h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>would Sebastian Vettel drive a Daewoo?

There are so many parallels between vacuuming and Formula One, aren't there!

">>would Sebastian Vettel drive a Daewoo?"


Well, apart from my not knowing what a 'Daewoo' is, I imagine, yes, yes he/she would, were he/she popping to the shops to buy some parmazan cheese and anchovies... or, really for whatever they were going to buy
If I were cleaning the carpet to get it clean enough to do open heart surgery I might want to use something as efective as a Dyson, but if not... then that level of filtration seems a bit OTT...

>>that level of filtration seems a bit OTT...

The cleaner the better, I think. It's not just sitting deep in the carpet, never to be released, because we know it's possible to remove with a vacuum.

I think the take home message from my post was - yes Dyson's *can* go wrong - but if you pay attention (as I manifestly did not) - you get a *free* 5 year warranty on parts...

(or at least you did in my day - times may have changed...)

If I were that* worried about stuff hidden deep within the carpet, I'd have tiles. I've only one carpet in the house as it is, for this reason, tiles and floorboards are so much easier and quicker and cheaper to clean...

Yeah, I was wondering why you paid for a broken bit - I snapped a clip on mine and phoned the number in the manual to ask how much it would cost to replace it. They asked for the serial number, and when I told it to them they said "Oh, that's still in guarantee", took my address, and sent me the relevant part with instructions on how to fit it.

I note also that the bit that I snapped off no longer appears on the machines - they've redesigned the attachment to make it more robust.

And no, it's no low expectation to be delighted with things that work. It's experience, over decades, of paying good money for things that *almost* work, or that work but badly.

The example I always remember is a tea/coffee pot set my mum had when I was a kid. It looked all lovely and modern with its brushed stainless steel, its smooth lines, its matching milk jug and sugar bowl. You would wonder, if you saw it, why it invariably had two or three sheets of kitchen towel tucked under the sugar bowl. The kitchen towel was there to catch the drips, because EVERY SINGLE TIME you tried to actually pour liquid out of either the tea or the coffee pots, half the volume of liquid that left the pot would do so in a stream down the body of the pot and onto the table, rather than into the target cup. I'm actually getting angry thinking about it. If I'd been the owner of this abomination I would have EITHER returned it for a refund for being not of merchantable quality (it had one function only and consistently failed at it) OR would have set about it with a lump hammer and turned it into an attractive ashtray.

After a lifetime filled with products of all kinds that do that, coming across something as well-designed as a Dyson is like crawling through the desert and finding a fridge full of chilled Evian.

In fairness, there's less of it about nowadays, but it's not gone away completely. Has anyone ever tried to take a photograph of something fast-moving using a digital camera? "Shutter lag" is something the digital age has invented that we never had before. For over a hundred years, it was a given that when you press the button, the camera takes a picture. Of course, you don't instantly get to see that picture and then not bother to print it if it's rubbish, but the point is, the picture taking thing happens when you press the button - not half a second or a second or if it's dark and you didn't half-press the button first anything up to ten seconds later. Again, it's a thing that's passing with faster processors etc., but it's a form of frustration we invented for ourselves that we didn't have before, so when you find a camera that doesn't have it, you fall upon it weeping gratefully when in fact you should be saying "about bloody time, too".

That is similar to the retrogression in TV technology. They now take ages to boot up and change channels. No better than our old b/w telly which we had to crank start with a knitting needle back in the 60s.

I have very little problem with TV. The only bugbear I have right now is that if I press the power button on my TV remote, it doesn't come on. The light on the front of the telly flashes to show that yes, both the TV and the remote are in fact working, but unless I HOLD the power button for at least a couple of seconds, it is going to assume that I've just sat on the remote, and hence ignore me.

Other than that, though, it produces a pin-sharp fifty inch picture more or less instantly, and I can surf what's on the other channels WITHOUT LEAVING THE CHANNEL I'M ON, skipping lightly through what's on and what's going to be on, on any of 100 other channels, all while watching the program I'm considering leaving behind. That, I think, is great. What's less great, obviously, is the fact that (a) the program I'm watching is no good, otherwise I wouldn't be wanting to change the channel, and (b) none of the 1000 other channels have anything on them that's any good either. But you can't have everything. Where would you keep it?

