UnNews:Still impossible to know if computer is on
Thursday, March 17, 2016
In 2016, 33 years after Microsoft was founded, it is still impossible to know whether a PC is on or off, it has been reported.
Case study: Jason Gardener, a 26-year-old who has spent almost his entire life in front of one kind of screen or another, sat down at his work terminal this morning.
"They have these old Dell computers," he told UnNews. "The power button is about the size of a penny. Unless I literally get on the floor, I can't see if the LED is on or not... and to be honest, I always push it. Like I think if it's off, that turns it on, and I get the impression that if it's on, it doesn´t really turn it off. It like resists or something, or goes into standby"
Hankering for the days in which PC's had real buttons, ones that went in and out, a man's button you could set your watch by and which satisfyingly turned off the fans and everything with a pained squeak when opening two emails at once froze your system, Gardener explained his ordeal further.
"I was sitting there for about 90 seconds, coffee in one hand, poking first at the PC button, then at the monitor. Pressing caps lock - seeing the LED on the keyboard, so the computer was on - then pressing the monitor button. Holding the monitor button on? Is that a thing? Does that do something different? It seemed to flash on and off, so I tried again and nothing.
"Then I tried turning the PC on (or off?) again."
Gardener's problem has stumped the IT department, whose beyond-cliched advice, "try turning it off and on", is not as easy to follow as it once was.
It's time for a new era, the era of the big red button.
