On Wed, 9 Jan 2008 20:31:14 -0000, "solar penguin"
wrote:

Sadly, they've phased out the ticket vending machines that have
different buttons for each destination,

You mean the ones that only issued a limited number of destinations?

and replaced them with those
awful new ones with touch screens.

Which offer all walk-on ticket types to all destinations, rather more
useful?

Not that it's obvious that they're
touch screens. The very first time you use one, you're looking you
waste a lot of time looking for some mouse-style thing to control it!

The ex-Silverlink ones say "Please touch the screen to begin" on the
front screen. The only counter-intuitive bit is the credit card PIN
pad where you have to move away from it, but this is understandable
for security reasons.

As you type, the list of stations above it gets whittled down until
there's only one left matching what you typed. You then have to select
that one. Why!?! If it's the only one matching, it's obviously the
only one you could want. Why do they make you do extra work by
selecting it? It should just select itself automatically.

It shouldn't, for the main reason that it's very poor user-interface
design to carry out a screen change or refresh that wasn't initiated
by the user, as that kind of thing causes confusion, especially if it
was whittled down to one by typing something wrong!

It's _much_ quicker and less complex to ust say "Return, Belvedere,
please," than all that messing about with the touch screens.

It takes me approximately 5-10 seconds to select the ticket I want, if
I know what it is (normally a Saver Return, routed Any Permitted, to
the given destination), on the Scheidt and Bachmann machines. Payment
takes a short while longer, as does printing, but then it would at a
manual window as well.

The Deutsche Bahn machines, while very comprehensive, are *far* slower
and *far* less intuitive.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.