Start Button

Since the page was created, and had no content, an amusing snippet was brought to mind:

Welcome to Windows '95, an operating system so intuitive, you have to hit a StartButton to ShutDown.

Gee, on my VCR I have to hit the on button to turn it off. What's the problem?

It is a crying shame that the start button's hit area doesn't extend to the appropriate edge of the screen. I pegged my taskbar at the top of the screen (because I'm weird). I can't just wing the mouse up to the top left corner, I have to go to the top left corner minus a few pixels.

None of the Whistler screenshots I've seen suggest that they've bothered to change this.

-- AdamVandenberg

Hehe... it doesn't look like they've changed it, but they have... if you click in the very bottom left corner, the mouse will jump the 3 pixels to the corner of the bottom, so you finally can't miss the stupid thing :)

Guess what? If you have a double-height taskbar (and at 1600x1200, why not have a double-height taskbar?) at the bottom of the screen, if you stick the mouse cursor in the corner and click, it still jumps three pixels - into the empty area under the Start Button. I mean, like, DUH! -- MikeSmith

Stopping is a process which must be started in the case of a computer which normally has housekeeping to perform in the orderly shutdown of a process. This is true for other processes, as in an Chemical Refinery, and Nuclear Power Plant, or even your garden variety automobile. The humor comes from condensing the meanings of start and stop to singularities and implying that they have atomic operations.

It might be valuable to observe that the act of starting or stopping the computer should be conscious and premeditated; therefore, having the Start/Stop button(s) in a place that requires the user to seek them out (as well as confirm the action) isn't such a bad uea. This is less important on TV remote controls than on Class III patient life support systems. <ahem>

If it has a button to start stopping, why doesn't it have a button to stop starting?

[Ba-dump bump! <cheap cymbol crash>]