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Software Packaging And The Environment?
jayhawk88 asks: "One of my users brought me Microsoft Street and Trips 2001 to install on their laptop yesterday. The box for Street and Trips is fairly large: a little taller than a regular software box, and about 1.5 times wider. The contents, however, are as follows: a standard size jewel case, and a 3-page folded leaflet, that is about half the size or a regular sheet of paper. I'm no environmentalist, but holding the entire contents of this over-sized box in the palm of my hand almost makes me sick. Clearly, this is simply Microsoft spending a pile of cash on packaging to be the biggest and shiniest title on the shelf at CompUSA, but it did get me thinking. Has there ever been a push to 'slim down' software packaging, similar to what happened with CD's in the early 90s? If not, should there be?"
I think the retailers are the people who specify the package dimensions.
Alot will only promote stuff with standard size boxes etc.
Think about bleem!. When it was first released, it wasn't quite the commercial product it is now. But, when it first got to computer stores, it entered the 8.5x11-ish packaging. When it began to sell, the push came to have it more easy to recognize. Then came the humongous boxes. While not particularly environmentally sound, it served the purpose it was designed for.
Keep in mind, however, that we're slowly moving away from shelf-boxes for software into online purchasing - I bought and downloaded Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet (shameless plug) with no paper, or anything else tangible, for that matter, being exchanged. Slimming down the package is secondary now to eliminating it entirely.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
Consumer Reports has a "over packaged hall of fame" thing (can't remember what they call it) they run every month. Three months ago it was 6 cloth napkins from a dept store: Each napkin came in it's own box that was about the size of a desktop computer. It was a pretty funny picture--the napkins are in a tiny pile in the foreground and boxes are mounded up all over the room.
Why not submit Streets Plus (or something else even worse) to CR? It won't stem the tide but it might get people thinking.
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clearly, since we are dealing with microsoft, bloat is going to be an issue. soon, you will need a forklift to get the box that your software comes in from the store to your trunk (if it fits in the trunk, that is...)!
Because no company will reduce thier packaging and therefore shelf space until someone else does it first...
Should there be such a push? Sure. Will there be? I doubt it. Consumers equate the odd or large packaging as containing something special are therefore better. If a seller can provide an interesting box it will increase sales, and can offset the added cost.
In a sea of many choices it's a way to make your product stand out. Theoretically, the better products should be more likely to be able to afford such packaging, but in truth, it can only be used as a very minor factor in determining quality.
Jerrith
ars@iag.net
I think that it would be nice if they slimmed the software boxes down abit, but Software catches my eye alot diffrently than music does....
For the most part, If I like something I Hear on the radio, I go and buy the CD, On the other hand, I buy software cause it has pretty pictures or a nice big shiny box.
As unfortunate as it is that they pack the stuff this way, it is the way to attract people to thier software, who otherwise would have walked on by.
.mincus
I am quite confident that more and more firms will make there software available via download. No packaging whatsoever.
This of course leads to the problem of getting all of your documentation only viewable on screen, but this will be acceptable because 99.4% of all software documentation is not even suitable to line a birdcage with to begin with.
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A lot of playstation games come to mind, being practically just the jewel case, as being "slim" packaging. Nintendo, on the other hand, isn't on the side of slimming down. They do use recycled paper, but not using it at all was certainly objectable to their marketing department. Guess it all comes down to profitability. On another note, I would think software without a physical medium of distrobution (ala shareware/freeware) greatly cuts down packaging.
Microsoft addresses the simple user. When a user walks into a supermarket these days, they see discount software on sale, often with just the Jewel case. Immediately, "cheap" clicks into their heads.
Microsoft, of course, feels it has to show a bigger box. American philosophy: bigger is better.
I agree, way too much packaging. A man named Roger Sorensen who has a sci-fi modeling page, has a section of his site dedicated to overpackaged models. You can see an example JPEG here.
Maybe CompUSA should invest in a garbage compressor? =P
As long as a big shiny box with a single CD rattling around inside sells better than a single CD, There will be no reason for M$ and others to change.. Perhaps as more people buy software online, and vendors change their licenses (You are *NOT ALLOWED* to own an install CD of this product) This will change- But then again maybe not- I've seen a lot of "Internet in a box" packages at the shops- Big shiny boxes with a CD rattling around inside.
air and light and time and space
The worst offender of useless packaging needs to go to the fast food places. They waste far too much on packaging.
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The bigger the box, the less likely someone is going to make it out the door with it stuffed under their shirt..
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It's not the air, it's the the dead trees. CD packaging used to be just as bad, but rather than an authority dicatating CD packaging changes, consumer pressure got the industry to change. We need something similar for software.
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It would seem to me that unless the retailers made it a major issue, that as you say the marketing people will continue to see the benefit of using oversized packaging. Adding to the issue is that some packages deserve their big boxes (ClipArt collections with reference books, compilers and manuals, etc.) Because of the wide variation in "legitimate" package size there is no way for the retailers to reasonably force vendors to use a standard package size. And as long as the retailers are willing to stock it on their shelves the marketing people will play any game they can to increase sales (it is their job after all).
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They call it the "Golden Cocoon Award" (maybe "Golden Cocoon Award of Overpacking" or something like that) and they sometimes show it as part of a feature that they always (at least, last I checked) run on the very last page of the magazine about strange marketting techniques or just plain stupid ploys. There isn't necessarily a Golden Cocoon handed out every issues, they just give them out as they run across deserving products.
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One of the consequences of shopping by the net is that you can put up a big ad on the web, and ship in a little box. OEM software almost always comes like this. Electronic delivery is even better.
But this works to everyone's advantage -- those big boxes cost much more to design, print, glue and ship than a shrink-wrapped jewel case. Businesses can make money off of doing the right thing! Only people who lose are the CompUSAs of the world.
Can this be a poll question? Who still buys software in a store instead of online?
Have you ever noticed how just about every box on a store shelf is of a similar size and shape? Not just software, but cans of peas, soup, cereal, crackers, cookies, etc. If you make your package stand out too much, it won't fit properly and the stores will get mad at the manufacturers.
The other problem for software manufacturers is that if you make your packaging too small it won't be noticed as easily (that's the theory anyway). Marketers know that having a shiny box is very important in impulse decisions, same as with books, and if you make it small people won't see it next to el crapo title even if you have the hotest game of the year.
On another note, one of the more sensible packages I've seen lately is for Homeworld. It actually had a good manual in it, just under half an inch thick. Those big boxes started out containing those useful manuals of olde, but no longer...
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Since nobody could be bothered to give you any dead tree-ware documentation anymore, you'd think they could slim down the boxes. All that space used to be taken up by manuals, but now it's empty. I think if they still want a big shiny surface to catch the eye, they could at least make it a big card with the jewel case and leaflet shrik wrapped on, sorta like how matchbox cars used to be packaged...
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I seem to remember reading that EA (I think) was going to start packaging their games in DVD like containers. I really like that idea, but I haven't heard anything about it for a while.
One solution is to put the nice, glitzy, eye catching - but empty - boxes on the shelves, with a stack of CDs below/beside it. The consumer can oh and ah over the packaging, then just toss the CD into their cart. Nah - too reasonable.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Make the product bigger! Make a push for people to suppy manuals with software, like they used to in the old days! :-)
i don't know about anyone else, but i LOVE those really large boxes taking up space on my shelf at home or in at the office. who needs those pesky trees anyway?
but on a more serious note, our economy seems to be based almost as much on packaging (interpret the term "packaging" loosely) as it is based on the actual products (or lack there of)...i'm not a hardcore environmentalist, but how can we not see something wrong here?
I agree completely that the size of the boxes should be reduced. I really hate walking out of a store wondering if there is actually anything in the huge box I recieved, or if the contents had already been stolen, removed, or subjected to some such action.
Of course, most manufacturers are unwilling to give up the appeal that a large flashy box gives. Still, it seems to me that the situation could all be resolved very easily. Consider DVDs. DVDs come in a compact case, a little larger than a cd, and with room for a small bit of documentation. They don't seem to have any real problem selling. Just think of all the materials that could be saved if manufacturers were to switch to some kind of DVD-like compact format. Oh well, just my 2 cents even if no real change is likely.
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There is a limited shelf space. Shelf space in brick and mortar stores costs quite a significant amount of money. I'm hoping a game designer will reply to this thread and say just how much money it really costs to get shelf space. Games that don't pay for shelf space get bargain bin space, instead. This seriously compromises your ability to sell your title at a decent price. Microsoft is effectively pushing smaller boxes off the end of the shelf. It's things like this that force you to have a publisher if you are to sell your software in a brick and mortar store. (Of course, that's where microsoft steps in and buys Bungie's developer's souls...)
Well, let's remember that the box is mostly air. It doesn't take that much more material to make a 2-inch-thick box over a 1 inch box (someone want to run a quick calculation? I guess about 5% more material).
In any case, compared to the volume of newspapers, magazines, and junk mail, I think computer boxes probably are about 0.001% of the total paper mass, much less total garbage mass.
If you want to focus on garbage generation, this is not the place. I could even argue that any paper really isn't the place, since that is pretty easy to recycle.
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Actaully, I think the exact opposite has happened from "slimming down" of computer software boxes. They say don't judge a book by it's cover, but it seems consumers judge software from the box.
;)
;) Face it: a single jewel case wrapped in plastic with online doccumentation and a $49.95 pricetag just doesn't sell well.
Let's look at some of the stupid wastes I've noticed and laughed at.
Wierd shaped boxes: Star Trek games. You know what I'm talking about. The box that looks like a damned communicator. Or worse, the ones that have the doughnut holes in the middle. What's the point of this? I guess to make people pick up the box.
Heavy boxes: Is that hard-covered 300 page manual REALLY a necessity?? Especially since it can be put in postscript format? OK, for RPGs this can be a nice touch, but I got Visual Studio 6.0 for my birthday. The box was about 5 pounds!! So many useless manuals that nobody would ever use! Including a 100-page WELCOME NOTE written on thick paper. I swear this stupid pamphlet accounted for most of the box's weight and it served no usefull purpose. Strange thing is consumers actually seem to take weight into consideration!! I've seen men and women holding competing software in each hand and seeing which one weighed more!! It's a funny site, I'm telling you. They buy softare like they buy watermelon.
Expensive boxes: Quake3 Arena. OK. It looked cool. But why did the box need to be made out of metal! This one was even worse: two guys I worked with at the time BOUGHT Q3A soley to get the metal box. .
Biiiigggg boxes: Ultima 9 started this. Anyone see that box?? It was MASSIVE. 'Nuff said.
I think as more and more people are owning computers and buying software, the less level of knowlege the general consumer has about the product. Just like cereal whose box is only half-full, I think in the future more and more software boxes will be dead space. Or dead weight. Or whatever else is wastefull and sells
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You are right, it isn't every month. I was intending to imply that it was handed out more than once a year.
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If Microsoft will package every product in a cubic-meter size box, few stores could find space to keep anything but Microsoft products inside. That's an innovative (TM) move in their monopoly game.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Overpackaging is just a tiny sliver of the waste this brave new digital world has brought. We were supposed to have "paperless" offices. But instead computers have made printing so easy that nobody thinks twice about printing anything out and we end up with more waste.
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Why are they doing it? It's advertising. Same thing goes with the bigger boxes with stuff in them. Personally, I'm more surprised that vendors put up with them. Why would they want to waste shelf space that they could have other products on? Maybe it's because that's what MS wants...
kwsNI
I think the problem is that many software products still ship with fairly hefty manuals which require the larger packaging, while companies that have moved to electronic packaging are loathe to have their product look less substantial than others on the shelf.
I personally would like to see all software products with electronic documentation with optional dead-tree format sold separately. (that alone should pull $50 off the price of photoshop)
matt
Cds used to be boxed in a box about 2x the size of the CD. There was great resistance to "un boxing" them from stores having to redo there "shelves" and deal with greater theft of the smaller boxes. Now they sell CDs without boxes.
Early playstation games came in very large jewel cases.. Now just regular jewel cases.
I think its a retail "marketing" thing. People still equate a good big box with something important. odd when you consider box size has absolutely nothing to do with program quality. Hopefully computer CDs will go the way of music CDs.
Hmm, big shiny package on the outside, very little of value on the inside...sounds like Microsoft, all right. Them, and their software.
