Yep. That's Windows 98 keepin' this kiosk alive.

This past Thursday evening, I visited my local Albany, NY movie theater to go see State of Play with a friend. What I was expecting was to be entertained, what I was not expecting was to have my evening nearly ruined by a klunky user interface (UI).

If you just thought to yourself, “this girl is totally exaggerating,” you are 50% correct. I am, but I’m not, really.

It was at this point when I realized that not all movie ticket kiosks (kindof like men) are not made equal. Post-Google research showed that there are many companies who design and distribute these handy machines, but it just so happened that I happened upon a sub-standard one.

Sure, this situation vaguely reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut novel, but there is some truth to it- there are some things that movie ticket theater kiosks should keep in mind.

1. Touch Screen Monitors are a Must: This local albany kiosk had some sort of old-school “the buttons on the sides do not line up with the items on the screen” issue. Not cool.
2. Don’t Time Out after 15 Seconds: The kiosk timed out while I was looking for my credit card. By the time my hand emerged from my (huge) purse with my visa ready to go, I was back to looking at the home screen. really? really?
3. Maintain ‘Em: After a flikr search on the subject, I found a hilarious picture of one kiosk running Windows 98 (see above- embarassing…shouldn’t it be showing the app dashboard) and a friend sent me an iPhone photo that depicts another with the blue screen of death.

Bottom line: Sometimes, it’s OK to embrace when something has reach it’s EOL (end of life)… and it’s ok to move on (like in the case of windows 98). We all did.

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