Which things annoy you about your laptop or desktop PC?

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Computers have very much become a 'special interest' of mine over the past year or so, but some things about them annoy the hell out of me. Examples:

Touchpads: I always use a conventional mouse (wired or wireless) by choice, but when trying out a laptop in a shop am sometimes forced to use the touchpad. I simply find these impossible to control, possibly because I'm heavy-handed, the cursor seems to have a mind of its own and things are 'selected' without a left-click being made. First time this happened I thought the touchpad was defective, but it seems they all act like this for me.

DVD Drives: Simply can't believe how cheap and plasticky these things are, even on an otherwise well-built laptop. Every time I push down on a disc to click it into place, I'm half-expecting to hear a snapping or cracking sound from the flimsy tray. A couple of trays have recently become stuck in the closed position as well: one can be persuaded to open by manipulating it with a paperclip, but the other seems a lost cause.

Accessibility: Some laptops give good access to things like the hard drive and RAM modules via easily-opened compartments on the underside. The Dell Latitude range and Lenovo Thinkpads score well in this department. With many others though, getting at these items is a nightmare which can virtually amount to dismantling the whole machine (the HP Compaq 15 comes to mind here). Cynics may say that companies do this to deter customers from trying to upgrade their computer and buy a new one instead.

What are your own 'favourite' gripes with your computer, or computers in general?

RAM prices. I remember a time when upgrading RAM was a cheap upgrade to do. I am thinking of upgrading to Coffee Lake, perhaps an i7 8700K, but the thought of buying DDR4 really irks me.

Touchpad for me too! Haaaaattteee them! I always use conventional wireless mouse with my laptop.

I can control a touchpad well and normally, but I just find the necessary motions involved to be highly irritating, with all the repeat-finger-drags to do certain things.

I have a Macbook. It is beautiful and I love it, but the only fault I find with it - that might be my fault - is that when I try to highlight something lengthy, I seem to run out of space on the trackpad, and I have to go back and start right in the corner. I don't *think* this happened with any Windows laptop.

Things that annoyed me about Windows:

The endless security updates. It was nice to have them but worrying that the system was apparently constantly-at-risk.
How each new version seemed to get worse and worse.
(re: 8 and 10) how things started to move around in terms of accessibility.

Windows 10 and the removal of the Windows Restore feature (can't be bothered to buy a 3rd party one). Essentially Windows computers always slow down over time and eventually you have to format your computer and do a fresh install of Windows. f**k that.

I also hate Windows 10 inability to automatically find the proper program to open a specifc file type. It is a pain in the ass to find the program you want to open specific file types for.

I hate that the Cortana useless crap can't find specific menu options using the search bar and instead just runs a Bing search instead. It is essentially useless. The Windows 10 app store sucks as well. They should just give up and allow Android apps instead.

I rarely touch a PC anymore and just use my Galazy S7 for everything.

I'm considering upgrading an old secondhand Toshiba Satellite to an 8GB megabeast, but it seems the DDR3 RAM would cost around 50% of what the machine is worth. Computer magazines seem routinely to state that 'RAM is very affordable these days', but these are the same publications which refer to £1000 laptops as 'good value' and describe £500-600 ones as 'budget' models.

The sound of this one's cooling fans. There are 2, maybe 3, I forget, fans in this PC and their combined harmonic pitch (or whatever the proper term is) gets on my nerves.
I don't make much other sound at home, for example don't even have a TV, and so I expect I notice that kind of thing more than other people do.

And I would swear the sound didn't bother me after getting this PC a year ago until after having it about 4 months there was a power near-outage, a brownout, and after that the fan sound changed. Maybe my imagination, maybe not.

Settings -> Update & Security -> Recovery -> Reset This PC

Will reinstall Windows for you, with or without deleting your personal files, super easy, no DVD required.

You still have to reinstall all the software.

I also don't like touchpads, I can control it easy enough but they make my hand hurt after a while. Also you can't really play most computer games with a touchpad especially games like League of Legends.

Couldn't agree more with the touchpads, especially with my laptop not being able to register that you're clicking on something unless you're pressing hard on the button. (That's a defect on the manufacturer's part.) Other than that I love everything else.

DDR3 is in currently being phased out by DDR4, thus its cost is going up as it's manufacturing declines. When you read 'ram is cheap these days' or 'cpus are cheap' realize that they're talking in relation to other necessary components in most cases and not to the cost of ram say a decade ago. This is because most hobbyists (the market for the magazine you're reading) generally build a computer from scratch, or with a few modern components from a previous build, thus they'll give themselves a budget for the entire build and it's helpful to know what's the best component value now and what's best to buy as an upgrade later.

You can still do a restore to a previous point in time as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myAOhB8N3vs

Last edited by ErwinNL on 30 Aug 2017, 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

Q: Which things annoy you about your laptop or desktop PC?
A: In 19 years of having PCs I have yet to find a firewall which keeps the crazy people out of the web.

I've abandoned gaming PCs (boxes i build myself) for gaming laptops, they are more mobile. Major problem is the pricetag. Also the power for USB isn't much so i have an external powered USB hub for some devices.

One major side gripe is the keyboard i got, it has the printscreen (built in screenshot) next to a power button. Really annoying.

I am irked by hardware that does not respect my freedom. i.e. hardware with Intel Boot Guard (no coreboot) or UEFI firmware that does not let me install my own Secure Boot Keys (http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloader ... ng-sb.html)