This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Eric DVH: Removed the following:
Often, the computer will finish analyzing or downloading some data and it will beep to alert a waiting character that it is done.
- Real world example: Windows Vista's UAC. It beeps every time it pops up, it alerts you about "potential security breaches", and it pops up all the time! (seriously driving people who actually have to work with the system nuts.)
- Another real-life example: Mac OS X firmware updates. After you download the update, a window pops up telling you how to restart the computer and perform the update and describes what will happen. The window tells you the computer will beep...but what it doesn't tell you is that the beep will be uncommonly and incredibly loud. Fortunately, you don't have to do this very often.
- In yet another real-life example, when WinAce finishes extracting something very large, it beeps loudly. Not over the headphones, either.
Virtually every program ever written for every computer does this, it's called alert sounds, and they're used whenever the programmer wants the user's attention. I think this trope should be about something uncommon in real computers, namely computers making noises ALL THE TIME rather than just when they want to alert the user to something.
Floating Root Beer: The last few examples in Real Life would be better off in a Troper Tales page. Could someone else start off a page for me?
