My Computer

[David Jarvie]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 13:04, Chusslove Illich wrote:
>
> Yes, I also didn't find any trace of this particular issue in the slides,
> but the string is a part of the solutions tested there. With "My
> Computer",
> the results are as they are; if another name would be used, we can only
> speculate how it would influence the whole -- perhaps it would do nothing
> to
> the numbers in the slides, perhaps it would improve them, but perhaps it
> would crash and burn them :) Thus, so long as one is not willing to risk
> it,
> "My Computer" is a tested alternative -- along the lines of the local
> saying
> here, "better a sparrow in the hand, than a pigeon on the branch"...

I also can't see anything in the slides to suggest that "My Computer" was
tested as a phrase, except purely incidentally. It just happened to be one
of a number of terms in a much broader test with quite a small sample of
users (half of whom were students - not exactly representative of the
computing population, although KDE may have a higher student user base
than average). So there doesn't really seem to be any evidence that we've
been told about to indicate that it's in any way better in usability terms
than any alternatives.

Personally ever since the early days, and before Microsoft became such a
dominant force, I have always cringed at Microsoft's terms "My Computer",
"My Documents", etc. (It's simply a gut reaction - I can't really explain
it.) I'd really like to see KDE use another term.

-- 
David Jarvie.
KAlarm author & maintainer.
http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm