This one's mainly to the Americans on the UT.

How can you guys stand using a computer that bleeps, whirrs, squeaks, chirrups and trills at you constantly. I know this cos every US film or TV prog with computers in it - they all do this, even to the extent of blipping at each character (slowly) appearing on screen, as in the old teletypes (e.g. the messages to Nostramo in the Alien films). This would drive me out of my skull.

Your computers are so out of date. They don't even have mice; the operator has to furiously thrash the keyboard for every query, even managing to position and move cross hairs and selecting areas of the screen to zoom in on via the keyboard. The answer, or the hits always sit there flashing and beeping. Over here we'd use a mouse and drag over a rectangular area to select and zoom etc., with but a click of the mouse.

And the software is so out of date. Rather than having menus and selecting from them with a mouse the user has to key in queries such as "How many employees are online?" and "Delete file SECRETS.HGF". Then the message "Delete file SECRETS.HGF?" appears, flashing and beeping, to which you have to type "yes" (which always takes half a minute, by the way). I used to think the US was technologically advanced, now I know the rest of thew world is way ahead of you.

Seriously though, is it because in order to show any MS-like feature on a screen would incur crippling royalties from Uncle Bill? :-)

Terry