Offbeat
Customers left staring at restart plea with no keyboard, mouse, or hope
BORK!BORK!BORK! “Let’s cross this one off your list”
are words to strike fear into the hearts of many a Windows user, particularly
when they appear on some Post Office digital signage.
Spotted by an eagle-eyed Register
reader in East Dulwich, London, the screen is one of two public displays designed to entertain and inform customers waiting to be ignored by a
member of staff.
The Post Office is a place where objects
can be sent and forms completed or collected. It is normally identifiable
by a queue of depressed citizens snaking toward (and sometimes beyond) the door,
and an impressive ability to have not quite enough staff to ensure all
available positions are open.
Here, Windows is thankfully relegated to serving up information rather than the all-important task of announcing available counters. The English may be patient queuers, but even they would baulk at a mechanical voice declaring “IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL”, followed by the news that Windows needed to dump its memory before service could resume.
That said, using Microsoft’s finest to run an information
screen does seem overkill. “I’ve always been
amazed that a full-fat OS is used on a system that only has to perform a
trivial function,” our reader noted, and we’d have to agree, particularly when Windows, in this instance, doesn’t even seem able to do that right.
The message, in theory, is helpful. Windows needs an update and is politely asking when a good time would be. The
problem is that, without a keyboard and mouse is available nobody in the queue can
help. And, frankly, Windows shouldn’t need to ask.Â
Considering the opening
times of the average Post Office, there is plenty of time when the doors are
locked, and there are no punters on hand to witness the operating system giving
itself a jolly good update, with a cheeky reboot or two to finish the job. ®
