What were they thinking?

That's a question I often ask myself when I get new hardware equipment. For instance with LCD's.  Most of the new LCD"s I end up buying for work are displayport.  I've ranted already how the company who fixes our monitors did not have even a displayport card to test out monitors they fixed. They expected the client to send them a board to try out the monitor!

Then there's the guy in our IT department, who's worked there for at least a year, who could not tell the difference between displayport and HDMI. One of my employees went to get a displayport cable and was offered 4 different types of HDMI cables. In the end the IT guy asked my employee if the monitor had other ports, when my employee said yes, he suggested to use another port.  I can see it now a client calling tech support complaining our displayport boards don't work with displayport monitors and we answer "Sir our IT guy suggests you use another port!!!!"

Then there's stupid features that are developed for monitors. This is the 2nd brand of LCD where I spot what I call stupid features.  My Benq periodically tells me "your eyes deserve a well-timed rest". I kid you not.  I'm sure my boss would love it if each time my monitor told me my eyes need a rest, that I would go home. Like WTF? 

I have these new Philips displayport LCD's that I just got last week. They look very nice and sleek. And after you turn it on for about 4 minutes it goes into low power mode. So in an office with neon's, you can't see anything on your display. I had to hunt down the feature that does that. I mean  you're sitting there clicking away and suddenly your monitor goes dark. They call this feature a "power sensor". I'm not sure what it senses but seriously having these features turned on by default for shipping is kinda stupid.  I can figure out it's a feature of the monitor, but I wonder how many neophytes would return the monitor because it goes dark? 

I often wonder what the people who design these things are thinking... or maybe they aren't thinking.  I've met a lot of gifted engineers, but I've also met some who design some of the stupidest and most useless features into products. Things that you have no need for and would never see the need for. Like spamming the user with messages on his LCD that his eyes need a well-timed rest!!!!!! Please!