Letters to PC World, July 2007

Noisy Software

To any software developers who may base their product features on Stephen Manes's columns, especially the May one ["Software That Just Won't Shut Up," Full Disclosure]: Don't listen to him! Thank you.

Seriously, Stephen Manes is entitled to his opinion about the sounds coming from computers, but there have been so many times I have said to myself, "Software should use aural cues much more often than they do," that I just had to write.

Stephen, turn off your speakers, or use the options for your software to make it quiet. As for me, I like the audible notifications, and we could use more--except once (for real), my wife told me she thought there was a strange man in the house while I was gone, and it turned out to be the Avast antivirus software saying the virus database had been updated. (Okay, that one's kind of loud.)

Software developers, please put sounds (soft, quiet ones) in your software, and we'll turn off the ones we don't like.

Marvin Biver, Okeechobee, Florida

I agree with every point Manes made in his article, and I would like to add a few more to his list. But I'm sure we all have our favorites.

I find myself losing more productive time having to constantly babysit antivirus, security-suite, and backup programs as well as needing to update Microsoft programs and add the latest operating system fixes and patches. There really should be a better way.

Can't some engineering software guru write something so that all you have to do is drop these time-consuming programs in a single utility, schedule when the update takes place, and be done with it?

Is there anyone in tech land who can unburden us PC users and make us really productive again?

John Meyer, Northridge, California