I recently updated my desktop PC from a 2012 Windows 7 behemoth to a lovely new Windows 11 piece of kit. Nothing too fancy, but it’s nice and does the job quickly and quietly.
There have, inevitably, been some changes in personal computing since I was last in the market. Actual disk drives appear largely to be a thing of the past, as are CD/DVD drives. SD/USB etc ports are also in short supply. Time for what we used to call “peripherals” back in the 1980s.
Today I took delivery of an external drive which does all sorts of things at all sorts of speeds and has all sorts of connections. I say took delivery, and Amazon’s tracking page clearly tells us that the parcel was “handed to resident”. In fact, said resident was not in residence at the time and the parcel was actually dropped over a six foot fence into the back garden. Hm! That quibble aside, the drive is unpacked, plugged in and tested and seems to be performing admirably.
It’s the instructions which have flummoxed me. I assume they were printed in China, given that the item was manufactured there. Perhaps they were printed elsewhere. What is certain is that they were not printed in any country where English is the first language (or German or French, come to that). Well, we are all used to that and we are skilled, nowadays, in the art of reading between, across and through the lines. Heaven knows the interweb is full of hilarious translations that went wrong.
Anyway, none of today’s booklet would win a literary prize, but I thought I would share one particular line which has intrigued me. It is right up front, in the important dos and don’ts, as “Note 9”.
It reads:
“Don’t put this item on the vulnerable squeeze place, to ensure successfully normal use.”
I’m worried. I don’t think I have a vulnerable squeeze place. I’m not sure I ever had one. Worse still – perhaps I did and I’ve forgotten.
The best I can say, dear reader, is that I shall be careful but, should I happen across such a place in using this new IT marvel, you will be the first to know.
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PS – The latter pages of the instruction booklet are no help. They variously identify the same location as either “le lieu de compression vulnérable“ or “die gefährdete Quetschstelle”.
fortynine + one up 