Most companies do not seem to think that giving the user choice is a wise thing to do. If you have ever installed a Windows operating system you probably know what I mean. But this article is less about Windows but about the general lack of choice in consumer products and one of the best examples that is affecting me day in day out is the blue blinking light of my Nokia N73 mobile phone.

The phone is starting to blink blue every five seconds or so if it is in sleep mode. Sleep mode has the advantage that the phone is using less battery. It is only possible to turn off the blue light if sleep mode is turned off which would mean that the battery of the phone would drain faster.

Nokia did not think that it would be necessary to give the user the choice to turn of the blue light of the phone but still offer him the choice to keep the sleep mode. The phone has to be placed with the face down to avoid the blue light which is annoying at night.

That’s a case of bad choice on behalf of Nokia to give the user no choice at all but to live with it. I really cannot see the reason why they decided to construct it that way. I also fail to see why Microsoft is not giving its users more choice when installing Windows.

Most customers can probably live happily without facing choices which could make the products more difficulty but that’s where custom setups and settings come into play.Give the average user the default installation but please provide experienced users with a way to customize the product accordingly.

Have you discovered a product like the Nokia N73 that is giving you no choice but to use a feature that you do not need? Let me know about them.

I mean, I know when my mobile phone is turned on and just in sleep mode which means that the blinking blue light of the Nokia N73 is completely useless. The problem is that you can turn it off but this also means that you turn of sleep mode which in turn means that your mobile is wasting more battery.

To turn it off you navigate to: Menu -> Tools -> Settings -> Phone -> Display -> SLEEP MODE => off. This sends the blue light and the sleep mode to Nirvana which is probably not such a good idea. An alternative would be to place the phone with the front on the desk to get rid of the light without disabling sleep mode.

I’m not sure why there is no option to turn of the light only and still keep the sleep mode. Nokia, it is time for a firmware update that fixes this problem.