Re: automatic climate control

[Robert Houk - WorkGroup Server Firmware <Robert.Houk@East.Sun.COM>]

   It has gotten rather cool here in Buckingham Pennsylvania over the past 4
   or 5 days.  My 95 S6 seems to love the temperature and air quality, it is
   running better than ever.  Perhaps some of you can enlighten me on the
   climate control system a little.  When I press the AUTO button, no matter
   what the outside temperature, (52 F this morning), and no matter what I set
   the temperature on the system, the a/c symbol lights up, and you can hear a
   relay clicking in the dash, presumably to turn on the a/c on.  I am a
   little surprised that the system is not sophisticated enough to recognize
   when a/c is not needed, hence automatic climate control.  Is there a
   problem with my system or is this simply something I should get used to? 
   Please forgive the childish questions, this is my first Audi.

No, it is not a "childish" question, it is a perfectly reasonable
and intelligent question.

The allegedly "smart" automatic climate control is one of the most
<insert assortment of trenchant four-letter Anglo-Saxonisms here>
brain-dead examples of "smart" that I have ever had the mispleasure
of suffering.

It will continue to operate the A/C all the way down to the 30s (F),
right until it decides it is unsafe to do so and refuses to let you
have the A/C at all, even if your windows are fogging over terribly
in rainy wet humidiferous 34F weather.

Just hit the A/C (snowflake icon) button to manually override and
shut the <...> thing off.

It is an oh-so-incredibly-annoying example of rampant stupidity (and
other non-G-rated actions) in an otherwise pretty-fine example of
engineering . . . it is the singular aspect that is most likely to
make me decide not to buy an S4 (assuming it is not priced above
the $trato$phere$omewhere$...and assuming they actually become
available...)!

Deep Heavy Sigh.

					-RDH