My sister and I recently bought our dad a microwave. Dad’s not a big technology fan. He’s at home with a typewriter and a telephone and a television, but that’s about all he needs and perhaps all he can handle.
Jeff Atwood has illustrated perfectly the problems of microwave ovens: most modern models have a heap of different buttons. People who can’t handle technology find this bewildering, and almost everybody else just ignores most of the buttons and presses the Start/30 second button.
We (okay, my sister) ended up shopping around to find one with a knob, rather than the myriad of buttons. It took a bit of hunting, and the only one around was a cheapie brand (Tiffany, which to my mind means cheapie hair-dryers in Target) and not very big. Hopefully it works reliably and is big enough.
7 replies on “When less is more”
Daniel,
yeah, can relate to that. Our microwave at work is very modern and very complicated – lots of buttons to press. Thankfully, if you hit the START button four times, it equates to “2 minutes on High”, which is all I need to heat up my lunch.
Rog.
PS In another workplace, a woman would heat up her depilatory cream in the microwave and after two minutes, the display would read: “Enjoy your meal”.
We did the same for my Nana a couple of years ago. It’s the most basic of models, and she can handle it ok, so I have great confidence in your Dad! :)
Does anybody else have the problem that whenever they hear things like this they wonder what our children will be forced buy us the ‘simplest’ model of so that we can cope with it? I certainly do.
My parents swear by their old analogue model. Sure, it’s not terribly accurate, but it doesn’t really need to be.
My friend has had one of the Tiffany microwaves for years and it is still going strong. It even survived her 3 yr old popping a party pie in unbeknownst to her mum and giving it a good old zap for 30 minutes or so. Did take her a few weeks to get the smell out of the oven and her kitchen though! Let’s hope your dad fares better.
Lyn
reminds me of once putting a party pie in the microwave at a kid’s party. The problem was, it was on a Royal Doultan china saucer. The gold rim created a disco-display until I realised what was happening – Oh well, that’s only one item wrecked of a 48 piece set.
Rog.
I bet that simple microwave oven doesn’t have a standby digital display using up electiricity even when not in use.
A Terrific Green purchase.
Well done.