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You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
Not very large packaging, and even better, you can get slackware :-)
Eh...
One of the best known ways to advertise is to get people to see your product. Companies pay big dollars to get there products on the shelves at a particular height or in a particular area. Walk into a grocery store and you will not find the sweet cereals with cartoon pictures at adult eye level, but instead down closer to the floor where the children can see them and bug there parents to buy them. The same goes for software, clothes, or anything else in the store. If its big and bright and highly visible you are more likely to pick it up and look at it.
I don't know how much the ESD idea has caught on, but it is intriguing, and if I ever paid for any software I'd use it :)
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tcd004
Heh. That reminds me of the Matrox 3D accelerator card. The box is 5 times larger than the card itself. You are right, it is entirely marketing related. more box space = more advertising space.
Of course, you can always fit in the bigger printed manual with a bigger box instead of a damn PDF file.
As per the original comment, I'm surprised the jewel case was included. Practically all the software I've recieved on CD has NO jewel case, just that flimsy(and not very protective) paper and plastic-window thingy. I gotta steal empty jewel cases from work.
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The oversize boxes of CDs in the late 80's, early 90's were to allow retailers not to have to change their bins to display the new products. The boxes were 12" tall, and 6" wide, one half the size of the 12" by 12" LP albums. This is entirely different.
There is a similar problem with bloated code. No matter how many Gigs you have on your drive, you can only hold a certain amount of informaiton. The more room the proprietary code (a) takes, the less likely you are to be able to install their competition (b). And if you can install another from company (a) and it will share some files of the first installation, then they can intice users to stick with them over (b).
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I'm sure that the game makers know that they waste space like this, and if they could, they would reduce it, but no one will take the initiative. If you're the only company putting out games in a box that actually fits the stuff you're selling, you won't take up as much shelf space (though you may have the same number of copies), and it's easier to overlook the package for something that's bloated. Unless all the major software publishers switch at the same time, this won't happen.
At *least* the bulk of the packaging is cardboard which can be recycled in most cases. I generally do that and keep the colored printed part of the package for UPS symbol and whatnot.
(Of course at the same time, it makes me think of interesting software product boxes that have been used; the Marathon series were always a challenge...)
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If buy consumer pressure, you mean market pressure, then that probably happened.
The amount of dead trees involved in changing the size of a box from say 1.5 x 1 to 1.75 x 2 is minimal. Software is not as mass a retail market as you guys seem to believe.
If you want to affect real change, try to convince Sun not to ship a full set of documentation for each license you purchase. The retail software marke tis a real yawner in this regard.
I just had a similar experience with a Lexar smartmedia card - the blisterpacked box could easily hold the digital camera! and the plastic is about 9x7 for a product the size of half a credit card! - and these products are always behind the counter to avoid theft - I'll check out the CR site [thanks] and make a complaint too.
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The "Golden Cocoon" award is on the "Selling It" page - the last page of the magazine and certainly the most entertaining in a cynical sort of way.
Piss off.
I remember in the early 90s when Sierra made a conscious effort to slim down their packaging, produce smaller boxes, use recycled papers, and get rid of extra liners. The idea is slowly catching on; more and more boxes are being made of a single layer of thick cardboard, instead of the outside paper cover with an inside cardboard box.
Additionally, a lot of companies have started putting manuals on CD, though this is more annoying than anything; especially when you know that they aren't doing it to help the environment, but merely to cut down on publishing costs.
And the OEM copy won't install on any hard drive but the one it was first installed on.
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The thing that always gets me mad is that the software boxes are huge, but there's no paper documentation inside. I'm not an "old-timer" just yet (close though, I'm pushing 25. ;)), but I do remember when software (especially server OSs and complex packages) actually came with printed documentation. My eyes are screwed up already, and staring at a monitor looking for something in a product's online doc isn't helping them. I hate wasting my own toner, paper and (by extension) another tree, and I know the software makers don't pass the cost savings for printing on to us.
:)
Anyone else remember WordPerfect for DOS, and the huge slipcover binders that the manuals came in? Or the first versions of NT, or OS/2? [1] There really should be a way to order paper docs at no charge to the consumer. Acrobat's nice, but I like the ability to actually pick up a book and sit on the couch.
Does anyone else think this way??
[1] Or at the far end of the doc spectrum, VMS? Bookshelves and bookshelves of brown binders...
It's a generic consumer expectation that expensive stuff come in a big box. The more it costs, the bigger the box should be. Of course there are exceptions the consumer makes for jewelry, PCMCIA cards, digicam memory cards and such. Software is not one of these exceptions.
It's happening to CmdrTaco too, I think.
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This has been a very common problem in retail stores, where the hardware profit margin is in the single digits, and you have to sell alot of software and peripherals to make it up.
Long ago and far away, I used to work in a now defunct retail chain. I can recall going through a store and finding empty boxes, merchandise gone. The complex fold over of the cardboard etc is thought out to prevent just this. Considering the cost of cardboard, vs 50 - 500 dollar product, the trade off is a pain, but understandable.
heck I can even remember people buying a computer, and then returning it, saying it was broken. We would take it apart, and it would be missing the ram, the harddrive, etc. We could not "prove" that they stolen it, but it was obvious that they had. [We didn't have the resources.] We even went to setting up the machine and and running it first, in the store, just to cut down on the theft. it was insane.
no wonder the chain went under. Some people have no morals whatsoever.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The company's package evolved from a spiral-ringed binder, to a slim plastic spiraled manual with a disk insert, to a small box, to a full-page sized box two inches thick.
Retailers *hated* the huge box...but we sold much more after changing formats. For one, you couldn't turn the box on it's edge. It begged to be placed face-out. It demanded more shelf space...the one thing the retail stores have a limited supply of.
We even tried sending out upgrades in a no-fuss package; disks plus manual in a slim carboard shipping box, but got complaints and a bad write up in a trade magazine. Because of that, we shipped the full box after that point.
One product was even targeted for sale at the register, so we scaled the package down below the size of a CD case. After getting next to no sales on that, we dumped minimal packaging attempts entirely.
In the end, we decided that a brochure-style box with a full-color description was necessary. It was a glossy, heavy, and cardboard re-inforced package -- even though the manual was only a little bigger and one more diskette was added.
The only environmental concessions we were able to get away with were vegtable dyes and no plastic except shrink wrap.
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Two years ago, I worked for an organization that purchased 200 shrink-wrapped copies of Windows 95 because the volume price of the shrink-wrapped versions was significantly cheaper than just the licenses. Two people worked for 8 hours to open each box, remove the license, and throw everything else (including the non-biodegradable CD) away.
The funny part is that they consider their recycling efforts to be better-than-average! I would tell you the name of the organization, but they made me sign a ******* NDA.
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I don't know if anyone agrees with me or not (probably not, since companies must be packing things in bigger boxes for a reason), but I've always thought putting a product in a box larger than normal (8.5x11ish) makes it look cheap.
Maybe that's just because I used to work in a software store and from experience, almost all of the non-conformist boxes contained crap.
i admit, i don't know much about paper usage and recycling, but it seems to many -any- place to start is a good place to start, no matter how small the field of view.
yes, if people are going to spend X amount of time doing something to further environmental causes, there may be other areas in which their efforts are more productive, but doesn't -every- area deserve to be paid attention to?
IIRC there was an article in (the new defunct) PC Accelerator magazine a few months back about games that are soon going to be shipping in keep cases. I personally think that this is a great idea. There is plenty of room on the outside of the case for any artwork and info, and more than enough room inside for the disc, manual, warranty registration card, whatever. If anyone knows where to find more info about this, please post it. www.pcxl.com just feeds you over to dailyradar now.
If you were standing in the aisle of the store and looking at a shelf-full of software, would you be more drawn to A) the large box with the fancy cover graphic and covered with fine print and pictures on the back detailing the product features, or B) the just-large-enough-to-contain-the-jewel-case plain-cardboard box with the product name and little else? To maximize sales, software makers take advantage of the same consumer psychology that dictates, for example, bright primary colors on laundry products, and filling a third of the package with air just to make it look larger. In the absense of laws forcing smaller packaging, no manufacturer is going to take steps that will diminish their visibility on the shelf. I'm not aware of any serious effort to do this for software (or supermarket products for that matter). I think it happened with CDs because they're bought by more people, and because the package made the CD visible from the outside so the wasted space was more obvious.
While the reason for them going away was at least partly environmental, it has to be remembered that the reason they were there in the first place had a lot to do with the fact that two longboxed music CDs placed side by side fitted rather neatly into racks that had been designed to hold LPs, thereby eliminating the need for record stores to replace their fittings. As stores replaced fittings naturally over the course of time, the reason for longboxes existence evaporated. The pressure for the existence/removal of large packaging that existed for music just doesn't exist for software.
Then there's the security aspect - it's a lot easier for someone to slip a jewel case inside a jacket than something the size of a box of breakfast cereal, and boxing also makes it easier for them to put those little magnetic thingies that set off the door alarms inside the packaging, where they're harder for a thief to remove (anyone else noticed how those now appear *inside* DVD cases, too?)
It's still a waste, though - why they couldn't reduce the depth of packages from the current inch or more to half an inch, I don't know - they could retain the large form factor to give plenty of space for pretty pictures, the stores could get twice as many on the shelves, and they'd still be awkward enough to discourage theft.
At the very least, it is more environmentally friendly than the 10 pound Microsoft Office boxes a few years ago. 9.5 pounds of useless manuals that are included online + 25 diskettes!
Back in the 90's, just about every software product (word processors and compilers especially) came with half-a-dozen or more user manuals which were difficult to understand and rarely used. And those were paperback with glued binding. Before that (70's, 80's) the documentation actually came in ring binders. We could probably reduce packaging more, except that 1. people usually like to have fancy packaging, 2. market droids like fancy packaging, and 3. a bigger box seems to justify the bigger ($49.95 ;) ) price usually attached to these things.
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I wish Consumer Reports would put out a book consisting solely of items from the "Selling It" page. I'd buy it in a minute.
I actually tried to suggest this to them once, but I'll be damned if I can find an email address for them. I looked about 6 months ago--combed through the magazine, searched the online site: nothing.
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I think there's a tendency to notice something M$ does (now, I'm not exactly pro-microsoft, but neither am I completely anti-m$), and bitch and point at how evil they are. At the same time, we completely ignore the fact that (especially in this case) it's really just good marketting or something equally benign (not that marketting is completely benign). I mean, really.. whether or not somebody thinks the better box has a better product, it's just plain more noticeable.
my $0.02
-V
I'm no environmentalist, but holding the entire contents of this over-sized box in the palm of my hand almost makes me sick.
/.ers, as well as the pro-Open Source angle, and a pro-environment viewpoint.
/.ers, Libertarians, dogs, Republicans, M$ies, everyone) are a part of the environment. We do not so much depend on it as we are in fact a subset of it. "Dependance", to me, seems to imply a separation between the dependant and depended. i like the image of the subset better. The Earth's biosphere's viability does not require ours, rather the opposite.
Well, i am an environmentalist; just think how this kind of crap makes me feel, eh?
The way i see it, we could draw a neat parallel between the Libertarian bent of many of us
Libertarians want to have their rights un-trodden-upon, Open Sourcers want to have the right to view/mod/whatever the source code of their stuff... I, as an environmentalist, want to have the right to clean air, water, etc...
FWIW, i am unsure as to how anyone could not be an environmentalist. the way i see it, non-environmentalism is like non-spleenism (someone will correct me, i'm sure, if the spleen is not in fact required for the normal functioning of the human body).
We (all of us, environmentalists,
So, if the continued viability of the environment is a prerequisite for our (read: MY) existance, it is only logical that we should, each and every one of us, do what we can to prevent the further degradation of our life-support system.
That, and i think if i had previewed this sucker, i probably would have used less < b >'s
Don't ask. Go see.
the only reason software companies do anything in regards to packaging is because it works. If the consumer wants to see hot babes on the front of the box and the mfg would sell more with hot babes on the front... you know what would be on the front of the boxes from now on...
The only way to get companies to make more environmentally friendly packaging is to vote with your pocketbook...and that means not buying the software.
Perhaps the best way around this would be the kiosks you see from some software manufacturers... the cardboard displays that are human-sized, but would hold software in the smallest possible box.
