Re: Disable start and stop recording sounds?

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

At 03 Jun 2008 16:47:39 +0100 treadmill-- with the great taste of fish
wrote:

The OEMs- Samsung, HTC, T-Mobile, etc. are, and
any errant app we develop or run, or ROM-based file we delete that
screws
up operation of the device becomes THEIR problem.

Not in this case and, I'd expect, many others. In this case, if I do
something to brick my device, that's my problem and I wouldn't expect
any sympathy from OEMs nor MS.

But you'd blame MS anyway, wouldn't you!

The point here is: WHY must a simple thing like a sound that plays
when launching an app be locked down? What good reason is there
for that?

You are, of course, making the assumption that it's intentionally been
"locked down" when, in reality, it hasn't. It's simply one of the many
design decisions that were deemed unworthy of yet another menu of tedious
check boxes of user options. The files themselves are hard to manipulate
because they're in ROM, not on an (easily) eraseable/rewritable disk.


(There's a good reason to NOT have a sound for recorder because if,
for example, you're in a meeting and you've forgotten to turn off
sound, when you start the recorder you could unwittingly be rude to
anyone speaking at that time by interrupting them with a demented
chirrup from your PDA!)


I've owned WinMo devices since they were Palm-Sized PCs and don't recall
off the top of my head anyone complaining about the "chirrup" sound. It
seems softer than many of the beeps and boops emanating from my WinMo
phone. It seems to me that if I were in an environment that I feared
offending someone with the recorder start/stop noise, I've probablyalready
silenced the device entirely to mask spontaneous incoming calls, push e-
mail notifications, etc.


I do understand your point: locking things down so that users cannot
accidentally break things is a good idea. But making simple things that
ought to be changeable SO difficult is, I'd argue, silly and counter-
productive.


I'd agree, but we're talking about a minor feature that never even got it's
own proper options menu! I'd file it under "oops, we never thought of
that" rather than an MS-wide conspiracy to wrestle the ability to control
your device away from you.


How many mobiles are running Linux right now?

A good point, and you could have made that point many years ago
about the desktop, but look at Linux on the desktop now - yes there's
still a way to go in many areas for Linux but many prefer it.

Sure. Many prefered DOS as well. Linux will never gain mass adoption
until it has a consistent face. Every Wintel vanilla box, or Mac OS PC has
the same GUI as the others. Most people don't want to hear about
distributions, kernals, or tarballs- they just want the think to work like
everyone elses to take advantage of "hive support" from their co-workers
and friends.

I have a laptop that came with Vista but I almost never boot into it; 99.9
percent of the time I boot into Ubuntu because I much prefer it. I wonder
if we'll see Linux on PDAs in the future?

Maybe- a few have tried it, like Sharp's Zaurus, but people like a good UI
(see Apple) or app support (see Palm, WinMo and Symbian.) The Zarus had
the worst of both worlds- a clunky WinMo-like UI coupled with little
software support.

To be fair, I think that a lot of what has been achieved by MS in mobile
devices is great work. (And believe it or not I often say as much
when showing people my device.) Handwriting recognition on
Windows Mobile is just one example of something that works well.
But as someone who is used to the freedom to set up things to suit
my way of working, encountering silly restrictions is annoying and
gives a bad overall impression of Microsoft.

So you like buttons...(so do I, BTW.) However, to play Devil's Advocate
there are certainly advantages to the end-user (namely simplicity and
support) to minimizing user-settable options only to the most crucial.
(Which means the real issue here is whether control of the "chirrup" sound
is "critical.")

A glance of the help given on this NG shows the ridiculous number of user
settings available. Some settings are nested three, four or more screens
deep! Change network settings? Easy- select Start, Settings, Connections
(Tab), Connections (Icon) thentap the "Advanced" tab, and hit "select
networks"- easy!

Kidding aside- for all we know the chirrup sound CAN be disabled but no
one's stumbled on the right menu yet! ;-)

.

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