Knobs and Buttons: WHY?

[Lemur]

Raise your hand if you've ever wrestled with someone's laptop, trying to figure out why the wireless isn't working, uninstalled and reinstalled the driver, disabled and enabled the device, beaten yourself silly on the thing, only to discover that there's a small "wireless" button that turns the WAN off. What the ****? In the days before PCs were smart enough to shut components down when not in use, I guess that made sense. Now I always check to see if there's a freakin' "turn off my networking" button before getting freaked out.

Today I was helping with a Toshiba laptop that could not make sound. Again, uninstall/reinstall drivers, enable/disable device, and so on and so forth, only to find a small, recessed, almost-impossible-to-see knob that turns the volume up and down. And of course it was off. Grrrrrrrrr.

Unlabeled analog controls HAVE NO PLACE on a modern PC. For cryin' out loud.

This reminds me of a really early computer, pre-IBM PC days, that had a button that would erase everything in memory. Just sitting there, waiting to be pressed. Can't remember the name of it. Always made me think of the History Eraser Button. Anybody know the proto-PC I'm talking about? Anyway, it never sold well. People have a way of hitting the history eraser button.

Anybody else get tripped up by knobs and/or buttons?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I love them. Chose my current laptop mainly because it a had a volume wheel--infinitely better than the other, terrible versions of volume control on laptops (buttons that let you go up 1% each push, or need access to the taskbar.

The switch for wireless is nice when the wireless goes down and flipping the switch back and forth resets it.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I had the same problem with my laptop. My four year old kid had pushed the button when I was away. So, when I came back I tried everything to get the network back again. Was ready to call the network provider when I accidentally pushed that button.. Not the best 30 minutes or so..

[Husar]

My laptop has such a button, switches between Bluetooth, WLAN, both or neither, but it also has an LED light that indicates which mode it's currently in.
I kinda wish it had a volume control wheel, too, because Alt-Tabbing and going out of full-screen video just to change the volume in the taskbar can be annoying.

[Togakure]

I also like having hardware controls. They allow me to adjust things quickly, even if I'm in a full-screen game or other type of app that doesn't allow alt-tabbing to the desktop. It's very convenient.

I do sympathize with your frustration as I have supported a large organization's hardware and software, and ran into similar problems when troubleshooting devices with which I had little previous experience. But I eventually learned to check those things first.

[Vladimir]

That's not a security "feature" is it?

[Lemur]

I love them.

My laptop has such a button, switches between Bluetooth, WLAN, both or neither [...] I kinda wish it had a volume control wheel, too

I also like having hardware controls.

When I am king you will be first against the wall.

[Beskar]

My laptop has a analog sound wheel thing, but it only turns the computers sound up and down on the taskbar. I don't have or even seen these other funky buttons before.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Yeah those buttons are annoying. Completely, and utterly, pointless too. (At least using something like Linux where a simple ifconfig command does the same but, crucially, better). By the way, if need to fix a Linux box where wireless doesn't work you can try the command "rfkill list". It will lists both hardware and software “blocks”.

Audio sliders are not remotely the same thing. I don't see why you compare audio sliders/rockers/buttons with rfkill buttons. At least when you mute the speakers/channel you get a nice “muted” icon to give you a clue, whereas the rfkill toggles give you nothing to go on (except that “the Internet does't work”).

[Husar]

Audio sliders are not remotely the same thing. I don't see why you compare audio sliders/rockers/buttons with rfkill buttons. At least when you mute the speakers/channel you get a nice “muted” icon to give you a clue, whereas the rfkill toggles give you nothing to go on (except that “the Internet does't work”).

Not necessarily true, my notebook came with a small program preinstalled that would display the changes onscreen. Unfortunately it only seems to work in Vista.
Ah yes, there is also the Fn + F7/F8 button to change the volume, it would show that onscreen, too, but IIRC I couldn't get it to work in Windows 7.

[Togakure]

When I am king you will be first against the wall.

[tangent] Heh, well my issues with this started in the 80s, from the opposite perspective. Analog keyboards all had knobs for every function. I could create and edit sounds rapidly. I could use knobs live to affect sounds in real time. Then the digital keyboards came along. One knob, an LCD, and gazillions of parameters under the covers. Creating and editing sounds became a much slower process, and it became difficult to affect more than one parameter live in a short time frame. So I guess I'm a bit biased in that sense. I like hardware controls. [/tangent]

[Tellos Athenaios]

Not necessarily true, my notebook came with a small program preinstalled that would display the changes onscreen. Unfortunately it only seems to work in Vista.
Ah yes, there is also the Fn + F7/F8 button to change the volume, it would show that onscreen, too, but IIRC I couldn't get it to work in Windows 7.

What I meant is that if you're fixing a computer where “the sound doesn't work!” you can look at the status icon in the system tray and if the hapless owner accidentally pushed a “mute” button then it will be immediately apparent. If on the other hand you fix a computer where “the Internet doesn't work” the status icon is useless because you can't tell why the Internet doesn't work: it could be rfkill, but it could be not (it could be an issue with the access point [router], for instance).

[Husar]

What I meant is that if you're fixing a computer where “the sound doesn't work!” you can look at the status icon in the system tray and if the hapless owner accidentally pushed a “mute” button then it will be immediately apparent. If on the other hand you fix a computer where “the Internet doesn't work” the status icon is useless because you can't tell why the Internet doesn't work: it could be rfkill, but it could be not (it could be an issue with the access point [router], for instance).

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.

[Lemur]

What I meant is that if you're fixing a computer where “the sound doesn't work!” you can look at the status icon in the system tray and if the hapless owner accidentally pushed a “mute” button then it will be immediately apparent.

Not on a Toshiba Satellite, or at least not the one I was working on. No onscreen indication of what was going on. Ain't life funny sometimes?