I think that most of the concern here is in the materials that go into the box.. though I do think you have bit of a point. While a bigger box may occupy a larger amount of space, most of that space is empty inside. However, even though the extra materials used to make a box even 2" larger than normal in any dimension *are* minimal, it adds up when multiplied by the millions of pieces of software sold every year.
I think it should also be pointed out, though, that most boxes are made of paper and are recyclable. Most people don't recycle their boxes, (and whether or not they should is another issue entirely) so larger boxes will probably mean more paper in the landfills.
Of course, IdiotBoy here brings up another issue. Shipping. Sure, bigger boxes don't weigh a lot more and aren't really going to add to shipping costs and fuel consumption in that manner, but you'll fit fewer boxes in a truck/plane/train/boat/etc. if they're bigger, and hence you'll need more shipping.
Just a few thoughts...
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
If the distributor has 15 different size of packages and he has to fill this bigger box with them, he will not be sure that the content will fit snuggly in the bigger box, and not get damaged before arrival. He/She will have to use those "styrofoam popcorn" things, and maybe ship the same amount of software, but it will cost him more in packaging material.
It used to be that software was distributed in lot's of different shapes and sizes, but the quantities were never the same levels as now.
The distributors got sick of this, and wanting to minimize their distribution costs, asked the software indutry to come out with boxe size standards (that are followed more or less).
It's all about not pissing off the people who get your product to the shelves.
Pat.
Unfortunately, it's just not Redmond that has no sense of environmental responsibility...
http://www.janegoodall.com/
The topic of her speech was on the environment and what the avg person can do to help improve it (i.e. make a difference). One of her main gripes was with packaging and the unnecessary use of large boxes, etc. She asked people to write to companies and ask them to slim down their boxes to help our env, reduce trash at landfills, etc.
I used to work as a Product Mgr at a consumer S/W company. Unfortunately, when I tried to slim down the box, I was outvoted by the entire commitee. Most /. users are quite well informed on the S/W they need, but unfortunately, the avg (U.S.) consumers have been trained to believe that the bigger/shinnier/colorful boxes contain better products, etc. and no corporation wants to be the first to break with tradition (and possibly affect sales).
Unfortunately, I see some of this happening with the newer DVD packages (getting slightly bigger, more colorful, etc for mktg purposes). Sigh.
-SaidiaDude
Buying software online has some other benefits too. For example, a customer in Canada can buy software from the US and download it. This bypass waiting, shipping costs, Canadian sales taxes and import duties. Customs have a little bit of catching up to do. If the US introduces sales taxes for online purchases, some companies are going to make a lot of money by selling to them from overseas. Can you imagine how hard that is to enforce?
I'm not sure if this is an American/capitalist society thing, or if this is pretty much standard everywhere.
Personally, I would prefer that all the software and games I purchase be packaged just like a music CD. Put it in a case that just safely and securely fits the product, put an insert in it, and leave it be. You can put installation instructions and contact information on the insert and put the product instructions on the CD itself. And since most people are online these days, you can make any 'extras' such as world-maps and data grids from games, available for download and printing.
It just seems incredibly silly that we should still see something the size of a jewel-case requiring more packaging than the box my freaking laptop arrived in.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Thieves have no problem sneaking the huge box to an empty part of the store and removing the CD. Used to happen all the time when I worked in under-staffed retail stores.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I was at the local Electronics Boutique a few weeks ago, and I noticed that a new game (sorry, I forget the title) on the shelves, and it was packaged in a simple shrinkwrapped DVD-style plastic "keep case".
It looked a little strange to me at first, but after a minute I began to appreciate the practicality of this kind of packaging. Not only does it allow for more titles to fit on a store shelf, it's also convenient for the buyer. No more unwieldy oversized cardboard boxes to keep lying around somewhere (or recycle, or simply throw away, depending on the buyer). Not to mention that the keep case is a great storage container that already fits nicely in most "multimedia" or A/V storage racks.
The software industry should definitely agree to standardize on keep case packaging. I for one would be only too happy to see the end of those ridiculous trapezoidal-shaped embossed custom-printed holographic-design boxes (with velcro-fastened flip-tops!) that game companies use in a futile "arms race" to grab the buyer's attention.
begin 644
The reasons for the big package are simple.
1) It's a lot easier for the customer to see and read the package from across the room than forcing them to have to squint at the edge of a jewel box.
2) The more shelf space you take up, the less shelf space is left for your competitors.
Bang the head that doesn't bang!
The extra space in the boxes is to hold the vapor that comes with every software package these days.
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
Sid Meier's Antietam! already shipped like this, and I beleive more are on the way. I hope so. They stack up much better in a bookshelf, and allow me to keep the original packaging, which is a nice touch.
--sugarman--
As a former employee at CompUSA, I believe I can contribute some thoughts here...
The reason retail boxes are so huge is the eye-catch factor. Ever see the four-sided towers at the front of a store with the crappy 14.99 software packed only in jewel cases? Ever really payed attention to them? I thought not. The more shelf space a company can gobble, the less room there is for competing products, and the more eyes hit the box. The largest part of my job there was trying to get all the freakin software on the shelves in a manner relatively close to what the higher-ups consider ideal.
Annoyances:
- six-inch thick boxes. C'mon, you could fit everything in that box into an 8.5" by 11" by 1.5" version. You'd lose no "eye space" but we'd be able to fit twice your product on the shelf.
- Odd-shaped boxes. Ever see the Tomb Raider and Final Fanasy boxes? ARGH!
- Boxes with holes in the middle. I actually had a co-worker tie a broomstick sticking out from the end of a shelf, and "impaling" the boxes on it. It didn't last long.
Enviromental factors? Big deal. Man has been given dominion over the Earth. While we should take care of that which we have been trusted with, we should not worship the creation. It's here for us to use!
Do you know how much toxic waste it takes to make a computer? And disposing of one is not easy either.
It is a safe bet that your computer is a bigger environmental hazard than all of the packaging for all of the software you are likely to buy for it. A very safe bet.
Regards,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
No matter how glossy and flashy the packaging is, the size of a box containing software ought to be inline with the volume of what is contained inside it. Consider how much more cramped our landfills would be if AOL were widely distributed in such a fashion. Disgusting. (The new DVD-like cases are bad enough.)
You know, I head over to the big displays, too, because the cheap CD rack is poorly organized, and never has recent software. But every month or so, I check. Because I just bought three games, and I just threw three large cardboard boxes in the trash. I'll tell you, I _love_ paper manuals. But if getting rid of paper manuals is what it would take, I'd be fine with it. That's not the issue, though - paper manuals are already mostly gone, anyway. If no software today shipped in a package larger than 36 cubic inches, i'd be pleased as punch, as long as they didn't ream me if I needed to order a printed manual.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
Every MS product prior to the era of Windows 95 had huge manuals and boxes to fit them. Case in point: Visual Basic 4 had all of the programming manuals in a good-size box. Visual Basic 5 had no programming manuals, but the box only shrunk a little bit. MS Dos 6 came with a huge (and very, very useful) manual. Windows 95 came with a quick-reference booklet and introduction to Windows.
Microsoft firmly believes that no manual is ever neccessary, but they'd be reduced to looking like Walnut Creek CDROM if they didn't have huge boxes.
Another something to keep in mind is that expensive things tend to come in larger boxes than necessary so that they aren't so easy to pocket and walk out the door with. Many CD stores still have the plastic holders on their cds that get removed at the counter, as well as the tiny magnetic bits.
Personally, I think it would be much better if all software just came in little racks like cd's in a cd store(you just reduced compuseless' floor requirements from 4 rows of software to one). If it comes on a single floppy, then you should just package it in a modified jewel case. If it's a special box set with more than one cd, or has a large manual, the manual should be behind the counter, and given to the customer at check out time(this also is a boost for being able to read a manual before you buy the software.) Multi-cd sets are pretty easy to cope with, just look at the packaging on playstation games(FF7 comes to mind as having a lot of cd's, and Gran Turismo 2 is a dual slot case with only 2 cd's in it, and the other space taken up by manuals). Up to 4 cd's can be dropped into a standard "dual slot" jewel case, and I imagine you could fit more if you do stuff like the two cd's in a single slot jewel case.
Of course, all of this is out the window if you go with the future and just get rid of buying media from stores anyhow. Get a decent connection to the rest of the world, and download the software in a format that you can burn onto your own cd. You buy the rights to it online, and you have your own key/whatever to keep it from getting copied(yah right, anybody that believes you can copy-protect stuff is a bleeding heart that needs to make that popping sound) easily, and then if it has a substantial manual, it should have a copy online(micro$loth is actually pretty good at this for visual studio, I'm shocked every time I use it), or you can order the full treebased version delivered to your door. Bonus: you never have to see the light of day, and you never have to leave the house.
As for marketing and advertising people that are worried about shelf presence and impulse appeal, these are the people that are worried about what color my pc is, and whether I think it needs a cupholder. These people should be shot in the leg and left for dead in the middle of the desert. The ones that find enlightenment will be the ones that survive, and will be the first ones to say that they wished they'd spent less time worrying about what color their cel-phone was, and more about whether it would save them from impending doom in the middle of an arid wasteland.
My opinions are your opinions. I just fixed them for you.
The problem with putting software into smaller boxes is obvious: in principle the jewel case would suffice, it has even space for a slim booklet, more than comes with most software. A lot of software IS in tha stores like that, but it's mostly chaep or old titles, for 20-30DM ($10-$15 in US i guess). One reason is that most customers arent used to spend $50+ on a CD or something of similar size. Another reason is also very obvious if you imagine 3-4 jewel case packaged Games between all those big cases: the customers wouldn't find them without asking, and if you put that brandnew game between all those (apparently) 'lame old' jewelcase packaged software many people don't even look at it doesn't work either.
One solution to this might be display cases: they take up the same space on the shelf as 4-5 'bigpackage' softwarecases, catch the customers eye but what you take home is just that slim jewel case (which has the added benefit of not cluttering up your shelf at home), there's even some cool variations about the jewelcase theme, music industry surly will provide examples.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Suse 5.3 had a small ass cardboard box, and it was STUFFED to the rim with a 500 page manual, stickers, and 4 (6??) CDs, 2 floppy disks and a few leaflets of paper. When they release 6.3 the box got a lot bigger, but the contents stayed about the same, they even had to put in a card board insert to keep the box from falling over on it's self.
The debian disks I got from cheapbytes though where a cd-rom in a plastic flexable cd-cover.
The newest version of GNU ls I download a couple months ago contained no packaging what so ever!!
Cardboard isn't bad, you can make it into multch and/or it will decay naturally, platic and things that do NOt decay are what to watch out for. It won't mind me one bit if Microsoft made a cardboard box the size of a card for there software, because that cardboard box can be reused, and if it isn't reused, it goes back to the planet naturally, nothing wrong with that. But if they had an over size radioactive nuclear plastic non-decayable cell sturcted box, what would make me somewhat upset.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
The box sells the product. The box also prevents you from putting the small contents in your pants. Display is all important. The environmentalist in you should be checking to see if the box is made from recycled materials. At least the software didn't come with a 200 page manual/advertisement like they used to.
I would really prefer smaller boxes. Not because I am enviromentally concerned, but I'm a pack-rat. I always have all these damn empty boxes just sitting on my shelf until I move to my next apartment. Its a huge mess. Then I throw them out in one fell swoop.
That's just my take I guess.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Packaging is akin to labeling, representing different classes of consumer goods. Over packaging software gives them a different social hierarchy as shareware jewel cases for $9.99. The imac appeals to certain people who see themselves as a particular type of computer users. The owner of a Jaguar sees themselves as a different class of driver than a Ford.
The comparison with music CD packaging doesn't quite work. Most people have some idea of what they are getting when they buy a music CD. With music, you are typically buying a kind of entertainment that you are already familiar with You've heard a song or two from it before, and that is the main reason you seek out that disc over the many others available in the store.
With software, consumers are buying the idea that this software is going to serve some useful purpose for them. Many people don't know if one particular package is what is right for them or not. Should it be Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop or CorelDraw?
The packaging convinces them that the product will make their computer that much more powerful and productive. That's a tough stunt to pull off in only 5.5 inches square.
