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Vox Pop: What default settings would you change?
Merlin Mann | Aug 21 2007
As I am wont to do, I was thinking out loud on Twitter this morning.
I'm convinced that, for better or worse, a lot of computer-related habits come straight out of using the default settings. For example a stock Mail.app install checks your email every 5 minutes (I reset mine to 'Manual') and, without interdiction, Apple's mail program will also create all your new messages as "Rich Text" (Nuh uh. Mine? 'Plain Text'). And then, in some cases, even if you want to do things differently, you have to swim upstream to do so. In the case above, I can't set iCal or gCal's default to anything but 1 hour (any more than I can autoset multiple alarms1). God only knows what poor John Gruber would give to have Mail.app more easily let people quit top-posting. The Question to You:What default settings would you love to change in popular applications? Taken a step further, what excellent habits could be taught to users by looking at defaults as something beyond familiarity and day one ease-of-use? Could the aggressive use of smart or personalized defaults create a generation of short-meeting-makers and intersperse-responders? 68 Comments
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 Windows XP defaults to no...Submitted by Jeremy (not verified) on August 24, 2007 - 12:43pm.
Windows XP defaults to no icons on desktop. You have to customize desktop to see My Computer, IE, Network Places, etc. It should default with these on. Also, IE should default to 'check for new page every visit to page,' not 'only on first visit to page.' ALSO, cell phone voice mail outgoing message should default to just your personal message and a beep. NOT "if you'd like to page this person, hit 1, for mailbox information, hit 2," etc. etc. Agree with the car horn when locking doors, and with IE temporary file cache being way to big. » POSTED IN:
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