In article >,
Kate Connally > wrote:
>It finally died and I got a new one for about $60.
>It has a keypad and many functions. I thought they all had
>number keypads these days. I've never seen one that has
>what the OP describes. So, OP, it looks like you didn't do
>your homework and just bought the wrong mw oven. Go out and
>buy the right one! Sheesh!

Microwaves seem to have followed a strange curve.

In 1999, I bought my first one for $80, and it had the buttons,
but they were arranged strangely. Instead of being four rows
of three buttons, it was two rows of five buttons. I think
that's why it was cheaper.

In fact, I think a lot of kitchen appliances are cheap because they
have bad interfaces. I used to have a rickety-cheap toaster oven
that I used all the time, for toast, muffins, frozen tater tots,
and other stuff I didn't want to bother using the big oven for. It
had two knobs: one for the temperature and one for toast darkness,
and a "toast" button. Then my parents bought me a fancy-cheap
toaster oven, with a little convection fan that makes things cook
faster. Neat, but it has three knobs now: mode, timer, and
temperature. If you want to toast, you have to first set the mode
and temperature knobs to their "toast" setting, then move the timer
past the 20-minute mark so it knows to turn the oven on, THEN move
the timer to the desired toast darkness. And it always burns the
toast, always always. So I never use it anymore.

--
Nick Bensema > AIM: NBensema
==== ======= ============== http://www.io.com/~nickb/