From...

November 6, 1998
Web posted at: 3:30 PM EDT

by Stephen Manes

(IDG) -- We are now in thrall to our computers. Bad enough that they make us work the way they want to rather than the way we want to. Now we've come to take that sorry state of affairs for granted. And things are only getting worse.

Take the act of shutting down your PC. It used to be easy: Finish your work, return to the DOS prompt, flip the switch, go home.

Now it can be an act of heroism. First, go to -- of course! -- the Start menu. Choose Shut Down. Pick an option. Wait while Windows churns. Answer a few questions about whether you want your dial-up connection to be disconnected or your unsent mail to be posted or your opened files to be saved or your DOS windows to be closed. Then, if you're lucky, the machine will turn itself off, or at least allow you to do it.

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But more likely, something will screw up. My ancient Win 95 machine tends to get hopelessly confused if I don't turn off my Internet connection before issuing the Shut Down command. On Win 98 machines, the system often churns through the motions and then dies before it gets to the shut-off point. And when you reach for what looks like the power button, you discover it's actually a sleep button that interacts with the software in the machine. Since the software is dead, the button is useless.

You can't quit now

Now you have to reach behind the unit and turn off the real power switch, or pull the plug, or, if you've read the online help only six levels deep at www.thisdumbmachine.com, do something like hold the button down for 15 seconds while whistling "La Marseillaise." The next time you boot up, a message will scold you for shutting down improperly. As punishment, you'll have to wait for ScanDisk to finish running -- unless you're willing to risk offending the natural state of Windows.

Shutting down a notebook can be even more puzzling. Do you want to turn the machine off, suspend it, or hibernate it? Lately I've seen machines that display the message "It's now safe to turn off your computer" for an instant and then turn themselves off automatically.

And how does the computer turn back on? If you've put it to sleep, you can touch a button on the keyboard. But if you've shut it down, you have to locate the power switch. Since when should shutting down and restarting a personal computer be almost as complex as starting and shutting down a nuclear power plant?

Silly Wizard

This sort of thing drives new users absolutely nuts, but it's hardly the only example. My current favorite is the FAT32 converter that's included even on brand-new Win 98 machines whose hard drives are already formatted in FAT32. If you fiddle with the converter, you'd think the first thing it would tell you would be something like, "This drive is already formatted with FAT32." But no: A "wizard" pops up to tell you all about the benefits of FAT32 but neglects to mention that you've already got it--until you try to use the converter. That's when you're informed that the drive is "already FAT 32." A little late, Wiz.

I particularly dislike products that think they're smarter than I am. I wanted to see how a unit with a built-in DVD player performed with a standard TV set, but I don't have a TV in my office. When I tried to set up the machine for TV output so I could take it down to the living room, the video card refused, on the grounds that I didn't have a TV connected. So much for using it as a luggable DVD player.

Unfortunately, we take such headaches for granted. We expect things not to work right the first time or the second. We expect to ponder help screens trying to fix problems that shouldn't exist, only to find that answers aren't there. We dedicate our lives to work-arounds we've come to think of as normal. We think that's the way it has to be.

And as long as our computers are dominated by a monopoly that has no competitive incentive to do better, you know what? We're probably right.

PC World Contributing Editor Stephen Manes has been writing about computers and their frustrations for more than 15 years. He is coauthor of Gates, a biography of Microsoft's chairman.