologizer, Benj Edwards has taken a look at some of the worst design decisions from personal computing's early years — including ones involving famous flops such as the PCJr, obscure failures such as Mattel's Aquarius, and machines that succeeded despite flaws, like the first Mac. In most instances — but not all — their bad decisions taught the rest of the industry not to make the same errors again."

Comments

Worst Mistake That Still Needs Fixing

[Dystopian Rebel]

Patents and proprietary, closed standards -- Open standards lead to innovation and better hardware for consumers. Look at some of the junk in that article... Engineers need the challenge of having other people improve upon their ideas. Open standards and open-source *will* win because people work best working together. Capitalism certainly won't die but it needs to learn this lesson.

Honourable Mention: Keyboards -- Most computer keyboards are designed for some other lifeform -- one with a single arm bearing 10 or more fingers. Consumers accept the familiar "conventional" keyboard because it's familiar and conventional. The keyboards that are best for human beings have a "split" or curve in the centre. There are many horrible keyboards, so I'd like to mention some excellent ones:
GoldTouch
Adesso Ergonomic
original Microsoft Natural (not the later rubbish that claimed to be "ergonomic" just because it had a fake leather wrist support -- while maintaining the straight-row key configuration that is bad for wrists)

Re:Worst Mistake That Still Needs Fixing

[UnknownSoldier]

> original Microsoft Natural

That was a great keyboard back in 96! I would demonstrate a simple proof to others to show the benefit of its ergonomics:

* Stand up. Put your hands by your sides. Notice the angle of your hands.
* Now raise your hands up, keeping your biceps in place, and making an L, as if you were shaking hands.
* Now roll both of your hands inward, as if you were to play a wide piano. Seem how comfortable that is?
* Now slide your hands together so your thumbs are touching. Notice how awkward that is?

Took me a little while to get used to it, but it was good. My only problem was that the Y,H,and N keys (quite logically) were put on the right side. I'm a pretty hard-core gamer that uses most of the left side + partial right side of the keyboard, and found those keys "missing." (I used the right hand on the mouse.)

I wish someone would bring it back, duplicating the TY, GH, NM keys on both the left and right side.

--
"Necessity is the mother of invention,
but Curiosity is the Father."
  -- Michaelangel007

Re: The 15 problems

[SlashDotDotDot]

Problem #16: Blindingly intense blue LED on my new Dell that blinks when the computer is asleep.

All night long the computer constantly warns me: "I'm asleep. I'm asleep. I'm asleep." It's like Homer Simpson's "everything is OK" alarm.

Re:General trend

[Anonymous Coward]

And even though its not classic, I think the "underpowered" Vista machines deserve at least a mention.

Can we stop with the knee-jerk microsoft bashing? The article is literally titled "Fifteen _Classic_ PC Design Mistake." There's nothing in the article that would make a vista reference even relevent. Posting as AC to avoid karma whoring like the parent.

#1 failure...

[master_p]

the choice of IBM to use the 8086 CPU. It set back the computer industry several years. The PC would now be at least 2 generations ahead if IBM did not use the retarded 8086 design.

Obviously, IBM did not believe in personal computers and thought they were gimmicks.

Re:#1 failure...

[vonhammer]

Read the Motorola 68000 assembly language manual and marvel at its simplicity and elegance. I believe they had an 8-bit and 16-bit equivalent back then. That would be my choice. Advantages are the simple addressing scheme, many general purpose data registers, brilliantly simple assembly language.

Low-tech solution

[Peter Simpson]

1 square inch of Scotch brand #33 electrical tape.

Re:The 15 problems

[demonbug]

Removing the eject button was a good idea; it prevented you from ejecting a disk without unmounting it and ending up with corrupted date.

Removing the eject button was an idiotic idea, and it illustrates one of the great failures of personal computer design philosophy - the idea that the system builder/designer knows better than the user how the user should use the system. If I want to eject a disk in the middle of an operation then I should be able to - maybe the possibility of corruption is preferable to the alternative of letting an operation continue. Maybe an electrical fire just started in the system power supply, and I want to get my floppy out NOW. Maybe a million things that the designer didn't think of. The assumption that the user is an idiot and doesn't know what they are doing, and that their control over the system must be severely limited for their own protection, is the single worst PC design mistake.