Bill Gates Acknowledges Ctrl+Alt+Del Was a Mistake

theodp writes "If he'd had his druthers, Bill Gates told a Harvard audience, Ctrl+Alt+Del would never have seen the light of day. However, an IBM keyboard designer didn't want to give Microsoft a single button to start things up, and thus the iconic three-finger-salute was born."

There you have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even bill gates does not approve of Ctrl+Alt+Del [cad-comic.com]

So why continue it...

[nschubach]

Once they got the "Windows Key", why did they continue using the Ctrl + Alt + Delete?

Could have been worse than Ctrl + Alt + Del

[MiniMike]

I'm just glad we didn't have to do something like Ctrl + Alt + Del + F6 + Esc + (number pad) Enter for the same functionality.

Re:Why would you want a single button???

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Who in their right mind would want that in a single key??

Data recovery companies?

Re:Redundant keys

[__aaeihw9960]

Semicolon; damnit; why don;t people use that one more often; I find it can replace all other punctuation;

Re:Redundant keys

[MiniMike]

But people who type properly use both shift keys.

Many keyboards have a space between the Esc and F1 keys. I heard somewhere that to allow for adding undetermined capabilities later, they originally wanted to add another key in that space. As it would be for undetermined functionality, and to keep with the naming scheme of the other function keys, this key was to be labelled "FU". While the actual key was never adopted, it's spirit has lived on in every release of Windows.

Re:Makes sense

[SJHillman]

But then managers would hit it every time they went to change their password Post-It.

Rebooting the linux servers.

[ls671]

I used to work for a small company where we had 10 Linux servers and 1 windows NT box hooked to a Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) switch. My boss was using the windows server for Webtrends.

He would never check which server he was on before pressing ctrl-alt-del to login so he would reboot the Linux servers at random causing customers to phone us because they were offline.

Gladly enough, ctrl-alt-del isn't as hardcoded in Linux that it is in Windows. All I had to do is modify the init scripts to ignore ctrl-alt-del so that solved our problem.

Re:So why continue it...

[jones_supa]

Thank god we are at least past the era in which pressing the Win key or Alt-Tabbing in a game would jam the whole operating system.

Re:Redundant keys

[JazzLad]

Bah, I find my right index finger works well on all keys. I've seen people feel all high and mighty because they use both index fingers, but I find 1 to be good enough for me. Whew, after typing all that, I need to take a break!

Re:No, Caps Lock was the big mistake

[isorox]

Caps Lock should've been a no-op placebo, like a lot of those pedestrian light-change request buttons at intersections.

Ctrl-Alt-Delete was actually a reasonable solution for the time, except maybe for certain handicapped users. Make sure the user never hits the reboot key by mistake.

CAPS LOCK IS WONDERFUL, I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT

Re:Redundant keys

[femtobyte]

If I ever find myself on a Windows machine, I figure woe already done gone betided me.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Redundant keys

[Lumpy]

You are an abnormal lefty, as my wife and I both mouse with the left hand and use the right hand ctl,alt,shift keys.

My sample of Two is 200% more than your sample of one so it makes it more better.

Re:Redundant keys

[Lumpy]

Enter Sandman would have been better. Both more honest and far more bitchin'

Exit Light,
Enter Night,
Take my hand.....
We're off to never-never land...