Additionally, consumers perceive that the size of the packaging relates to the power and amount of features of the software inside. There is a reason that Quicken Basic comes in a slim box and Quicken Home & Business comes in a thick one. And it's not because they needed the room to stuff in a bigger manual. "It has the bigger box, so there must be *more* in there!" Consumers already get confused about what the difference is between the three versions. The box sizes let them know that they are getting *more* (if only in packaging) for their money.
Even commercial Linux distros do this. Compare the "Business" and "Secure Server" versions to the basic versions.
Do I like that? No.
But I'm not expecting the relationship between consumers and marketers to change enough for software packaging to become more environmentally efficient. Even with the move to electronic distribution. I know enough holdouts who want to hold something in their hands before they'll plunk down money for it.
Bringing quality to Anonymous Coward posts since 1999
Ironically, their website was rather consumer-unfriendly. I tried to join last year but my logon wouldn't work but I wasn't sure if my credit card was being charged. But there was no customer service # and they would only accept emailed customer service requests from a form in the 'members-only' section (requires logon), I was supposed to send my problem via SNAIL MAIL. Eventually, I just gave up and chalked it up as a loss.
- bridgette
"Slashdot has got to be the biggest bastion of anti-libertarian thought on the net."
Nope. For some reason or another, Slashdot has attacted alot of persons who might fit that description.
Here goes:
Slashdot, for the most part, is an advocate of open-source software and operating systems.
Many of the readers, one could presume, are also advocates of open source.
Open source has the same concepts as free trade, freedom of the press, free speech, freedom of worship, and freedom of choice. Open source allows all to contribute freely and without repurcussion from the source code's originators. Many of the same principles upon which this country was founded.
Non-open source "countries" attempt to limit freedom of choice (what you read, eat, worship, etc). Contributions to the original product are seen as a threat to the overall well being of the product and its' creators rather than for the consumers. Consider governments who "Defend the Revolution" by shooting opponents to their plan. Good examples of this are Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, present day China, Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe, and some Middle Eastern governments.
All of this is meaningless as one Slashdot reader after another posts some statement blaming private corporations for the world's problems whether it be the cost of software to the enviroment. What they fail to realize is that the governement controls the ability for businesses (read corporations - a misuse of the term because many businesses are not incorporated, but I digress) to operate within their boundries. Governements decide whether or not to allow free trade and competition or state-run/approved monopolies.
As for corporations "buying" politicians, there are an equal number if not more, private organizations "buying" politicians. The largest being political parties (Republicans/Democrats here in the States), special interests groups (NRA, Handgun Control, NOW, trade unions, Heritage Foundation, etc) who contribute billions of dollars directly and indirectly to further their agendas, and individuals (Michael Eisner, Bill Gates, Steven Speilberg, etc). All of these non-corporate "buyers" have no interest in the individual any longer, only their own agenda. Nor do any of these other "buyers" believe truly in "open source" they only want their beliefs/products available to the consumer.
In a real open source enviroment, each of us has a direct voice into the government, nearly all products are available for us to purchase, rent or trade, and no one product or service is limited to a single controlling interest. When "corporations" are demonized and penalized, then they do not enjoy the same open sourced enviroment that the rest of society enjoys.
I don't have any details but I remember way back when... some group sued [a] computer software manufacturer[s] due to a law which says that you can't make your package larger than the contents just to make it look like you are getting more than you are really getting. The case didn't have any effect though because it was argued that the size of the box was necessary due to the amount of space needed to describe / advertise the product. I wish I could find a URL about it...
(I think that would work pretty well for a container of food or something. Every notice the indentations they put in the bottoms of shampoo / etc bottles, and around the middle sometimes, and then a nice tall plastic end-cap, probably to make it looke like you are getting more than you are?)
Who is the fraud here?
Rob Malda
Stuff like that should definitely be trimmed down. If stuff is slim enough, it can be displayed facing outward, like PSX games, with its little leaflet behind it. Then you wouldn't have to knock your head over to read the boxes. Some things, though, like Mandrake 7.0, have lots of stuff and can keep the big box.
-- LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
I saw an article back when e3 was running here in Los Angeles, and it mentioned that one of the big things that was going to start happening was the move towards DVD-style boxes, where a thin manual is in the door, and the CD is in the case.
the reviewer was pretty pumped about that, and I will be too... don't know how high the stack of boxes got in my garage before I threw them all out (close to four-five feet)
You should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Pop tarts have really gone off the deep end with packaging. The boxes stayed the same size but the pop tarts inside kept getting smaller and smaller. Eventually they got so small, some marketing type said "Let's put in 8!". Now 8 fit in the box and there is still a lot of air in the box. And we the consumer are suppose to feel better now that we have 8. Now I'm not a major environmentalist, but this extra air is wasting the world's limited resources. Yes, manufacturers like Kelloggs and Microsoft can pay to have these oversized boxes shipped but it wastes the worlds finite energy supply to move empty boxes. And for what?
I bought Fly2K a week or so ago...
But before that, I'm not sure I can remember.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
I am sure that the Father won't invite you into the Kingdom if you can't even respect your Mother.
(ps yes, i am aware that a part of packaging is to prevent damage in shipping.)
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
Now, while I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, I do have to give them credit for their marketing.
First off, big box. Well, you noticed it didn't you? How hard was it to find among the rest of the software? Secondly, you get on here, and start talking about it. So, not only is their software noticed because of it's obscenly large box (the programmer was obviously male, and designed the box himself to overcompensate for the lack of... software), but now they have a software title on slashdot.
Realistically, there will probably never be a regulation of software boxes. Come on, just like everyone else, I grab a shiny box, like the overeducated chimp I am, flip it over hoping to see more pretty colors. If you cut down the size of the box, you lose all the screen shots and such on the back. How many of you honestly have never flipped the box over to check out screen shots? I don't think I've even bought software and NOT checked them out.
So... In conclusion. Boxes won't change, big boxes are annoying. Let the stores deal with finding a place on the shelf for them. They know just as long as they are big and shiny, we'll always pick it up and take a look.
It has nothing to do with theft. Nearly any store that sells software already has good antitheft systems in place. This is a legacy issue.
Remember when you bought software with a big fat stack of 3.5/5.25 floppies and got a thick manual to go along with it? They NEEDED large packaging for everything to fit. Now, most things will fit on (C|DV)D, documentation included. Some people will positively spin this as an improvement, though you can negatively spin this by saying there is room for more improvement. I'll leave the hardcopy document lamentations alone -- you either like to have the printed manual, or you don't like "dead tree". It isn't necessary anymore, but it would seem kind of weird not to have the box.
All the same, things are getting better.
Open source distributions can be downloaded and burned directly to CD (for free, no less), with the documentation available online.
Proprietary software companies like Adaptec, Macromedia, and the one I work for are using Electronic Software Distribution for everyone's benefit. When there is no need to press thousands of CD's and no warehouse to ship the order, businesses save money. Because of software's nature, it also allows the latest and greatest updates to be available on the fly. The only catch is making sure that the customer has the bandwidth and/or patience to download the entire product...
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
almost all of the non-conformist boxes contained crap.
Now, I've heard of software that comes with trinkets or cloth maps, but that's just ridiculous...
The best I've ever seen was the box for a $15 CompUSA soundcard. The waferboard on the card was trimmed down to the bare minimum to support one chip, all the fingers and the slot. The box was almost big enough to hold an ATX motherboard, and contained nothing else except plastic to hold the card in place and a floppy disk. Woo!
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
"There really should be a way to order paper docs at no charge to the consumer. Acrobat's nice, but I like the ability to actually pick up a book and sit on the couch.
:) "
Does anyone else think this way??
But, then that would undercut the whole O'Reilly, SAMS, Dummies documentation industry. People sell books that cost just as much as the software. Microsoft is no exception. Sure, you can get it for free off the CD. The book costs $40.
joel
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
Interesting point. I live near a video game rental store that also rents out PC games (this is in Canada). Some of the games it has in stock are imports from overseas, such as Carmageddon, Grand Theft Auto, Worms and other UK-developed games, and the boxes for the imports are quite a bit smaller than the North American packages. Not quite as small as a DVD case, but still, it's a very noticeable difference.
The other thing that I've noticed is that there's a slight variance in package size among PC games, and the largest boxes contain games where the instruction manual is packaged in the jewel case like a music CD's liner notes. Feh.
Maybe it is the SW I buy, but the boxes are VERY useful. For examply, for my last system purchase:
Quark XPress (Big manuals, sm guides, CD, Floppy)
Photoshop (manual, CD, kb shortcuts, fliers)
Illustrator (manual, guide, kb shortcuts, CD)
Flash (manual, CD)
Dreamweaver (manual, cd)
Fireworks (manual, CD)
Painter (cool can) (manual_s_ , CD)
Mac OS 9 (just a CD and a few fliers/info sheets)
Conflict catcher (manual, cd, update cert)
After installing and making backup cd-r of the install CDs, I put the original CD in the box, with all docs. Receipts, in the box. Wrote the serial #s down on a separate slip of ppr and put this in the box. Put the manuals back in the boxes. Put the boxes on the top shelf of bookcase. Everything is tidy. Have had ZERO lost paperwork.
Beleive me, you do not want to lose any paperwork on SW. (Lost a serial # for Photoshop once.)
They are handy storage, not just big colorful packaging. I thought I would see a similar comment above, but guessed wrong!
Tom
Reality does not happen until you analyze the dots. -Don DeLillo (Underworld)
When you purchase a console game, you see it on the shelf, then go to the retailer and say, "I want a copy of Soul Caliber". They fish it out, and you're happy.
Why not do this with computer software? Have one "big box" on the shelf, but when you go to pick it up, you get a shrink-wrapped CD case and the mini-manual. No box.
This keeps the waste down, and they don't lose the current shelf-space purchasing strategy that retailers love so much.
CDs on the other hand, aren't QUITE as expensive and are therefore now sold in only their little jewel cases--the tradeoff between shoplifting risk and store real estate comes out on the side of store real estate.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
It's the same strategy used by food packaging people, which generate far more wasted packaging material than software ever will. It's typical to buy a package of Rice Pilaf mix or whatever and have the package be half empty.
Another factor to consider is weight. I worked for a company once that reformatted the user manual with larger type and wider margins to make the manual heavier. The idea is that a good hefty box feels better than an obviously almost empty one. I agree with the strategy as illogical and ecologically unsound as it is.
By having the biggest box on the shelf, there is a strong implication that you are getting "more", in addition to any factors of improved visibility.
I've bought countless software packages that included only a jewel case and a few slips of paper in a sometimes phone-book-sized box. I don't think the practice is going to change like the CD industry dropping longboxes a few years back for one reason.
With a longbox, you still knew that there was only a CD in there, nothing more. With software, a larger box implies more manual (or a manual at all) and/or more CD's. I don't see this changing even though it really should.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Folks here have already mentioned audio CDs, which used to be packaged in huge cardboard boxes, but now are almost always sold in plain jewel boxes. If shoplifting is an issue, the store can lock the CDs in reusable plastic extenders, which are annoying, but (presumably) not wasteful.
Computer software is different. Think of games, in particular, since that's where packaging really comes into its own. Some computer games will always require a large box... any Sid Meier game, for example. Many other games could be sold in jewel boxes, but those games still have to compete with the ones in large boxes. Even the most rational consumer couldn't help but pay more attention to the huge Falcon 8.0 box, with its three volume manual, than to the little Quake IV CD, sitting in a rack with hundreds of other identical jewel boxes.
MSK
Disclaimer: I despise Macrosoft as much as anyone else for making bloated software and engaging in illegal anticompetitive activity.
Think about it, though. This company is putting entire encyclopedia sets and other information-intensive information like map software on cd's and saving thousands of sheets of paper in the process. By popularizing (regardless of their corporate elbowing) this kind of approach to information, they are environmentally friendly and people are losing sight of the big picture. Now I realize that this may be symbolism over substance being that this type of software is not popular enough to actually make a difference in our habitually polluting ways. But, it does lay the groundwork for the results of this type of information to have a significant impact in the next ten years. This type of software is in its early infancy (only a few years old). This will do for the environment what databases did for office paper use over the course of the last 10 years.
The fingerpointing above is somewhat akin to the media pointing to singular isolated instances of overagressive policing in the face of the fact that crime is statistically down in the quantities of thousands.
