I almost went crazy within a matter of 10 minutes.

The fateful moment arrived when my computer booted up with Windows Vista. My 9-year old son who was standing next to me pointed to a blue icon on the startup screen and asked what that was. Unwittingly I clicked on that icon and he wanted to try this feature called Narrator to which I naively obliged.

Once I logged in, Narrator started up and started reeling of all the text on the screen. Initially it was very funny how it pronounced words. Soon I started to wonder how somebody with visual impairment could find value in the narration. For instance, when I clicked on the start menu, the narrator started reeling off all the options on the start menu one after the other. What is the point in reading off all the options? Better would have been narrating an option only when the mouse hovered over one of them.

Within a couple of minutes, I realized that I had unleashed a demon. The narrator rapidly transitioned from being funny to annoying. Naturally I poked through all the options on the Microsoft Narrator application window that had popped open upon my login. True to the Vista spirit of unintuitive UI design, I found every option but one that would disable the narrator feature.

My next stop was the quickhelp option and then the windows help option. By now I was frantically typing “turn off narrator” in the help search field while the narrator’s female voice was obdurately reeling off every word on the screen. Good grief Microsoft, none of the help topics described how to turn off the feature.

Duh, why didn’t I try running a Google search to find help regarding a windows “feature”? Its search results bring up a slew of links where posters were livid with desperation due to their inability to turn off the @#&% feature. As is yet another classic Vista trait, the solution was obscure: go to the Start menu, then Accessories, Ease of Access, Ease of Access Center, Use the computer without a display. Now, uncheck the option for Windows Narrator.

Phew! I slumped back in my chair and enjoyed the next few moments of silence..