The stupid PC On/Off/Sleep button
There has in the history of the world rarely been a greater disparity in function, sophistication and overall competence than that between today’s marvelously complex, powerful and competent computers and their crude, endlessly frustrating and absolutely useless and non-sensical on/off buttons.
Sorry to start off that way, but it simply needed to be said.
Computers are binary creations, living and operating in a world of 0s and 1s. For a computer, things are either on or off, 1 or 0. These two simple states allow them to compute anything and everything. The most complex operations, the most detailed pictures, the biggest spreadsheets and the largest databases, they are all based on zeros and ones. Everything in a computer is.
Except the power button.
You push it and, generally, nothing happens. At some point some lights may start to flicker. Maybe a screen or message comes up. Sometimes a menu. Maybe. All you can do is wait and see what happens. If the computer is running, hitting the power button by mistake can result in many things, and it’s hardly ever what you want or need. The computer screen may instantly go black. The computer may, in due course, get ready to power itself down. Or it may decide that pushing the button simply meant “close all the work you’re in the middle of and go to sleep.”
That’s because computer makers in their infinite wisdom decided that the power button and the sleep button should be combined into one. With no standardized rules as to what may happen when you push the button.
What that means is one single button lords over all those billions of transistors that make up a modern computer CPU, and lords over the incredibly advanced and concept power conservation measures built into every modern processor. That’s like operating a grand piano with a sledgehammer.
But seriously, can there be any reason whatsoever to combine on and off and sleep and wake into one button that you have to either push or push and hold for so and so long? Why not a power on/off button AND a sleep/wake button? Why not cram essential functionality into one button that you have to push so and so long to make, hopefully, something happen?
In a world that values productivity, total cost of ownership and all sorts of other metrics hat quantify value and performance, how can there be an infuriating button that can, and will, bring everything to a halt when you don’t intend to? And then make you wait until everything is restarted and back up and running?
It is a mystery.
Who will be the first computer manufacturer that puts an end to this idiocy and comes up with a better solution, one that reliably works and actually makes sense?