What's the Worst Technical Feature You've Used?

kooky45 asks: "In an effort to make our lives easier and more entertaining, technology designers pack more and more features into electronic devices, but often they're more nuisance than they're worth. An earlier article on LEDs discussed some of these. Another example is my Nokia 6320i mobile phone which has a back lit screen that drains the battery life at an alarming rate. When the phone is not in use the back light is off; if the battery starts to run low, it gives me regular warnings by beeping and turning the back light on! What other examples of designer stupidity have you seen?"

It will come up sooner or later...

[Daniel_Staal]

Clippy.

Honda Stereo Security

[stoolpigeon]

My honda, and I think many others - have a security feature for the entertainment system. If the power is ever out to the unit, the owner must punch in a 4 digit code to turn it back on, after power is restored. If you forget the code, and don't have it written down somewhere - you can get it. You just need to remove the unit from the dash and call a dealer with a number written on the outside of it. This is not an easy process - and dealers will do it for you but it costs around $200 last time I checked. In other words - the only person who can easily get at the information necessary to the code is someone who already has the stereo out- like say a thief.

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[Corpuscavernosa]

You actually used Clippy? Man, what a friggin' dork! ;)

The desktop

[D+iz+a+n+k+Meister]

There's a computer on my desk. Doesn't that make a metaphorical stack-overflow?

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[Vanayr]

Bob, definitely Bob

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[Miguel de Icaza]

again; even after all these years I still maintain the paperclip is great idea

LED

[Fallingcow]

I don't know about the LED thing.

I sometimes plug in my USB flash drive, which has a very bright blue LED on the end, just for the light.

Grab testicles and squeeze ring mode

[spun]

The sales person made it sound like a great feature. Never miss another call he said. Alerts you no matter how distracted you might be or how noisy the environment, he said. That may be true, but let me tell you, it is not nearly as useful and convenient as the sales people would have you believe.

PC Load Letter

[labalicious]

PC Load Letter? What the fuck does that mean?

Similar - beeping

[oyenstikker]

My Motorola v260 beeps loudly ever few minutes when the battery is low. I know when it starts beeping I have another 12 hours. There is no way to shut off the beeping.

Re:PC Load Letter

[Nimey]

Paper Cartridge Load Letter. You need to reload your Laserjet with letter-size paper, as opposed to PC LOAD A4, which would need A4 paper.

You must have a /fancy/ printer, since it can display lower-case on its status display. Mine just says PC LOAD LETTER or 00 POWERSAVE.

There, destroyed the joke for you.

The Right Mouse Button

[thesupermikey]

Fuck Context Menus
thats right, i said: "fuck context menus" /mac user

Photo

[Viking Coder]

My cell phone has a Camera button on the outside edge. Every now and then, I hear the fake shutter sound that lets me know my cell phone just took a picture of the inside of my pocket.

I'm surprised no one else has mention the worst feature ever: DRM.

In Windows Vista

[phalse phace]

Cancel or Allow? feature.

Re:Microwave

[daeg]

A vending machine in my building does something similar. There are no "out of product" lights, there's only a single line display. If you select something that's out, it scrolls "NO PRODUCT TO DISPENSE - PLEASE TRY ANOTHER PRODUCT OR CALL 1-800-XXX-XXXX FOR REFILLS - NO PRODUCT TO DISPENSE" one letter at a time. During which time you cannot select another product, get your change back, or do anything at all. Pressing any buttons helpfully resets it to scroll from the start.

Oy!

Re:The desktop

[hey!]

Well, the worst thing about most PCs is the way the cup holder automatically retracts during a reboot.

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[Jhon]

Clippy was bad... this predates it:

It may not be a "feature" I've intentionally used and it may not be the WORST, but it always gave me a chuckle WayBackWhen (tm) I'd turn on my PC without a keyboard plugged in:

Error: No keyboard present

Press F1 to continue, DEL to enter SETUP

Wonderful advice...

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[Anonymous Coward]

My high school had a batch of computers that would regularly boot to some variant of "Error: No keyboard present. Press F1 to continue." In fact, it was so regular that all the students knew to just hit F1 on the darn-tooting-it-was-present keyboard. And it worked.

1-800-XXX-XXXX

[LunaticTippy]

I just called that number to complain about the vending machine being out of taco pellets. They were very helpful and understanding. They also have a website [covenanthouse.org]

Re:Microwave

[Verteiron]

It obviously needs the date so it can properly adjust leap seconds at the beginning of the year. And how else is it supposed to adjust for DST?

Re:Microwave

[YourMotherCalled]

But, who the hell thought it was important for a microwave to store the date?

Didn't you read the manual? Chickens cook differently in odd years than they do in even years.

Mac OS X Finder

[chord.wav]

Why the hell would I want to mix folders and files, all ordered alphabetically??

Not to mention the hockey puck mouse.

