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April 25th, 2006

Made in USA!

At work we have a new water dispenser. Its control panel lets you get cold water or hot, which requires pressing two buttons at once, presumably to avoid accidental scalding.

What I enjoy most about this dispenser is the display. It rotates between four messages:

  • Pure Water!
  • Made in U.S.A.!
  • For service call…
  • Total consumption: 148 gallons

While the service number and the total consumption are somewhat interesting or useful, the first two items are pointless… especially the second. “Made in U.S.A.!” “Well, good! I’ll trust this to supply me my drinking water because it’s not one of those foreign units!”

According to the site, this machine “[p]rovides a level of performance and programmability never before seen in a point-of-use drinking water system.” You know what that means: it must be hackable.

Any suggestions for replacements for the first two messages?

Posted in Consumer Commentary

Ryan April 25, 2007, 1:40 pm

I’ve been meaning to note since I wrote this Ping that some clever co-workers did indeed figure out how to edit the text on the screen (it wasn’t terribly difficult since there are only a few buttons that one can press). Read about it and see pictures here:

http://www.wcrews.net/blog/index.php?itemid=39

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