If windows 95 starts and nobody hears it?....
If you were lucky enough to have Windows 95 plus, it had 'themes' which included nice high colour icons (better looking than the modern flat efforts), and sound schemes. Every time you clicked a button / maximise / minimise etc it would make a little sound.
I usually use vibrate now, and have actually seen on a colleague's twitter him complaining about the noise of phones vibrating on desks. Though I also get the phantom vibrates, and miss calls with the phone in my pocket having not felt the vibrate.
A few weeks ago I had to run my wife to A&E with sleeping infant in tow. While waiting, some annoying chav girl kept typing on her mobile which had noises for the oncscreen keyboard. It was just "tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap...." constantly. Of course she seen woke baby up, to which she got a glare and a tut and a hint to put it to silent.
But I'll admit that in the past I've been the phone user with my shiny new Nokia 3310, annoying other people in the pubs by showing off to my pals the polyphonic ringtones. The girl in the table beside us got - quite rightly - annoyed and threatened that the Nokia would visit a very dark place. I'd bet it would've survived that trip anyway.
Those of us who were too stingy to buy the polyphonic ringtones from those listings in the back of the newspapers (together with 'no fear' or cannabis leaf 40x20 pixel wallpapers) could always find a site with the notes to type them in. This was the modern day equivalent of writing BASIC listings, except you didn't have a clue what each symbol meant. And inevitably there were errors, meaning it never quite sounded like the sound you wanted.
When I finally got a phone what could use .mp3 / .wav sounds for notificiations I took a Sonic phase and used the 1up sound for messages, and green hill zone as ringtone.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
