Why is it that table and desk lamps are so badly designed nowadays, I have several I have bought over the past couple of years and not one of them is ideal. It's not as if getting it right would be difficult, it's just total lack of thought about the design.
There are several problems, as follows:-
- You can't simply turn the light on and off. Most lamps now have ways of adjusting brightness and some even have colour temperature settings. These are all very handy but you don't want to have to go through lots of settings every time you turn the light on or off, you just want to turn it on and off. (Torches also suffer from this, torches I have to click more than once to turn off drive me crazy!)
- The on/off switches are 'quirky' in some cases. I have one light where you push a switch on the end of the light to turn it on and off, the trouble is you have to hold the light with your other hand to do this otherwise it falls over. If they had used a touch sensitive switch in this position it would work well but, almost to make it awkward on purpose, it's a clicky switch that needs a push. Another lamp I have has a switch in the cable which I can see no good reason for, it's difficult to find!
- One desk lamp that I have that's *almost* Ok has a very silly fault, the controls are on the flat base of the lamp and it has a separate control for on/off so doesn't have problem 1 above. But, for some wonky reason, the controls are lit only when the light is on, completely pointless as then they are illuminated by the light itself. They are nice, small, low-powered blue LED indicators and would be perfectly OK to have on in the dark, quite pointless when the light is on!
If I could mix and match the features of my several lamps I could get a sensibly designed lamp, none of them was desperately expensive so it's not cost that dictates the bad design, it's just lack of bothering to think about it.
Ggggrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!! :-)