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Here at $new_work we have a very fancy drinks machine. Unfortunately
it's so fancy that it gets in the way of my coffee fix.
Normally, a drinks machine would have a list of all the possible drinks
on the front, with two digit codes. Hit two digits and get a coffee.
This one, however, has menus of options. I have to hit 6 for
"speciality coffees" then get another menu. Hit 6 again for
"espresso"*. Then 2 for "double espresso". Then 1 for "no sugar". At
this point there are no further options, but I still have to hit "start"
for it to spit out my drink. Five button presses instead of two.
Sometimes, I'll hit 6 ... 6 ... 2 ... 1 only to be told that it's run out
of cups. Grrr.
Even all of that I could live with, cos I'm sure the menus won't change
that often and I can remember 6621start easily. But I have to pause
between button presses for the menu to re-draw, and it re-draws SLOWLY.
The fancy graphics-capable display appears to build up each character a
pixel at a time, and the list of pixels to light up feels like it's
being sent over a piece of damp string. I bet it's just a serial port
running at 4800 baud at the most.
So here we have bad interface design (menus, ugh); bad software (only
telling me at the end that it can't dispense my drink, and not listening
to the keypad when redrawing); bad hardware; AND it makes crap coffee.
Truly this is hateful.
* - never mind that these bear no resemblance to espresso, it's the
caffeine that counts
--
David Cantrell | Reprobate | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david
Liver with fava beans and a nice chianti is
less appealing if the donor has cirrhosis
-- after Coyu, in soc.history.what-if
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