Take a step back and look at the big picture.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
IIRC this is the tactic people used with those stupid CD longboxes and it worked. Maybe it will work here, too.
The real reason for all the extra packaging is pure marketing. The bigger the box, the higher the visibility. I don't like the packaging for a personal reason. I like to keep everything in the box it came in, and put it on by bookshelf. Odd size boxes sometimes don't even fit in the bookshelf. Personally, I like the DVD Video packaging the best. There is plenty of room in there for the CD, and any paper the software would require, and it would be a nice uniform size for storage.
Eagles soar, but Weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.
Power companies basically run on fossil fuels and nukes. So you have a 'puter that essentially runs on coal.
So in businesses that run huge networks 24/7, the environmental benefit of being paperless is put into perspective.
go solar, then ditch the paper...
<//-------------//> /. but you can tell it was designed by programmers..."
"I like
Am I the only one that immediately thinks "cheap software" when I see a small box or just a CD-case standing alone? It seems that the only things sold those two ways are the $9.95 discount software CDs... this could have something to do with it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who equates little or no packaging with cheap, inferior software...
Note: I'm not saying that I SHOULD think like this, it's just my initial reaction because that's the only thing I've ever seen packaged like that.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Does anyone remember the Fractal Painter release that came in a paint can?
I remember it being mentioned in a article about packaging on software. Sorry I don't have an URL it was a long time ago. Anyway the gist was that they were looking for a unique package so they went with the paint can thing. It turned out that the paint can was cheaper. Both in manufacturing and shipping. A 1 gallon paint can is a *standard* size so it was much cheaper all around. That and the cans themselves are recyclable.
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
I know to some extent that such large boxes are used to help prevent shoplifting. It's much harder to conceal a large box than it is to conceal a CD in just the case. I'm sure that most companies just think of this as an added benifit to being the most visible on the shelf though.
besides the reasoning mentioned in the article, manufacturers of all kinds of consumer "tech" use huge boxes to discourage shoplifting.
The problem with boxes is; as you increase their dimensions the surface area avaliable for misleading advertising grows rather slowly. What is needed is a hologram on the back so the software makers can misrepresent their software in multiple visual-planes. Jokes aside, people feel offended spending a fortune for a cd they know costs less then a dollar to produce. Most of the software in the store is the Britany Spears of software ... looks good, great package, but ultimatley does and is nothing. Reach for that steely dan album!
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
DVD is also something that irks me in its complete waste of plastic and space. They could easily have gone with jewel cases but opted instead for the rediculously oversized packaing we see today. Note that the vast majority of DVD's don't include ANYTHING inside the case other than a simple list of chapters.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
It's easier to justify charging $99 for a BIG box of software than for a small box or jewel case only.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I don't know about anyone else but I hate CD crystal cases. I don't have hardly any that aren't cracked. If you look at them they crack. What is the point of these things!
I bought a U2 album that didn't have the crystal but was made of cardboard. It was much much nicer.
AAMOF I would like to see the CD cases get BIGGER. I would like to see album sized CD cases with big cover art, like in the olden days! Remember when many albums had a gimmick... like that Stones Sticky Fingers album. Some opened up like a book and one even had 3d effects with glasses built into the album cover! Those where the good old days.
My opinon about the oversized packages for software is that companies like Microsoft know that people will feel ripped if they buy a CD for 70 bucks. They therefore have to pump up the bulk of the package. That sucks but what can you do.
On that same point, remember those great old Infocom games. They had a lot of COOL junk bulking up their packages. (Microscopic space fleet, Peril-sensitive Sunglasses, Don't Panic button).
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
"It doesn't take that much more material to make a 2-inch-thick box over a 1 inch box (someone want to run a quick calculation? I guess about 5% more material).
Leaving aside for the moment the issue of "I'm only wasting a little bit" isn't really an excuse, your math leaves something to be desired. First, you need to know how big the sides of the box are. Let's assume they are 8.5x11. That's 187 in^2 for the front and back together. "1 inch thick" is then 39 in^2 for the 4 remaining sides. That's 226 in^2 total.
Now double the thickness, which doubles the in^2 for the 4 sides. That's 78 in^2 + 187 in^2 = 265 in^2. An increase of 17%. (Boxes with smaller faces would show a larger percent increase by thickening.) Since big companies routinely rethink manufacturing and packaging in order to save less than 1%, that's fairly sizable. Also keep in mind that we aren't comparing "1 inch thick" to "2 inches thick". We are comparing "box" to "no box".
As for your "0.001%" figure: Let's see some data. Let's also see some justification for your implicit claim that a small amount of the final total means the source should be ignored.
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Language is about communication. If thoughts are converted to words transmitted and then reconverted into the same thoughts in the reader's mind, then the communication was 100%, absolutely, without a doubt, grade A, successful... and not "wrong" or "improper" in any way shape or form. Any complaining is thus completely idiotic since there's nothing to complain about.
After all, we are the elite of the new economy. The producers of the world will cower beneath our grits-covered boots.
This was the /exact/ same argument that Audio CD Manufacturers used against jettisonning the boxes and just distributing the jewel cases. I remember Peter Townshend confronting a group of Industry folk and whining, "Gentlemen, you need to buy better browsers."
Unfortunately, less than a decade later, I don't think we have the kind of grassroots environmentalism alive to do this again.. There aren't any big media icons involved with software, aside from various CEOs and the 'Linux Nuts'. People are just sick of hearing about how their world is falling apart, because they keep doing the same stupid things, and many environmental concerns seem to have fallen to the wayside as just another story.
Weapons of Mass Analysis
We are producing two (similar) products, and the word from the publisher is that they want both products in one box, on one cd even, with an installer that allows you to choose between them.
Supposedly the distributors are pushing for smaller DVD style packaging for software as well. I think it is that particular publisher (Microsoft) that is pushing for the larger packaging, since there definitely is not a distributor or retailer demand for such a thing.
It may not be now, but it invetitibly will become part of the English language at some point or another, like "nite" has.
Language is a fluid entity. Many non-linguists have a hard time with that. (So do many linguists -- it gives us headaches).
By the way, language is about a lot more than simply communicating, but that is a story for another day...
just my blog and pix
A few months ago, Sid Meier released Antietam! as an EB-exclusive game. The game comes in a small DVD-sized container. I saw that, and thought, "if Sid Meier can squeeze one of his games into a box the size of a DVD, why can't everyone else?"
Every program should be able to fit in a box the size of a DVD case. The case can be made thicker (for multi-CD games, ie Baldur's gate) but all the packaging, documentation, etc must fit in the box. Exceptions can be made when necessary (i.e. flight sims).
If Playstation, Nintendo, and Sega developers can squeeze the documentation for their games into a jewel case, so can PC game developers.
Nathan
"On a side note: I originally submitted this article about a week-and-a-half ago. Is this the norm for Slashdot submissions? I'm not bitching or anything, just curious is it normally takes the "Herd of Attack Geese" that long to sift through all the submissions."
/. section, that it proably does. I got one aproved yesterday, and I'm not expecting it to show up for a few more days at least.
I would say, for the ask
--- 'dex
"There are a lot of x in the world." (where x = idiots).
The term a lot is an example of metaphorical speech. Literally, it likens the amount of x to an amount large enough to fill a lot (i.e. a large open space: e.g. a parking lot).
Alot is a non-word. A lot is two words that are perfectly fine to use. If I were going to be a proper grammarian, I'd tell you to avoid the term alltogether and use many instead. Here are some examples:
- There are alot of idiots in the world. --This makes you one of them.
- There are a lot of idiots in the world. --This makes you look like a person with average brains.
- There are many idiots in the world. --This makes you look very intelligent.
Verstehen sie?it's what's on the CD that's garbage. My fear is that I'll be travelling on a sales call somewhere, checking these MS Maps on my laptop - all plugged in to my "Gig"arette lighter when POW - harware conflict - "Resource sharing error. Pull over and restart."
Tree hugging hippies have too many other targets to wipe out first. Issues like flushing the toilet or doing laundry must be stopped first to avoid global warming! Once those are gone, I'm sure there'll be problems with bathing, eating foods they disapprove of, farting, driving automobiles, and sitting in chairs. Maybe after all of us are purified of these nasty, global-warming-inducing habits they can cry about boxes.
Games for consoles rarely (if ever) come in big boxes and are often just a cd in a jewel case with a booklet. Even cartridge based games have very small packaging. A lot of console games are expensive (anywhere from 30 bucks to 80 bucks for a new high quality game), yet people don't seem to be put off by their small packaging.
And here are a few reasons why:
1- Because the only way to get it done would be to get ALL software makers to comply 100% so that no one company would get to have a big box. With companies like M$ out there, there isn't much hope for compliance.
2- Retailers want boxes like that. They encourage impulse buying, because so much can be crammed onto them with big pictures. Try that with a jewel case, which would make all the games look like Playstation games, which don't stand out in the crowd. Retailers didn't mind this with CD's, because CD longboxes are blank white (Although some retailers still sell them like this, such as Costco.) and rarely had much else on them.
3- Retailers also like those big boxes because they make it hard to steal games. Putting them in jewelboxes would require storing the games in locked areas, or using intense antitheft systems like record stores do.
[nostalgic sigh]
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
There was a wonderful question from a reader in a subsequent issue. It read "If all Atari games look like that inside, then why do some games cost so much more than others?"
Beautiful comment. Whacks the establishment right square on the head.
The editor did a nice dance talking about copyright, R&D expenses, paying poor overworked programmers, etc. and fully, though unintentionally I'm sure, made for a complete bullshit explanation that failed to justify the **HIGH** costs of some games over others, which is what the question asked.
Software prices are arbitrary. It's price is "whatever the market will stand". MS, the SPA, etc. will PREACH about how it pays for development costs, paying starving programmers salaries, testing, debugging, marketing, etc.
This.
Is.
False.
e.g., there's no reason the full version of windows should cost $130 (and the upgrade $90). The $$$ generated cover staff and R&D in their first 0.5% of profits. And once recovered, prices do not go down. It's just price gouging, pure and simple.
If you compare total revenue from software sales / R&D and programming and staff costs, you will find VAST deviations from software item to software item. It's not about programmers feeding their families, it's about gouging gouging gouging GOUGING.
A bigger box lets the SW vendors gouge a bit more than they could get away with if everything was fit into a standard CD jewel case. That's all there is too it.
My box of Red Hat Deluxe 6.2 was fairly full with disks and manuals, relatively speaking.
Sorry for being offtopic, but that story came about before Slashdot instituted all sorts of measures (throttling posters who post too quickly, banning IP's, etc) to prevent such abuse. In fact, it's stories like that (and the 2nd-place story as well) that prompted such measures.
So Slashdot has some holes in it. You don't like it? Read something else.
For more information, click here.
Earlier this year, Gamespot did a feature on some of the most prominent computer game developers (Don't have the link, but I'm sure someone could find it). One of the questions they asked every one was, "If there was one thing you could change about the industry, what would it be?" About half of them said they wanted to slim down the game boxes. They pointed to current PlayStation games at your local EB. They are small, and you can fit tons of them on the shelf. Computer games boxes are huge compared to the PlayStations, and you can fit maybe only a quarter of the amount of games on the same shelf space, compared to the PlayStations. This means each computer game can be on the shelf for less time, which means many good games get pushed off the shelf before they have a chance to catch on, and hype surrounding a computer game's release has more to do with the success than the quality of the game.
The game developers stated that the publishers keep up with the huge boxes because they are afraid some small box would get lost amoung the rest of the huge boxes on the shelf. The developers also hoped that if one game shrank the box size, and sold well, that the rest would follow suit.
You can still fit a lot into a double-sized jew case. Look at Lunar: Silver Story Complete for PlayStation. It came with a good sized instruction book, 3 CD's, and a full-sided map!
-Kefabi out.
I know that it's hard to tell, even from the pictures on the current oversized boxes, what a program is like. I think that the retailers wanting a standard size box excuse is just that, an excuse. Jewel cases are a standard size and take up far less of a retailer's valuable shelf space. What software retailers should have is a CD shelf like a music store, or even like the shelves many of them use for shareware, OEM and budget titles that don't come in cardboard boxes. Then, to show off the artwork that would normally be on the boxes they could use small posters, a scrapbook or best of all a terminal that displays screenshots, info and even demos of the software. This is a far more environmentally friendly approach and doesn't cost the retailer as much in their #1 commodity... space.
