Gates provides an odd answer, and somewhat shifting blame.
He's essentially saying he would have preferred a single "Reboot" key on the keyboard, then would have used that to begin the login sequence?
He's essentially saying he would have preferred a single "Reboot" key on the keyboard, then would have used that to begin the login sequence?
At least one computer has been released with a dedicated secure attention button - the NEC Versa LitePad was a ~2003 tablet running Windows XP. It had no physical keyboard, relying instead on handwriting recognition or an on screen keyboard, but it had a dedicated button with a picture of a key on to begin the login sequence. It's the middle button at the top in [2].
(if you're wondering, the other buttons were rotate screen, escape, Fn, up/down, power on/off and wireless on/off)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_attention_key [2] http://digichar.com/imgs/a/b/i/w/q/nec_versa_litepad_vl___pa...
> Given Microsoft's predilection for adding buttons for all other sorts of things in the 90's, I don't understand why this never happened.
Probably because those other buttons were 'just' meant to add functionality, so that users without them would just get a less-assisted-but-still-functional environment; whereas requiring a special key on a keyboard just to log in would have left legacy users unable to do so, a situation which (they and therefore) Microsoft would surely find untenable.