It's the little things in life which can make us the happiest. Similarly, it can be the little things in life which drive us to the brink of madness. As much as we love computers, which is an almost unreasonable amount, there can be no denying that are an enormous amount of niggling irritations which combine to pit themselves against our blood-pressure. If we had to type out all the things that get to us, we might be here a literal month, so let's confine this list to only the most recent of recent irritations.
Hey, Listen!
If you’ve played Ocarina of Time, then we apologise for the flashbacks, but even Navi would have trouble comparing to the famed Windows error messages. Sure, these can often be helpful, as they were designed to be, but just as often they are pointless, unnecessary, and make us feel as if we are being treated like children. Even worse is that Windows can be notorious for not listening to your choices, as ‘keep the colour scheme the same and don’t ask me again’ apparently directly translates into ‘ask me again tomorrow, when I’m in the middle of an intense online fight’
Where do you think you are?
You’re checking out your favourite Subreddit or browsing a thread on another forum about how only suckers use Reddit, and somebody links a video. People love it, everybody is laughing, and you take a look for yourself.
Sorry, this content is not available in your area.
Who is laughing now?
Region locking websites and videos in particular can be a huge pain in the back, though fortunately, this is one issue which others have been happy to fix for us. VPNs come to save the day, yet again, and cover the entire range of online media. This guide on how to get American Netflix unblock VPNs saved our butts on overseas trips, for example.
Sorry, Were you in a Hurry?
Automatic updates – we understand that you are necessary, we understand that you can be urgent, but why can't you understand that it's not always the best time? While we appreciate the whole automatic nature covering for us when we would tend to otherwise forget for long periods of time, we aren't especially big fans of starting our work laptops for the day only to be staring down 20 minutes of unskippable installation. Give us a chance when we start our computers, Windows 10, for the love of Pete.
Who are you Again?
Another annoyance born of protection, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. We talk, of course, of online service location-based protection methods.
Sorry but you seem to be logging in from a new location, please jump through these hoops to verify.
Just the other day I came across one which really blew my mind. Sorry, you cannot log in to Steam, please verify your location by copying the code we send to your Hotmail (yes I still have a Hotmail address). Sorry, you cannot log in to Hotmail, please verify your location by copying the code we sent to your Gmail.
Dude, come on! I just want to play Doom.
So what do you think? What are the potentially thousands of elements which annoy you about computer usage? We can't guarantee that talking about it will make you feel better, but, as they say, a problem shared is a problem halved. Except for viruses; don't share those.
Add new comment