>No, my beef here is not with the speed, but the unnecessary and extremely annoying "bells & whistles" of their computers (Why DOES a fingerprint matching program have to bleep with every print it compares - hundreds a second?). The only time MY 'puter makes a noise is when I get an error message, mail arrives, "You have replies", or when I accidentally hit the caps lock button. It would send me off my cake to hear that cacophony all day.

The false image of computers on TV/film has become a tradition on its own. Pretty much just like any larger ceiling light has to make a thump when it's turned on/off, or that a veering car's wheels have to squeal, even on snow, mud and sand.

> Also, how can rapid keystrokes possibly select a rectangular area of an image to enlarge, and why isn't it done with a mouse?

I thought the software which turns a 50x60 pixel area into a 6 megapixel photo was still in the "Blade runner" only, but then I understood how they do it: they just enlarge the area, then remove the out-of-focus pixels.

>I'm just taking the mickey at their fantastic system integration and how they have every toy possible in that lab (some new ones for a specialist job just happen to be "over in the corner" when they're needed).

I'm still amazed how their spectrograph gives you the correct compound name. Isn't it supposed to give you just the composition of the stuff element-by-element?