On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Dimi Paun wrote:
On Tue, 2009-02-03 at 02:20 +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:Min power Default Max performanceSo a blinking cursor indicates higher performance than a non-blinking one? You can't represent power management on a one dimensional scale. That's poor UI.Whatever. This can be worked around. Somehow on this forum saying that "90%+ of users use Windows" is a "made up statistic" whereas saying that turning off blinking on a cursor is going to save millions of trees is self evident. Yay! Changing defaults like this is just a way to shoot ourselves in the foot. Real customers/users are very finicky about the tiniest of details. Dealing with them directly is a great learning experience. Besides, we seem to enjoy pain: nobody will appreciate a non-blinking cursor,
Wrong.
yet we know _some_ will have a big problem with it. The only people benefiting from it is the ones doing mental calculations about trees saved. That's a tiny minority.
Ignore the power savings aspect just for a second.My television has a power on led below the screen. It blinks when the tv is starting up and when the remote control is used, both cases have a very clear and sane purpose. It does NOT blink while you're watching the tv, and for a good reason too.
Blinking things tend to draw attention, and in the case of Blinky the Cursor it's drawing your attention to the fact that there is nothing at all to attend to. It can also cause seizures for people with epilepsy or other disorders.
Now, somebody please tell me: what is the grande justification of consuming a few extra wats per every computer in the world to attempt to draw the users attention to exactly nothing, despite being known to cause health issues to some people while doing so? And "it's always done that" is not an answer.
- Panu -