Comments on: Product idea: Simple hardware to “mute” your laptop

By: Spencer Claiborne

Spencer Claiborne — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:39:26 +0000

I have a mute button on my HP DV5, its touch sensitive so i touch it and it shuts the computer up.

Simple as that.

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:27:40 +0000

I discovered that my MacBook Pro maintains two audio settings: one for the built-in speakers, and one for the audio-out jack (used for external devices, typically headphones). I normally have the built-in speakers muted. All I have to do is plug in my headphones, and I have sound, at the volume setting I last set when using the headphones. I unplug the headphones, and the audio goes back to “mute”.

This isn’t exactly the “shut up” button you described, but it is a very handy behaviour, which, as far as I can tell, is totally undocumented. Why does Apple hide such thoughtful features?

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:26:25 +0000

I discovered that my MacBook Pro maintains two audio settings: one for the built-in speakers, and one for the audio-out jack (used for external devices, typically headphones). I normally have the built-in speakers muted. All I have to do i plug in my headphones, and I have sound, at the volume setting I last set when using the headphones. I unplug the headphones, and the audio goes back to “mute”.

This isn’t exactly the “shut up” button you described, but it is a very handy behaviour, which, as far as I can tell, is totally undocumented. Why does Apple hide such thoughtful features?

By: rakesh

rakesh — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:16:41 +0000

The problem with just a button– well, first, a lot of laptops (including my MSI Wind netbook) don’t have any such button. And two, when it’s a button like I’ve seen on Dell laptops, you never know whether you’re starting off with the sound on or off. In the middle of someone else’s presentation, you open your laptop and the sound happens to be on — bam, your laptop makes some distracting noise that interrupts the presentation! So a hard switch that you can glance at and know whether it’s on or off would be ideal IMO.

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:55:59 +0000

I’m a little confused here, but perhaps because my Dell Latitude laptops have always been fairly easy to mute. My current one has a nice big button at the top of the keyboard for this purpose. Is this what you’re thinking of?

But if your computer is lacking this functionality, you can create a “simple headphone jack gizmo” yourself, assuming you have some old headphones or other unwanted device with a 1/8-inch jack. Cut the cable where you will and presto!