Isn't there a little rubber Tux toy in Corel Linux or something?
(I'll never find out)
I for along time have felt that I was getting scammed when I open the box to find nothing but a cheep 75 CD and a crappy one-page pamphlet. It is a gross waist of resources. I realize this is America and we are the most decadent society in the world, but that is no reason to waist what resources we have. What is wrong with showing the people what they are really buying? I don't need that 120-page instruction book printed for me, which could be put on the CD with the software. It is nice to have it printed but it is about time that we start looking after the world we live in and try to become a little friendlier to our environment. I am not saying that everyone should turn in their cars for a pair of recycled sandals, all I am saying is lets make some reductions, most of us won't even notice the change, like when music CDs stopped being packaged in boxes. Who remembers when that happened? Changing the packaging that the software we buy comes in may actually make the earth a little more habitable for our children. Anyone else who is upset with the packaging software comes in can e-mail me to add your name to a petition. Please include your state and voting district this can be found on your voter ID card. The petition is going to be e-mailed to major software manufacturers to attempt to get them to reduce their packaging. Copies are going to be e-mailed to major software retailers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to the congressmen and representatives of those who have joined the petition. I think that at some point you have to stand up and fight for your rights.
Seriously.
The more shelf space that you consume the less space that is available for competitors products. It's a known tactic.
Hence the trend to larger boxes and increased packaging.
Deleted
"It's in a big box, so there's more to recycle."
Lets see how spammer scripts handle that! ;-)
----
Microsoft's moto:
"If it compiles, ship it!"
Hell, everyone does that!! The game makers are the worst.
Outside, glitz and fluff
Inside, much less than it seems
Metaphor for Bill
------
------
You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
larger packaging helps prevent theft - it's a lot easier to steal a CD jewel case than to steal a box the size of your chest.
If this were simply a case of Microsoft choosing a bigger box for more visibility on the shelf, don't you think they'd do it for all of their software? Since that's not the case, there must be some other reason.
Consider Streets & Trips' biggest competitor, Delorme's Street Atlas USA. Look at the box picture at http://www.delorme.com/software.htm . It's big as well. I assume MS made the box big to match the size of its competitors. If you went to the store, and were uninformed about the state-of-the-art in mapping software, wouldn't you pick the big box over a smaller box, even if each contained only one or two CDs? I would.
The overpackaging is nothing compared to the space the app takes up. 4 - count 'em - 4 CD's for Office 2000 (60 MB for Staroffice download - that's about 1/40th the size).
So what, you say? Considering the rate at which Microsoft makes current computers obsolete, the industrial waste caused by the turnover of PCs in this country might outweigh the packaging for the software that makes the obsolescence possible.
I have worked at two software stores back in the late 80's early 90's and the same thing was brought in PC MAG and other publications. People subconsciously go for the biggest most colorful box. Every game I have bought for myself or son has had %80 air in the damn thing. They use cardboard to stiffen it up. I catch my self doing it when looking for a new book to read too. It's not going to change because it works. A customer of mine just bought a billing program they downloaded and the company no longer sends out a CD or manual. Everything is downloaded and the company keeps track of who you are so if you ever need the application you can download it for free. While I like that setup for the environment I still like to have a hefty manual next to me as a backup or something I can browse on the train. If you can get 20/20 to generate awareness then change might occur. It has to be a conscience decision.
....... Thus ends my attempt at wit or whatever
Has there ever been a push to 'slim down' software packaging, similar to what happened with CD's in the early 90s?
Hell no.
If not, should there be?
Hell YES.
There should be a push for software to be sold in jewel cases without all the cardboard, and sometimes plastic casings. All documentation can be put on the disk and printed out if needed, or a double cd jewel case can be used which have plenty of room for small 'getting started' booklets.
If shelf visibility is a concern for software companies perhaps they should consider reuseable shelf displays and dioramas for their product to sit upon.
I never RTDM anyway. I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to.
Fire the "laser".
It's not just that the box is large. It's the fact that the large box weighs next to nothing. It's as if you're paying a significant amount of money for air. I don't mind a large box that has some heft to it (i.e. a nice thick manual inside). It's the ones that look like they ought to weigh as much as a cinderblock but only weigh a few grams that I have a problem with. You're muscles are all ready to lift something heavy so you end up flinging the box across the store. It's embarrassing.
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
Has anyone ever seen how toys R Us sells video games? They have 1 empty box for each product mounted on the wall, with tickets under them. If you want the game, you grab a ticket, pay for it at the register, and then trade your ticket for the game at a counter behind the register. It seems to me if stores like compusa used a system like this, you could really knock down the amount of packaging used. The manufactures could still have their big box to appear on the shelves, but when you actually bought the thing, you'd get a nice little efficent oem style package. Take it a step further, rather than have tickets, just have a credit card swipe under each product or something. Swipe your credit card on what you want, when you are done, walk to the counter in the front of the store and swipe your card again, and it charges your card, and gives you a nice list to hand to the man behind the curtain.
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
I got an AOL Gold CD a several months back that was a shrinkwrapped CD in a 1-1/2" x 6" x 8" box... nothing else in the box but the CD... I'm sure mine wasn't the only one (wait... we've tried for years, but as soon as he sees the CD in a *box*... he'll come around and sign up...)
Yeah...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I read through this thinking how many people say 'consumers like this', 'consumers do that'. Hey, I'm a consumer! Here is I shop for titles (games, usually. Apps I get online). I like the smell of the software company. The big giant displays. The annoying salesman who seems to think his favorite game is the one everyone should buy. The rows and rows of games I've never heard of. I see something that looks interesting. Pick up the box. Read the system requirements. Open up the front flap. Look at the screen shots. Read the game description, the reviews on the side. Shake the box. Does it sound like just a jewel case flopping around in there or is it there a manual. Put the game down. Do this for an hour or two and decide on a game. Sure, I know I could get reviews, screenshots etc. on the net, but its not the same thing. It has been pointed out a number of times: People will always go to brick and mortar shops because they like to get out, they like the physical contact with the product before they put their money down. Don't get me wrong, I want the boxes to be smaller, but I also want to be able to see what I'm getting. I don't shop for play station games in a brick and mortar, since it's just the jewel box, and usually, it is behind glass where I can't examine it, so you have to know exactly what you want before going into the store. I think the best way is to keep the boxes on the shelves. When you take it up, you get a shrink rapped disk/docs to take with you. Interstellar Donkey
http://www.masscom.net/~deadfish/donkey.html
The Internet is generally stupid
EA is planning on publishing all of their games in a DVD-style box starting later this year. Perhaps other game publishers will follow suit, and then hopefully all software publishers will do so, where appropriate.
As shopping is done more online, the large companies (amazon, buy.com) will push manufactures to have smaller boxes. The box only serves for in-store purchases, where display counts.
So even if electronic distribution doesn't arrive, as long as electronic ordering becomes stronger, the boxes will get smaller.
Some major game publishers (Electronic arts for one) are moving to publishing games in those little plastic folders DVD movies come in. This is definately a step in the right direction, especially with games that never include a book-like manual. Regular software should do the same thing!
Computer books are grotesquely big. However, it's not because of the amount of information. Most of the size/info ration of yer avg computer book is gobbled up with wide margins, high leding and monster fonts. Viz
COMPUTER BOOKS CHOSEN AT RANDOM FROM MY "LIBRARY"
The Complete Oracle Reference.
1120pp 30lines 9.5wds/line -----> 319.200wds
The CodeWarrior professional Book
440pp 36lines 10wds/line -------> 158,400wds
NON COMPUTER BOOKS SIMILARLY CHOSEN
The Social and Political Writings of Castoriadis Vol 2.
360pp 44lines 13.5wds/line -----> 213,840
Holy Blood Holy Grail
460pp 47lines 9.5wds/line ------> 205,827
Note that my non-computer books are svelt mass-market paperbacks, while the computer tomes are... tomes. Despite this disparity in size by about a factor of 6, they both hold, on average, the same-ish number of pages. NB, I didn't include photos or diagrams in my calcs. I just counted that space as "worded".
So how come computer books are so damn big if all the info they contain can be fit into a puny paperback? Several reasons:
1. Compu books are expensive. Not a heck of a lot of people want to read a book on Java... almost nobody when compared to Stephen King's latest, or even Holy Blood Holy Grail (which is on its 14th printing or something like that). Low print run equals higher cost. No consumer is going to pay $40 for a paperback, hence the Rosetta Stone school of book binding
2. Shelf space competition. There are a dozen beginner C++ books out there and, let's face it, they all cover pretty much the same stuff. As a publisher, how do you increase your sales at the expense of your competition? By grabbing the most shelf space! This is especially true for beginner books as beginners haven't developed publisher preference yet. Shelf space is a big deal in publishing and some publishers of non-comp books even offer chains (ie Chapters) incentives to "face" certain books (stack with cover, not spine, facing customer). Comp books are too small a market to be able to justify these tactics so the solution is a really big spine!
So, how do you get a really big spine? Well, some bindery techniques can do some of it, but by and large the easiest way is: thick pages and lots of them. Hence wide margins, high leding, monster type and lots and lots of dead trees.
2 1337 4 u!
I'm sick and tiread of having to print 400 page manuals for some f\/(k1n6 expensive software.
Paranoids of the world unite!
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
If you got a book, then there was at least a half an excuse for the box. This story was about a software box which contained nothing but a CD-ROM in a jewel case, and a pamphlet which could easily have fit inside the jewel case.
One thing you can do is open the box at the checkout, take the stuff out, and hand the trash to the cashier. I have tried this before. It is amazing how much garbage there is when you even go someplace like the grocery store.
There are tons of products out there on the market that are overpackaged. Andes Mints are a good example. If you look at a package of them, you will see what appears to be a whole bunch of mints through the cellophane window. Open the box and all the mints you can see are the ones you are getting. The rest is just cardboard.
Also, to the person that submitted the story: this type of stuff has as much to do with common sense and waste of money as it does with being environmental. TANSTAAFL. When you buy one of these oversized packages, the manufacturer is not giving this to you for free, ya know? You the consumer are the one paying for it. Hence, why I give the trash back to the store.
After all, why should I have to pay to throw away their overpackaging of my SIMM chips when putting the chips in a little container would be much better in the first place?
It turns out that (At least, I was told this) Germany taxes the companies with bigger packages.
When I bought SuSE 6.4, I noticed that the box had become much larger than the older releases... :-(
I guess all the arguments I read below (visibility, impulse buying aspect, etc...) also apply here...
What's sad is that the box's contents are exactly the same (CD box + manual)
I hope this trend will reverse, but my illusions are already gone...
let's assume, just for an example, that the average software box is 10 inches high, 8 inches wide and 1 1/2 inches deep. Now let's say that this slightly larger box is 12 inches high, 12 inches wide, and 2 1/2 inches deep. Finally, we'll declare that a CD is approximately 5 inches, by 5 1/2 inches by 1/4 inch.
Box 1 Box 2 CDSurface Area(sq.in.) 214 408 60
Volume(cu.in.) 120 360 7
So it seems that the slightly bigger box uses 3 times the volume of the average box, and about 51 times the volume of a jewel case. But who cares about the environment, we've got product to sell, and it looks damned fine in a large box.
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Just something to think about...
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
Paper and cardboard actually make up the largest part of our waste stream, and not only do that generally not degrade well, in modern landfills, but the slick looking cardboard boxes of today's software have all sorts of nastiness associated with their disposal anyway. But as previously noted, fuck the environment, after all, if it was a big problem, then surely it would be on the evening news along with the little cuban boy, right?
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Why don't you go and do something useful? Or is that incorrect as well?
if your favorite linux distro cam in a huge penquin shaped box, would we be even having this discussion? probably not, most of you would of ran to the store just to have the penguin on top of you computers...... hahahahah
Wrong... In 1996 packaging comprised 29.7 percent of all landfill waste in the United States. This document cites a case where a corporation cut two-inches off a box flap and saved $360,000 annually at one plant. Every inch matters.
Last time I checked, you've never lived in Canada and ordered something from America.
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First off maybe all of those boxes are leftovers from the 1.54 gazillion pages of documents from the antitrust trial. Peel away the paper see if it says "Confidential MS documents - shred or eat"
/.!, out of paper - hell they're gonna burn up anyway.
