I bought a new USB key yesterday and plugged it in. All went well and then I received the following message :

Your device is installed but may not function properly until you reboot.

How many people these days would know what boot/reboot means? Don’t most people ‘start’ ,’shut down’ or ‘restart’ their computer? It’s similar to the icon tray icon for Microsoft Money – ‘Run Money’ is one of the right click choices. Most people these days would ‘start’ money.

Computer related language has changed and we geeks need to take this in to account when letting non-geeks know what’s happening with their software and hardware. It’s time to unlearn.