Someone took our microwave from the collection pile today. The thing was about twenty years old, and had started making explosion noises when we turned it on, so we had to get a knew one. It's a pitty, becasue that thing was the easiest machine in the world to drive. Instead of having a bunch of buttons that said things like "Potatoes", it had two dials; one for power and one for time-which also spun backwards to act as the timer. Behind the doof frame was a sticker that had recommended times on it, nut it was really up to you how much you cooked things. The dials were huge, and had a nice bit of tactile feedback in them, unlike the squares you push on the new machine. It had no clock, and instead of a chime it had an actual bell that I think was connected to the timer dial. Unfortunately- as well as the aformentioned explosions- the sheilding was going, and it horrible fake wood veneer that was peeling off.
I'm not just getting nostalgic here. This was a machine that did just what it was supposed to and nothing more. The controls were uncluttered and intuitive, and didn't try and second guess what people wanted to do with it (what if I don't want to cook potatoes?). I kinda think that if you combined a modern magnetron with some dials and a lack of clock-and made it white- you could build a better microwave.
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2 comments:
I think you had the same microwave that we used to have until maybe ten years ago. Sounds pretty similar.
Since then, we are now on our third microwave... i think.
They made things much better back-in-the-day... :(
Either that, or everything runs too hard/often these days.
We used to have a microwave like that as well, but it died a little while back. I'm impressed that the things lasted as long as they did.
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