Next - why don't they just treat software like any LARGE object you buy at the toy store. That is, put ONE up in the shelf and mount a little slipper with tickets inside where you can redeem them at the cash register. That way they could make the package as large as they freakin please!
Next - and don't get your boxers in twist, but according to the WHO (World Health Organization), one of the MOST polluting industries in the world is - - ya guessed it! Paper recycling! That's right. They have use all sorts of dangerous chemicals and materials like sulphuric acid, mercury, bismuth, etc.. So maybe not trying to reclaim all that packaging is not such a bad thing.
Maybe someone will start building those nano-destructo satellites seen here on
When you bury cardboard in great deep landfills, it doesn't decompose. It just sits there, like a rock. Probably, it eventually turns into coal, or something similar.
Cardboard is made from wood. Wood is made by trees sucking carbon dioxide from the air. When trees die naturally and rot, or are used for fuel, they release the carbon dioxide they absorbed back into the atmosphere.
We appear to have a problem with global warming from releasing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by digging up carbon-based fuels from deep in the Earth and burning them.
Think about it...
Wasteful cardboard packaging helps slow global warming by fixing carbon in the Earth.
Don't recycle! Subscribe to every newspaper and magazine that you're vaguely interested in and toss them in a landfill. Forms in triplicate and printouts of everything are part of a secret government initiative to stop global warming!
Packaging is just another version of media control via formatting. It's akin to proposed proprietary "MP3" formats too keep music distribution under control. Microsoft is not likely to make their software available for download, because they perceive that having you pay $$$ for a big package gives them greater control over who has access. It reaveals the level of faith they have in true internet commerce. By the way, what's wrong with being an environmentalist? I think anybody who can say excessive packaging "makes me sick" should be proud of that label. -- Not what you think.
don't drink soap! keep out of eye! dilute! dilute! ok!
Most bottles of wine with concave bottoms are for safety. When wine is allowed to ferment in the bottle, enough pressure cold build up to cause the bottle to explode. Add a concave bottom -> get more surface area for less volume -> less bottles blowing up.
Most true wines won't need this though since they don't ferment in the bottle. Champagne and other naturally carbonated wines usually do have stronger bottles (Thicker), and often the indented bottom.
I've had my share of homebrew beer bottles blow up on me before I learned to how much sugar to add and what kind of bottles to avoid using.
Gone are the good old days of being able to judge a software product by the 'Heft Factor' and other totally-subjective tests. The 'Heft Factor' was one test in a series of tests designed to be a software rating system. The following is a comprehensive list of tests that could be used to evaluate software:
1) The shake-shake test: The more floppies the software had, the better the game must have been...
2) The 'heave-ho' test: If it had a manual in it, it must've been good!
3) The DOJ test: a software package in each hand, trying to figure out which is heaver.
4) The $$ test: obviously, a $40 game was better than a $30 game...
All of these tests were designed to be easily conducted inside of your local Babbages/Egghead/Software Boutique. The rating scale was a simple 1-5 with the following weighting:
3xSHAKE-TEST + 2xHEFT-TEST + 1.5x$$-TEST = rating
Lastly, the DOJ-TEST was used to break any two ratings that were within 10 points of one another.
sigh Those were the days...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
If you've ever bought a big machine from HP, you know that there can't be any regard for the environment in them. They used to send everything in its own box...even individual license agreements! You'd get ten boxes roughly 9x12x3" each containing one piece of paper. Then, they'd stack them all up and put them in another box for shipment. It was disgusting.
But there are alternative ways to making your package more noticable.
1. instead of having a big box, have a big paper backing, and seal the cd to that somehow. The benefits of that are less packaging (therefore less money). The product would take up less space and not loose the effects of a big box. Most software doesn't come with a manual anymore anyway.
2. Use more noticable colors. A small strip of shiny foil would draw the eye. Manufacturers would have to rely more on creativity than on sheer size.
3. Like music stores, use recyclable plastic security holders. Put the advertisement on them, and when done, reuse them with new labels.
You do? I buy it because I want to use the capabilities of the stuff inside the box. If what you're saying is true, it would seem we are a match made in heaven. Let's go shopping for software together. We can split the cost, you get the box and I get the cd. Sound good?
You, sir, are correct.
Unfortunately, the cartoon Clerks on Fox (of not Fox, forgive, but it's gotta be Fox) is just so not funny. I keep trying to give it a chance, but man....
Clerks the movie was classic (though what kinda guys did that gal screw to not notice fat man was DEAD?).
Clerks the cartoon won't make it past July.
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool
1) The big shiny box gets customer attention. We like customer attention. The customer is paying for the box anyway, may as well make it nice... it certainly won't cost us.
2) Customer sees CD in jewel case, that's it, and thinks "This is OEM sofware, so I should get a break on the price." enter customer whining (come on, $500? It's just a little box!)- amazing how a $400 program is suddenly worth $50 in the mind's eye of the customer just cause it doesn't have a $2 box around it. If that $2 box makes it worth $400 in the customer eye, I want it.
3) Notice how in the olden days you got big printed manuals as well as the jewel case? Not any more - now it's on CD - big cost savings for them, no price break for the consumer.
4) You're paying for this in WAY more ways than you know.
1) Floor space costs money.
2) Shipping costs money - and it's done by cubic inches, as well as weight.
3) Inks, dyes, paper, plastic wrap, etc. costs money. Guess who pays for it?
4) It costs more for the employee to move 70 copies of large boxes than 70 jewel cases.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
But what would Microsoft put inside the package? They could not even manage to get substance in their software; how could they get it in "doo-dads"?? Although, perhaps a tiny package of Bill Gates' pocket fluff (probably wadded up $500 bills). Or an envelope of smarties along with a corpus delecti for an officer of the court (I figure that is Microsoft's next move). Or some peril-sensitive Microsoft(tm) Windows(reg US pat off) CrashPrufe(R) sunglasses that turn black when Windows is about to crash. They could use the same black cardboard as Infocom.
Yeah. Like a manual in a 3-ring binder. And the manual had words! Not just reproductions of dialog boxes. And some had programming infomation. My Atari Word Processor ($500, circa 1981) manual was a full-sized 1.5" three ring binder with an easel back. Now that is documentation.
Evidently, he's still pulling the same trick at Microsoft today.
--
``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins
Oh, but we should err on the side of caution, for the sake of the childeren, and hire bureaucrats to measure boxes, issue regulations, and fine violators, who would be summoned before an administrative magistrate (yup, if you can make up laws as you go along, you can make up courts, too). There is a downside to making laws about this kind of thing. Better just to say if it offends you, avoid it.
I wrote parts of this stuff
software should be the case and book only. holding the manual and cd behind the counter, much like in a music store. after all a person that buys software asks questions or knows what they want. the don't need a big flash box. later
50882960 - icq im the same as you, waiting to die, just like everyone else
I wasn't complaining about it.
It just happens to be a pet peeve of mine that many self-proclaimed environmentalists don't have a clue about what does and does not actually have an environmental impact.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I bought the latest Vicom FTP client for the Mac over the net with my VISA: one relatively quick download and they emailed be my registration code; no fuss, no muss, no GST, no friggin' $5.00 'handling charge' (oh, thank you Canada Post!), etc.
Just remember what John Ralston Saul sez: NAFTA: Not A Free Trade Agreement.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I want to start collecting these in the back up my pickup and dump them all on AOLs doorstep some day...
-p.
Not quite right. "Sie" should have been capitalized because it is referring to "You" in the formal.
Pronouns:
auf Deutsch|auf Englisch
du:you, informal
sie:she, or they
Sie:you, formal, singular, or plural
Make sense?
-Matthead
Empty boxes on the shelves for browsing, when you are ready to buy, walk up to the counter, tell them what you want, and they grab an OEM-like distribution of the software from under the counter or the back room.
This probably would not work well for businesses like Best Buy or Circuit City that have multiple sales counters, but might work well for stores like Software Etc., Babbages, or other game-centric retailers that usually only have one counter.
I doubt this would slow checkout down too much, as console games, in many stores, have to be fetched from a locked glass case anyway, of course, you do get the box in that situation, only it can be a hassle to get a look at it before you buy.
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
I can't remember the name of the company, but whoever made Spaceward Ho! and a famous Solitare game for the Macintosh used to sell their product only in jewel cases so that they wouldn't waste packaging space.
Naturally, their product did horribly in retail because it didn't "look" like a professional game...
-Bill
My brewery puts beer out in 6-packs of 12 oz. bottles - most breweries do. When it rolls out the door I have something like $13.43 of variable costs in each case of beer of that $10.11 was costs for packaging. Putting beer into 12 oz bottles is about as big a pain in the ass as you can find - IF YOU WOULD BUY BEER IN ANYTHING ELSE WE WOULD PACKAGE IT THAT WAY. Consumer demand is driving the big empty software boxes.
When I get a package that is over packaged I remove the part I want from the package and leave the excess packaging at the store. If everyone did this retailers would start stocking products with less packaging.
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
Aha! That explains it. See, I live in LA County.... Have a look at the crime stats for our affluent neighboorhood.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
All that ended when COGS considerations were given the upper hand after R12. The weight of printed material intially was cut in half and has by now gone down to zero. The books, if you pay for them, are small format with cheap-o binding and printing popularized by MS. The slash boxes are replaced by the standard perishable cardboard waste. (Meanwhile the reduced costs were not passed onto the VAR or the consumer. Duh.)
Why do I bring this up? Because there used to be a real need for boxes. Customers developed expectations about software coming to them in boxes -- the bigger the better.
This is a silly issue altogether. The packaging waste is trivial compared to the paper wasted in most offices -- including in software shops. And the fuel wasted in distributing boxed CDs compared to on-line downloads is arguably more significant.
More recently, Autodesk chose to ship the actual CD;s in a nice biodegradable cardboard case instead of a jewel box. Customers revolted. They hated it. They forced them to change back to jewel cases. In public newwgroups Adesk folks were ridculed, no, excoriated for pointing out the virtues of the cardboard cases. Oh well.
Electronic Arts used to ship games and applications in folding boxes that looked just like (vinyl) album boxes circa 1986.
I still have boxes from great games like Starflight and PHM Pegasus. I remember as a 7 year old staring at the beautiful artwork and large photographs on these boxes; they really gave personality and depth to those games.
They stopped shipping software in that packaging around 1988-89 becuase 10 or 20 3.5" disks fit poorly.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
During the early 80-s, when there was a trend to flat, 4-1/4 by 8 shrink wrapped manuals bound around a disk (perhaps with a flat "cover" wrapped around those). Then competitors started getting attention with prettier packaging, so everyone followed suit. We never went back.
(Only one of my Wizardry Series, Knight of Diamonds, was packaged in flat form, and even that was reissued in a box).
Microsoft packages the way it does for other reasons as well, to fight against privacy. There are zilions of clever "anti-piracy" tricks in the Microsoft packaging, designed to capture the unwary. It is, perhaps, a necessary evil when you are selling about $5-$25 in paper and plastic for prices in excess of $250.00
Enough said.
Revolution = Evolution
Game companies might be the first people, in a way, who have attempted to minimize the materials needed to sell a software title off the shelf.
After initial sales are over, they usually revert to a "bargain bin" box content that includes a skimpy black and white manual (if that) and little else.
My copy of SWOTL, for instance was an old title by the time I bought it back in 1992. It came with a small, plain booklet. But other SWOTL players tell me their copy came with a well bound full color manual. My copy of Aces of the Deep, however, came with NO manual.
Of course, the companies do this to maximize profit, but it's nice to know they're conserving supplies at the same time. The seasoned gamer, after all, doesn't really need to read that "G" is for Landing Gear and "F" is for Flaps. ;)
I think that's why Best Buy always has a guy standing at the door checking everyone's receipt as they leave. Probably well worth the trouble.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
DVD cases are too big. Use CD cases!
Why not sell a bare CD?
Correct me if I'm wrong. I read this somewhere years ago. The reasoning behind large boxes was that tax is charged on the percentage of software (cd, disks etc) contained within the box. So if the game is released within a jewel case, there's 100% of the total price taxed. If it's sent in a largly empty box, well ... 10 % is taxed..... 1% over 1 million sales makes that extra size seem reasonable to managements bottom line..... IIRC this was based on US markets. Enjoy, Q.
