OFFBEAT

A time when Windows 7 was Microsoft's latest and greatest

BORK!BORK!BORK! A blast from the past greets customers at a coastal McDonald's, or is it just that the kiosk is seeking a return to the happier and simpler times of 2009?

An eagle-eyed Register reader spotted a very unhappy terminal at a branch of the McDonald's fast-food chain in Worthing, England. Where a customer might normally smear a finger over suggestions for ways to sate their desire for grease, the display instead reveals the kiosk's clearly PC origins: a BIOS utility.

It's not clear what has befallen the kiosk, though something has happened to the hardware that has sent it to the utility screen, which is normally accessible by holding down a key or combination of keys during the boot process. Although the BIOS is dated 2016, the system date is currently set to 2009.

Worthing is a town on the south coast of England, occasionally unfairly and unkindly referred to as "God's waiting room" due to the large retiree population it once had. While the town has long since shed that sobriquet (although it still lacks the hip and trendy traits of neighboring Brighton), it seems that there is one place that would very much like to turn back the clock.

McDonald's.

Cast your mind back to 2009. Bitcoin was launched, an Airbus A320 ditched onto the Hudson River with no fatalities, and US President Barack Obama was sworn in.

Best not to think about how much a Bitcoin acquired then might be worth now.

2009 was also the year Microsoft released Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista and the precursor to the widely derided Windows 8. Microsoft might not have realized it at the time, but this was arguably peak Windows. Sure, Windows 95 was arguably more of a cultural "moment," and XP was an undeniable milestone, but 7 reached heights Microsoft has not matched since.

2009 was also a few years before McDonald's began rolling out touchscreen kiosks to replace the experience of peering over the shoulder of the person behind the counter to see which foodstuffs were ready to go.

Today, the person behind the counter is far less visible, obscured by a line of delivery riders collecting app orders. The BIOS utility screen, however, looks back to an earlier time.

Or, possibly, Worthing is simply 17 years behind the rest of the world. ®