Oh and hardware locked DVD drives.

Re:Microwave

[dgatwood]

If you have the same microwave that I do, it's an easy fix. Press the start button, then open and close the door quickly, then press the start button again. It will start immediately.

They don't call it American enginerring (sic) for nothing. :-D

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[Torodung]

"Clippy" is not a technical feature.

"Clippy" is a four letter word. Microsoft couldn't even get that open standard right!

--
Toro

Re:Honda Stereo Security

[nasch]

I guess that's what you get for buying a fricking Malibu. Sorry, that was harsh. No wait, totally appropriate. :-)

Re:Honda Stereo Security

[Some_Llama]

Clippy? (i.e. paperclip?)

Re:Microwave

[incer]

The hassle of resetting the date every time is widely compensated by that warm feeling you get when you notice that your microwave has adjusted the time on it's own...

Re:Honda Stereo Security

[veganboyjosh]

So, if I'm going to steal the stereo from a Honda, take the extra couple of seconds and grab the VIN while I'm there.

Or the car it's attached to.

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[edwdig]

I once found the text strings stored in the BIOS of my 286. Not far from the standard "Keyboard error, press F1 to continue." message was "CPU not found. System halted."

I always wondered how they intended to display that message.

Re:Microwave

[mph]

The hassle of resetting the date every time is widely compensated by that warm feeling you get when you notice that your microwave has adjusted the time on it's own...

Actually, that warm feeling is the door seals leaking.

Re:Voicemail

[Paradise Pete]

I had a friend who was remarkably good at mimicking the voice on my machine. She called and left a message that repeated the menu commands, and I was sitting there trying to figure out what was wrong with the damn thing.

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[aichpvee]

I am attempting to say "Windows Vista" [allow] [deny]

Open button on a DVD player remote

[hoppo]

It is absolutely pointless to be able to eject a DVD from across the room. You still have to get up and walk over to the device. Unless you are strong with the Force. Then you wouldn't need the remote for anything.

"Safety Feature"

[element-o.p.]

My boss has a Mercedes SUV that will not start the engine if the engine computer detects that any of the three brake light bulbs have burned out. Now, there's a good idea -- when you burn out a brake light, you can't even drive to the store to buy a replacement.

Fuse

[dino213b]

Fuse: a $3 part protecting a $0.01 piece of electronics.

Even worse on servers ...

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I don't like brands, i prefer to build clones myself, even for servers.

For some crappy services, like a small router, or some backup DNS/Mailserver you just pick some cheap motherboard, and most tend to NOT have an option to just boot even when no keyboard is plugged.
Now it doesn't happend that often, but I used to fix this by using a crafted keyboard DIN or mini-DIN conector with no actual cable or keyboard attached to it.

Re:"Safety Feature"

[Smight]

That sounds especially useful in the case where a roving gang has smashed in your tail lights and is currently surrounding you. Mercedes knows you shouldn't just avoid conflict, but you should talk your problems out and be sure you are calm and clear-headed before you get on the road.

If Mad Max had driven a Mercedes, the post-apocalyptic future of Australia would have been a much happier place.

Re:On my Samsung LG-series phone

[lowid (24) _________]

My last phone was a samsung, and it was just terrible. Made me swear off samsung phones forever due to the inane number of bugs and random shutdowns. Worst design feature, though - there were two identical buttons right next to each other on the same side of the phone, and if a call came in, one of the buttons silenced the ring and the other answered the call on speakerphone.

There were all too many times when my phone went off in a class and suddenly a voice emerged from my pocket crying "hello? are you there?"

p.

Re:My windshield washer tank

[CBravo]

In this category: I had a car, an Opel Astra. When I wanted to use the windshield wiper fluid it would first use the windshield wiper to scratch all the dirt into the window and then add some fluid to wipe all of it away. The window had a ton of scratches.

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[ggy]

Heh, once while trying to fix a old Dell, I had to run their wonderful Dell Diagnostics application (to get any support from their support).
The diagnostics application informed me that the computer lacked a motherboard.

I'm still in awe over that one...

Re:Photo

[cerberusss]

Every now and then, I hear the fake shutter sound that lets me know my cell phone just took a picture of the inside of my pocket.

So, you're in the cinema with the date of your dreams. You move towards her for a nice wet french kiss and suddenly *flash* the phone cam its flash light illuminates the insides of your jeans, showing a big boner covered with that old Winnie-the-Pooh underpants that you should've thrown away.

Not Worst, But Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the LED on my UPS that tells me the power in my home is off.

You don't say!

Re:It will come up sooner or later...

[McGurk]

I had that exact same fuckign thing happen to me. It pissed me off so bad that I have NEVER bought another logitech input device.

Well, except for their bluetooth laptop mouse. Its the cheapest one on the market. But I'll be GODDAMNED if they think I'm going to install their bloated mouse software, the bastards!