Even better than putting data on CD-ROMs is putting it on the web. Just make sure your PC doesn't use much power because you're going to keep it on a lot.
If they're going to do that, they might as well use a really fancy model or uniquely shaped box. They could use a toy, or a hologram. When a boxing game comes out, they could have a little punchind doll.
The way to make consumers give up manuals is to make in-game manuals EXTREMELY friendly. One way is to make the game keep certain gameplay info onscreen at all times. Think of Zelda 64, and how it puts the whole controller button layout on the screen, as well as uses lots of "baloons" to say how each character and item works. In this sense, it's a good idea for users to buy bigger monitors, hopefully LCDs, so that there's so much space that giving up 20-25% of it to info is no problem.
ah, yes, thank you for the stats on your neighborhood... i see violent crime is a 184% of the national average, and non-violent crime is 226% of average.
----------------------------
What do you want to do, cut down trees until cardboard costs more than the CDs it houses?
Ever hear of weed trees? I'm not talking old growth. I'm talking aspen and spruce, trees that grow to full height and die on their own in 20-40 years. There are vast areas of weed-tree forest.
Better yet, plant hemp. Hemp grows twice as fast as any wood, sucks twice as much CO2 out of the air, and makes better paper (aside from various... side benefits).
Why make the most of each tree? There's plenty more where they came from. Just because some bozos are mining essentially irreplacable and relatively small areas of old-growth wood doesn't mean we shouldn't aggressively harvest stuff that completely rejuvenates itself in 20 years and is in forests as vast as oceans and springs up in your back yard, if you don't beat it back all the time. I say better we get the use of it than the termites do (did you know there's around 2000 lbs. of termites for every living person? They use a lot more wood than we do!).
Since people criss-crossed this country with roads, the prairies don't burn every year anymore. What happened? They became overgrown with trees. The endless sea of grass is no more. It's all farm and forest, thanks to ox and tractor. That forest isn't natural any more than the farms are, and there's nothing wrong with treating them just like the farms.
I work at Best Buy in the Media Department (Which includes software, CDs, and movies). I must say those boxes for Streets and Trips 2001 are a pain in the ass. In addition to being environmentally unfriendly, you should try fitting the 30 we get in a shipment on the shelves... damn Microsoft. Comparatively, their boxes are a lot bigger than the rest of the map programs we offer, which is probably the main reason they outsell everything else. It just goes to show how gullible consumers are. They think big box = awesome product. When really a big box just fills the landfills faster. Well, I'll stop my ranting. .. I just got home from work which is probably why I'm so annoyed by those bastards...
-Scorpio
When I decided to buy Quake III (like that was much of a decision), I went to eToys and bought the tin case version. I had yet to see the box, but I still decided to buy the nicer packaging.
Can any of you explain this one? I'm stumped.
Dane
(like the dog)
And the average house price is $270k! Oh the Joy!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Not only is there the standard waste in packaging, but what about the waste is shipping costs, store and shelf space before sale and the like? This level of unprecedented waste goes well beyond the "killing of trees".
You'd figure that resellers with a physical store front would have been complaining for years, let alone today's software warehouses. I mean, by reducing at least the 3rd dimension, depth, you can package 3-8x as many units while still preserving the marketing value of the 2-D frontal image! You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out! Dooh!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Working in a retail software store, I see (and am charged with the duty of shelving) tons of software boxes.
Generally, they're in that good ole' 8x11ish box size that makes it oh-so-easy to shelve.. But others can be a pain in the ass for smaller-footprint stores like ours (hint: in malls.. not much space) because customers smack their heads on, trip on, or otherwise destroy those pretty wide-ass boxes.
A good example: The Quake II Quad Damage pack. 4 cds - Quake II, the two mission packs, and the netpack. A fscking double-wide box. w0o. It's 2 freaking boxes wide! Of course, it fills our Activision shelf quite nicely, but the customers think it's f00king nuts.
A better example: Video cards. Although they're not software, they certainly could be packaged as such. Their boxes are about 10 times the volume of the contents! I mean, god... wtf? I understand the need for marketing is high in that market, but with the blatent BS and crap that they throw on those boxes (read the Voodoo 5 box for some 'interesting' information..) they'd be better off letting the marketing department take the day off.
Anti-example: Sid Meyer's Antedam. Whoa. I was freaking impressed by this one. It's packaged in a DVD case! w0o! Of course, it misleads the customer - they think the game's on DVD or it's a misplaced movie - but definately more economical and practical.
Lesson: marketing > usability
Well, what a rant. Something for ya'll to chew on, I guess...
It's not just software that's overpackaged these days. Ever tried to get into a bag of Oreos recently? There's about two layers of (mostly) unnecessary packaging:
-a peice of cardboard inside the bag, just so the bag doesn't get crumpled
-a celophane wrapper around the plastic tray that actually holds the cookies or, inversely the paper bag itself could be done away with and just have the plastic tray in its celophane wrapper.
I find it rather sickening that corporations feel the need to kill more trees just to make sure their products don't get so much as a scratch on them during shipping. I remember back when Oreos came in two layers of packaging.. a paper bag, with a paper tray to hold the cookies. It's still killing trees, but at least they could make all of that out of recycled paper.
Which leads me off on another tangent.. out of the massive volume of paper we must be recycling these days, how much of it actually goes back into circulation? And how many businesses actually make a practice of recycling paper instead of just throwing it away?
I'm not sure about the size of the box anywhere else, but here is Australia, Mcafee Office 2000 came in a box about the size of a mini-tower case and all it had was the CD and a 4-5 page installation manual. No joke
I hate those guys! (receipt checkers)
I've already paid and I want to go home. The conversation always goes something like this:
checker: [poised with pink pen]
me: [walks by, ignores checker]
checker: "Sir, I need to check your receipt!"
me: [ignore, keep walking]
checker: [repeats plea]
me "Hmmm, why don't you call the cops?" [keep walking]
Quite efficient (for both sides).
Ryan
Microsoft is taking a cue from the auto manufacturers.
Ryan
In a past life I was a software publisher. It was part of my job to make decisions about packaging format.
There are several factors that came into my thinking...
1. How much do I want people to pay? And whatever price I want, if the customer sees the product before purchase, the customer had better feel comfortable and happy that they are getting value for money. So a fifty dollar product can come in packaging that looks less important and is cheaper than a one thousand dollar package. On the other hand - if the customer doesn't see the product before purchase, then the packaging can be as cheap as you like - witness the OEM versions of Microsoft products.
2. There's an arms-race happening, currently at a stability-point. When a purchase sits on a shelf, the customer can only judge relative value by the packaging. So, if you make your packaging look and feel better, convey more information, and makes the customer more comfortable than the packaging that the opposition are using, then you will gain some sales that you would not otherwise have had. On the other hand, you also don't want to break the equilibrium that exists by producing something that the competitors have to match. For instance - packaging in gold foil may send the message that your product is a premium high-value product, but guarantees that the competition will have upgrade their packaging to compete. You just both end up spending more money for no overall gain.
3. Distributors and retail agents like 'regular' packaging. These are important people to please - they control whether your end-users will see the package. If you make packaging that is difficult for them to display, pack or handle you can be sure that some of them won't bother. So this means that you can't make an oversized box for instance if you want it to fit on ordinary shelving. And it means that while hexagonal boxes may be eye-catching, they will be a real problem to store.
4. Security. Someone has to pay for stolen stock. The smaller you make your packaging the more will be stolen, providing the value stays the same. So if you have a highly desireable product, make the packaging bulky. Also, make the packaging more complex, so that it is harder for casual shoplifters to gain entrance.
So - the reason that it's not going to change is that packaging is currently at an equilibrium point. For any change to happen there needs to be a new force - like a change in public sentiment about packaging or a new law. I don't think that's going to happen real soon.
Jeff Veit
Well, *I* for one found the show to be entertaining. The biggest problem I saw was that people were expecting it to be the movie, which it wasn't. (Not by a long shot.) But, I think it certainly had its moments, and when I flipped on ABC last wednesday and saw Spin City, I practically cried - there were supposed to be two more episodes! They were supposed to run at least four!
One thing about the show is that it flattened out the characters more than the movie, but in the cases of Jay, Silent Bob, and Randall, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Snootch to the bootch.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
And the education system is still getting fallout from that. But I still remembering my class getting one of our teachers sidetracked onto the topic of the location of the stars in Super Mario 64...
Besides, I think MA was voted something like second best state in the country to live in, so it can't be all bad. :) (Not that I remember the criteria for "best state" but...)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I can remeber at one point I ordered a copt of Metrowerks Codewarrior from some mail order firm and I was surprised at the shipping packaging. The product from Metrowerks was in a CD box, nothing over-packaged there, where the over packaging occurred was in the packaging used for shipping: a 30cm x 40cm x 40cm box, just for a CD !!!!
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
a) The record industries weren't forced to change their packaging. It seemed that way, that they were getting pressure from environmental groups. But if you stop and think about it, the amount of plastic and paper in an old cd package was actually inconsiquention, especially when compared to the consumer waste generated by other products, like fast food containers.. What really went on (and I was there working in a record store so I saw this first hand), the record companies not only put up no resistance, but they encouraged the environmentalist groups to lobby for it. Why? It reduced the physical space of each cd by half, making it cheaper to ship (by volume, not counting the weight anyway), and twice as cheap to store in warehouses. I mean, come on, has *anyone* ever heard of an environmentalist group being able to affect an entire industry so cleanly? Especially the record industry, with billions of dollars to fight (if they wanted to). The only objection of course was from the record stores, who now had to worry about theft since the cd's were in smaller packages and easily pocketed. They were forced to buy those expensive CD security frames and/or those security systems that go off when you try to leave the store with product.
b) Last I checked, Microsoft wasn't the only culprit. Redhat, Suse, Slackware all had nice big boxes too. (Granted some of them had manuals, but there's still a fair amount of air in them).
_______
2B1ASK1
Maybe there should be two boxes: the one for the shelf, so that you can look at the pretty pictures and then the actual product box, which would simply be a DVD style box, with the product in it, that you ask for at the counter.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
HP may have gone "environmental" with their goofy little cardboard CD sleeves, but have you ever ordered a server from them? Each little widget and cable comes in its own box. HUGE boxes, that would hold 50 or so of the same widgets, or 10 of the cables. I end up with one server, a 1-foot pile of cables, manuals, and widgets, and a 10-foot pile of boxes. As far as I'm concerned, they could ship all the gizmos in one well-sized box and give me a real jewel case for the darn CD's. :)
environmentalist wackos ?
Hehe.. Careful, your rampant zenophobia is showing..
On 'Talk of the Nation' on NPR today they are going to have Nader as the guest. Should be interesting.
Type your resume like that. Go on, don't worry about a few misspelled words, they'll figure it out. Right?
And then see how fast you *don't* get hired.
Hey! Those DVD style cases are great! You just take out the useless disk inside (chuck it or turn it into a coaster) turn the paper under the cover plastic upside down to show the white side or take it out, and Viola! Instant high-quality single-cd case (it can take much more of a beating than the brittle plastic of you avarage jewel case).
You can't do much about the "500 hours free" sticker on the front, but, what the hey....
--
An esoteric scratched itch:
Homeworld Map Maker Tool
Is there something wrong with wanting to keep the only habitable planet we've found, well, habitable?
So long as you're not an Envro-Nazi type environmentalist, the term only denotes a certain level of conscious responsibility. And there's certainly nothing wrong with that.
Reminds me of an episode of Sienfeld: "I'm not gay!... not that there's anything wrong with that..."
What you eat does not necessarily have anything to do with being "environmentally friendly" or an environmentalist.
True, if you eat most of the stuff that you can get at a large supermarket you will be contributing to environmental decay etc. But, that is often not a function of what the food is but how it is produced.
Thus, if I eat only red meat, but it's raised in a responsible manner, I am more environmentally friendly than a fuitarian who eats apples grown on land that has been clear-cut and then doused in chemicals.
Don't confuse animal rights activists and environmentalists. There's a lot of overlap, but they are fundamentally different ideologies.
How 'bout this: We all do what we can and then we can get on the case of those who won't even do that much.
Think before you speak.