My wife's handbag

My favourite example of 'retrogression' was when digital TV recorders first came out, we were stuck with recording the channel we were watching unlike the VCR/TV system we'd had for years. i.e. everyone took for granted that you could record one channel whilst watching another with the TV's own tuner.

It seemed like *ages* till digital systems finally started coming with dual tuners to allow this incredibly basic functionality back into our TV lives. Then of course Sky+ and the like made a massive fanfare about this incredible new system of theirs which allowed you to.. wait for it... record one channel whilst watching another! Wow!

Except a dual tuner on a digital recorder allows you to do something you genuinely couldn't do before - record one channel while watching AND RECORDING another. But I know what you mean.

Then again - until Sky+, how many people had digital recorders? Tivo happened but didn't seem to hit it big in the UK. Until Sky+, that tech really didn't seem to get traction.

In Canada, with a satellite TV receiver (PVR),
you can record two programs while watching a third
either live or from a previous recording.

I didn't know that when it was installed and insisted
that the service techie hook up both my old VHS recorder
and my DVD player/recorder. He sighed saying, "You will
probably never watch a VHS again or bother with setting
the timer on your DVD... but I'll hook it all up for you."

He was right.
I have 170 hours of capacity on the PVR and am spoilt for
choice. I haven't even played a DVD since I got the PVR.
There are literally hours of recorded programs I haven't
had time to watch.

It's as satisfying as the internet for multi-tasking and
viewing all sorts. It requires no more than one click to
establish a recording and it will automatically record
all NEW programs in a series. It has already been told to
record all the new Dr Who programs which are 'coming soon'
and Space channel hasn't even announced a start date yet.

~jwf~

The wonders of hootoo topic drift!

I have an account on a site called User Experience. It's mainly about software, but occasionally touches on other matters. It's amazing how much thought some people put into these things (and it's obvious how little thought so many other people put into them).

All the little frustrations we learn to live with and don't even notice till suddenly some new designer removes them.

TRiG.

I just had a similar experience buying a new pushchair. About ten minutes into our first decent walk I stopped to adjust the pushing handles, as I'm reasonably tall for a girl and my husband is taller.

You can't adjust them. We hadn't even thought to check when buying it; surely adjustable handles are standard now... but apparently not. It's still a good pushchair, but I have to have my arms held out at an awkward angle so that I don't kick the frame as I walk. *sigh*

"There are literally hours of recorded programs I haven't had time to watch"

With the PVR, Douglas Adams' prediction from the mid-eighties first Dirk Gently book has finally come to pass.

When I first read his idea that people have video recorders "to watch programs for them that they didn't have time to watch", I thought it was wrong. Indeed, for the tech of the time, it WAS wrong. Programming a video recorder in the mid eighties was sufficiently fiddly and difficult that you generally only did it for programmes you really, really wanted to watch, and then in the absence of fifty thousand other things to watch or do, you'd have time or make time to watch those things.

Today, I have "series link" set up on my Sky+, and all by itself it fills up with stuff which, thanks to XBox, Kindle, books, magazines, Youtube, h2g2 and, oh yes, actual physical activity in the outside world, I barely ever have time to watch. So it sits there for weeks or months until it finally gets deleted unwatched to make room for more stuff I'll never see. The box is watching this stuff for me, exactly as Adams said.

Oh I most definitely used to do that with VHS too.

Not so much as now though - it's true.

What?!; you don't have an electronic monk to watch it all for you, and of course, do the worrying about watching it?!

I'd still like to know why the speaker on my phone (not the ear piece one, the other* one), is located on the back; at exactly the point where you cover it with the palm of your hand, if right handed, whilst using the phone... it'd be perfect for lefties but seeing as how the majority of people are right handed, it seems a little flawed a design

Wheelchairs are similar. OK for going between the car and a building but on longer runs it's painful on the wrists.

I have a Vax wet and dry. It’s called scent of summer. Providing that is that you consider summer to smell of vomit and burning dust. It makes a noise like a helicopter in distress, loud and urgent. It’s quite new and hardly used.

I also have a dyson as my local supermarket had a choice of 2 vacuums and the dyson was heavily reduced in price. It gives me no trouble what so ever.

I actually used to have a Daewoo vacuum that I bought when I first lived in a bedsit. It was good but very small, when I moved into a house I found that I filled the bag everytime I vacuumed and it cost £4 for a new one. So of course I didn’t vacuum.