I'm the trouble starter, punkin' instigator.

[venta]

Having recently spent a little time investigating new cookers, I am curious to know your opinion on the ignition buttons on gas hobs. Your answer is unlikely to affect my cooker-purchasing actions, but having discovered in the pub last night what an unexpectedly polarising question this is, I'm now curious...

[Poll #2060995]

Comments

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I used a swanky expensive new induction hob for cooking a Christmas dinner at my brother's house. It was better than I thought in that it works pretty well for heating up and cooling down fast when you want it compared to other electric cookers I've used, but still not as responsive as gas.

It was even worse than I thought in terms of UI. The controls are touch-sensitive but not very sensitive, are completely devoid of any tactile indication or feedback (the control panel is completely flush and is under a single pane of glass that also covers the rings). They were also very poor in usability terms. For instance, there is a + button and a - button, and sometimes but not always you have to press the button of the ring you want to adjust before pressing the + or - button. There was also a degree of modality to the interface that I didn't fully grasp: there's a fast-heat mode that heats up very fast, but it's not obvious from the display how to trigger that, how to stop it or - indeed - that it even exists. It was easy to mistake numbers (indicating ring on on a scale from 1-9) from other indications (notably P which I think was the rapid-heat mode, and H and h, which I think meant 'off but still very hot' and 'off but still quite hot' - though again I'm not sure) on the seven-segment LED displays. Sometimes but not always there was an annoying 80s-style beep in response to detected buttonpresses. It's also not easy to quickly check that it is turned off, because of the H and h signs and other little LED dots that I didn't fully understand the significance of. I never fully understood whether it had an 'off' and 'on mode distinct from when there was heat going on or not.

The killer for me was that all this interface gubbins means that there must be code running it, and all code has bugs. I expect to do a lot of informal tech support for my extended family over the Christmas break, which often involves power-cycling. This was the first time I had to do it to a cooker. At one point my sister-in-law was in some distress because the controls were all flashing red, it was beeping away, and unresponsive to user input. Turning it off and on again at the main isolation switch fixed it.

I really don't want a cooker with that much UI frustration.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, that confirms the prejudices I had, but thought might be outdated, so I am happy to read it ;)

I had been assuming those buttonless-button things would be great, because easy to clean, but saying that triggered a huge rant from a friend. Mostly along the lines of jabbing repeatedly at the button wouldn't turn it on, but the lightest brush of a sleeve when you weren't intending it will turn it on every time.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

It was definitely easy to clean. But I concur with your friend's view.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Mum was right!