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Ferret growls at not just the lack of blinkenlights on computer stuff, but the poor placement of the few remaining ones! As TJ Coyote said, it's the "race to the bottom" with all companies competing to see how many features they can remove before the product fails entirely.
- Yamaha made the BEST CD burners, but left the business when the cheap Chinese imports flooded the market. My earlier Yamaha CD-burner has 2 activity LEDS that are clearly labeled. The later Yamaha has one activity LED but it's green for reading, red for writing. I'm annoyed that my NEC DVD-burner has only a green activity LED: I can't tell if it's reading or writing, which is useful for monitoring copies.
- my no-name USB to IDE adapter has an activity led UNDER THE LABEL! WTF?!
- my PNY 1 gig USB flash has a teeny LED deep inside, barely visible thru the label, and no write protect switch. The 512 and smaller ones have a clearly visible activity LED and write protect switch.
- my USB Simm reader has 2 leds that are not labeled and not described in the documentation! Not that it matters anyway, the Windows drivers don't work.
- ATAPI/IDE hard drives rarely have activity LEDS anymore. I miss using SCSI drives with useful administrative features such as activity LED (often used for diagnostics), connector for remote LED, connector for write protect switch too (the ULTIMATE virus protection!)
Growl. What's the good of all this advanced technology if our ability to administer it is diminished all for a lower price?
November 16 2005, 14:10:04 UTC 6 years ago
Even better (sarcasm)
The lights and doodads that are ever increasingly put into our consumer products do NOTHING AT ALL!Except to increase ferret appeal!
Whiff
November 16 2005, 15:09:53 UTC 6 years ago
SCSI controller will have a connector for activity lights, showing
any activity on the bus. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
November 16 2005, 18:59:47 UTC 6 years ago
Yeah, I guess that's Dell's fault but there you go.
Actually it's almost to the point where blinkies are a pain rather than a help. Why? Because, due to "Internationalization", none of these blinkies are marked anymore! Or they have stupid little international icons that you don't know and have to remember, anyway!
If you want pretty blinkies just get some of the latest consumer stuff. Instead of seperate blinkies they are now making everything light up fancy colors - orange, blue, red, greens. My new cordless phone glows all orange-red, even the keys surrounds. Looks really ferretty-pretty.
November 16 2005, 19:16:50 UTC 6 years ago
Simm reader? Do you mean memory from the times of the Pentium I and 486?
November 16 2005, 23:30:32 UTC 6 years ago
November 19 2005, 11:18:48 UTC 6 years ago