I think its a north American kind of thing, I noticed that whether it be cars, toasters, power bars, you-name-it, they are usually littered with controls and LED’s.
Sadly the designers will probably ‘fix’ this by adding a ‘sandwich’ button 
The time control is about the only specific feature of a microwave that is important to me. 15 seconds can ruin a good sandwich, where as 10 second can leave it too cold. Not too hard to do it either.
[1]
[2]
[Start]
In the case of the User’s Responsibilities with the microwave, they only have to keep track of time. Power is okay for more advanced users, in which case the [Power+] and [Power-] buttons serve fine. Though, I’ve never had an excuse to use them.
The add 30 second button is amazing. Sure I have to press it a bunch, but it doesn’t require much thinking.
I have a toaster oven with a timer dial, and it works great. Except for one interesting little quirk: the timer doesn’t even need electricity to work. If I unplug the toaster oven for some reason, and forget to plug it back in, I only notice when the timer goes off 10 minutes later and I find my food stone cold.
If you only want to apply microwaves for an approximate amount of time (until the dial wears out and does something funky, like turn on all the time or never), the dial is fine.
The digital interface allows for more precission, more features and less physical wear.
Beyond that, anyone overwhelmed by a few buttons on the front of a microwave might want to reconsider using a microwave in the first place.
“Beyond that, anyone overwhelmed by a few buttons on the front of a microwave might want to reconsider using a microwave in the first place.”
Isn’t that the same idealogy the *ix folks have on operating systems?
Everytime I see 10:24 on digital clocks I think “Wee! It’s 2^10 o’clock!”
Many, many years ago when my mother bought her first microwave she deliberately bought one of the last models that had a knob (time) and a slider (power) as all the new models had the keypad. Recently we replaced our microwave and I was delighted to find one with two knobs - not even a start button! Perfect.
Everytime I see 10:24 on digital clocks I think “Wee! It’s 2^10 o’clock!”
Neeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrdddddddddddddddssssssss! http://www.sillyape.org/trash/nerds.jpg
Yeah, I stupidly sold my two-knob microwave to work (they wanted a cheap uWave, I didn’t need mine at the time), but now I do need it we’ve ended up with this hideous thing that doesn’t even have a one-button start mode. That is the rescue mode for many of the stupid UIs out there - if you hit “start” you get 1 minute at full power, and it’s all a lot of people ever use. Our new one, on the other hand, requires me to hit time-numbers-start and the time+start buttons are in the middle of a bank of 2x3, so I actually have to look closely before hitting the buttons. FFS!
I hate my knobbed microwave at work, actually–they try to solve the precision for small times problem by relating rotation to time quadradically with an unlabeled dial and an LED display, so the only way to know how far you’ve gone is to bend over close to the display. Ugh.
I too like the simplicity of the older microwaves.
Recently though I’ve become a fan of the new microwave at work. It has an ‘auto reheat’ button.
Just put in whatever you want to reheat, press the button, come back when it’s done. It’s pretty good at heating whatever I put in there to the expected temperature.
Digital controls don’t bother me. What bothers me is the idiocy and counter-intuitive nature of newer microwave controls.
The one I had around the house was simple - you typed in a time and pressed start. It then did its thing for the next however many minutes and seconds, then beeped when it was done.
What we have at work is a number pad that jumps to “x minutes” based on the number you push. This isn’t really expected behavior and you lose the ability to input any precise amount of time… at least from what I’ve seen. I haven’t examined too closely for fear of discovering the “incinerate user” button.
I concur.
My previous microwave cost me AUD400, had all the digital crap on it and blew up because the heat from control pad and the LED display attracted bugs which fried the circuit board.
I went out and bought an old fashioned made in china 80 dollar one with the dial. Cooks better and doesn’t attract bugs.
Dials aren’t always perfect. My alarm clock has has a dial with 3 settings - off, radio, and alarm - in that order. If I wake up early before the alarm goes off and want to turn it off so that it doesn’t wake my wife up, I must turn it through the radio setting to get it to off. No matter how fast I do it, the radio still goes on for a second or two, which usually wakes her up.
But what if you need to nuke something for, say, 5 seconds?
Turn the knob forward, wait five seconds, then turn the knob back.
Honestly.
You could make a more simple microwave knob that would actually be useful. But I haven’t seen it yet. The first minute should be a quarter of the knob; the second should be the next quarter; and from then on it should be graded upwards to 20 minutes or so. Or something along those lines. The imprecision of such knobs to work for small times is irritating as hell.
Oh, and one more idea—maybe we could just leave it up to the ol’ free market here?
I mean, I like microwaves without knobs. You like microwaves with knobs. You buy the ones with the knobs, I’ll get the ones with the buttons.
I know, it’s a silly little point to make, but we needn’t pretend that the entire world is going to like the same interface. If the microwave display were entirely virtual, of course, we could have both. But in most “real world” applications you can’t. Fortunately we’re really just concerned with software here, right?
Hit [popcorn] setting, then [start]. Usually works for most stuff. May blow up some hotdogs.
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