andrel wrote:
> I am not sure I agree with you on this one. On most computers there is 
> one way I normally turn it 'off'. That is the one that should be easily 
> accessible, both as an icon and as button. For the special cases I'd be 
> happy with a big GUI.

And Windows has that. Joel is bitching that it duplicates what's on the 
menu.  He even talks about it having multiple icons in addition to the menu 
and how stupid that is.

> One that asks If I want power down completely or keep everything in RAM 
> so I can reboot fast. I mean explain what the various option mean other 
> than just the sleep/hibernate/whatever labels for the options that I 
> normally don't use. And on the bottom line apply/cancel/use this in the 
> future. That should also solve the problem of accidentally selecting the 
> wrong option and going through a five minute hibernate/reboot cycle to 
> select the right one.

That's precisely what Windows does. It doesn't have the "use this in the 
future." You go to the control panel to set that and the actions of the 
buttons. Giving you the choice of selecting what you want it to do is what 
Joel is complaining about.

> In short, I agree that this interface is stupid, but that I would have 
> simplified it in a different way. And so would you ;)  Perhaps this was 
> the compromise the design team could finally agree on.

I don't think the interface is stupid at all. Certainly I don't think 
there's any option there you can simply remove, except maybe "lock" vs 
"switch user", altho I can see someone in a shared-computer environment 
distinguishing those two: "lock" being "I'm in the can", with "switch user" 
being "I'm at lunch."  (For mac users, the difference between "lock" and 
"switch user" is whether you get back to the "login name" prompt or the 
"password" prompt, either of which can trivially take you to the other.)

In particular, I pick each of "log off", "restart", "sleep", "suspend" 
(which isn't even on the menu), or "shut down" at least once a week for 
each. The idea that you could eliminate those from the interface simply 
because Joel can eliminate those from *his* laptop is absurd.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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