Windows Vista startup sound
There’s a lot of fuss about this idea of Microsoft’s to have a non-customisable, non-removable Windows Vista startup sound. That is, real startup, as the logon screen appears.
I reckon that’s one of the stupidest ideas they’ve had in a long time. At least nobody had to buy Microsoft Bob. At least you could (eventually) turn off Clippy. Not that anybody has to upgrade to Vista either, but you can bet it’ll be very difficult to get anything else on a new PC by this time next year, and not all of us want to migrate to Mac or Linux.
As Ed Bott says, there are lots of reasons you might not want an unstoppable sound when starting up the computer. Sometimes you just want the computer to be silent (there’s a reason some people disable sounds in web browsers) and you may not be able to get to the volume control/mute quick enough to shut it up. In fact, some speakers don’t have volume knobs; it’s all done within Windows, after you logon.
How many times in the past have you heard someone setting up Windows and it blaring out the startup sound during the first boot? Imagine that on every boot, and not adjustable. Bleuch.
If they go ahead with this plan, it’ll be just another reason for me to hold back and avoid upgrading… at least until someone works out a hack for it.
