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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Fwd: Opinions on gnome2 / KDE - continued. screenshots!
From:       Uno Engborg <uno () webworks ! se>
Date:       2002-07-25 9:56:03
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Michael Peligro wrote:

>
>  
>
>Gee, you have an advanced time-synchronization setup. 
>
>Your preferences not to set the time is a power-user preference.
>

Yes, you are right about that,  at least if  we limit ourselves to KDE 
tools.
Then you would have had to edit /etc/ntp.conf by hand. There are a default
example to follow, but just the same it is not somthing a person with little
computer experience would normally do.

The situation gets somewaht better if I the Gnome tool for setting time and
timezone that RedHat provides in my distro. I don't know if that tool 
belongs
to Gnome or RedHat though. But I still have to know the name of a suitable
time server.

So why not make this power user thing, simple enough to use by less geeky
people. Why not add  a checkbox to the "Control Center"->"System"->"Date 
& Time"
enabling the use of a time server. If it was active a timeserver textfield
could be activated. Naturally with a default value based on your chosen 
locale
already set.


>I guess my preference closely aligns with home user, office user.
>


Yes,  setting the time yourself in that kind of environments pose little 
problems.
Your sound might stop working until you log out and in again, or your 
artsd daemon was restarted
but that would probably be about all that happened in this kind of 
environment.

But to work , and don't severely  mess things up in a corporate 
environment you would really need
to protect the time  setting with a root password, in all types of 
settups. Sending up a please give
me the root password dialog is just annoying to the user. It just tells 
him that  here's another thing
he is not trusted to do. And from the user perspective its just a 
"simple" thing like setting the time.
So I still think that settings like this are best hidden away in the 
"Control Center"

>
>We do have different needs, but I believe the option to set the time should be 
>there for us ordinary users. Most of us rely on our computer's CMOS clock 
>lithium battery to keep time. We don't have an indicator when this battery 
>will run out of juice, but when that happens, I'd like to power down the 
>computer, replace the battery, boot-up again... 
>
Most computers have ended up in the scrap yard long before that happens.
So I don't think this is a  big isssue for most users. If you have to call
the person in yor familly that holds the root password once every seventh
year or so I don't think he would mind. By that time you probably have
reinstalled/upgraded your OS at least once, and at that  time you could 
also change
the battery as well to be on the safe side. Doing this may actually prolong
the life of your computer as the specific kind of battery your computer 
needs
may even be discontinued from production by the time it have run out of 
power.


Regards
Uno Engborg

["smime.p7s" (application/x-pkcs7-signature)]
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