New equipment gripes

I have a few gripes with x-ray equipment manufacturers when it comes to their digital radiography (DR) offerings.

• The technique controls are terrible. If you’re going to make the technologists tap buttons on a touch screen to change the technique settings, give them the option of entering values into a text field instead of having to tap tap tap on the screen all the time. I want to go from 60 to 120 kVp without having to tap the screen a million times.
• Give me a way to turn off the stupid collimation mask applied to the images. It’s aggravating when I can’t see something at the edge of the radiation field because it’s blacked out by the mask.
• Give me some kind of reasonably easy to access service mode so I can see the unprocessed images (or at least an image with a linear greyscale applied to it) and enter arbitrary x-ray techniques. Some of the pre-programmed modes are too pre-programmed.
• Include a screen calibration routine for your FSE’s and make it part of the installation and PM procedures. It’s very annoying when you tap on a button and the computer thinks you’ve tapped somewhere else.