Whatever happened to analog volume control anyways?

These days, all these new laptops use "new innovative" volume controls, like touch-sensitive, or digital, or keyboard keys and what not... and I hate it!
These solutions always only give you the options to "volume up" or "volume down", and there's no way to tell whether you've reached max/min volume or not with your eyes closed... Not to mention, it's either less accurate, or more annoying than analog!

What happened to the old fashioned analog slide-wheel volume controllers, like this one or this one (don't really know what they're called)?

 

I've never, ever, seen a laptop with a dial. I prefer having phyiscal buttons (which my laptop does) but I have never once seen a dial.

As far as other electronics are concerned, I agree, and it seems that the dial is making a comeback. Look at stereos in cars nowadays, and more desktop keyboards seem to be moving to dial setups.

Greg

 

nowadays where iphones are hip, real controls with haptic that allow you to blindly control them are on the rare side and it sucks. being a dj i know what it means to feel your control.. and i'd love to have that on my notebook.. not just for audio.. screen brightness f.e., too.

 

My Toshiba x205 SLI1 has an 'analogue' HW wheel on the front. It was a selling point to be sure.

 

it sure is.. it's a bit like the led on cellphones.. first, they plugged them in for the "flashlight", and now they remove it again for a real flashlight.. in every cellphone generation i get, i always ask for the led light in there, as it's one of the most useful tool as a pc supporter or dj to illuminate the tiny things you work with (cables, in the pc, etc..).

usability features so often get forgotten.. it's really sad.

 

The Toshiba F series has them, but they are older Pentium M systems.
My Mitac Minote 8355 has one.

I would rather have buttons than a scrolling audio wheel

K-TRON

 

i think most toshiba lappys have "the wheel"

 

My old Packard Bell had a volume dial too, and it was amazing... It's really a let down to see so little laptops retaining that feature.

 

i would even like to use the touchregion i have for audio adjustment, if it would allow direct adjustment.. means if i click on the left part, i get silence, and on the right part, full audio. i really hate to have only indirect control to audio (louder, less loud) than direct control (silence, quiet, .. very loud).

this again, a bit from the dj standpoint. faders are great

 

MY previous M60 had one, and it was one of the single best features on the laptop. It worked under any conditions, and was very sensitive. MY new P300 has one too, but it is not an analogue wheel - it only works when windows is fully loaded, and it simply controls the volume control in windows OS. It is also requires aggressive spinning to reduce the volume.

 

yeah, the best thing was to adjust volume _BEFORE_ the system was loaded.. i remember one time we booted a laptop in class and the teacher told us "but be quiet or i'll take it away!!".. guess what, no hardware volume control.. and those in the days with the long welcome to windows jingles

 

In Vista you are able to set the system sounds volume separately from the master volume, so startup volume can be set to quiet.

 

Isn't the one on the P300 a continuous wheel? That doesn't qualify as "analog" to me because the point of an analog dial is, as most of you said, the ability to change volume under any condition.

 

My old acer 5920G had an analogue volume wheel. It rocked.

 

It is, but it doesn't directly control the volume like it did on my M60 - it alters it through windows OS software.

 

I know that objectively, it is an analog control.

That's why I said "to me".

 

those died ... kinda because we live in digital era already.

 

Yea but unfortunately, innovation ended up being a step back in this case.