Slashdot Mirror
The Ultimate PC Case - Continued
chrisd writes " While surfing, I found a link to the PCMODS site which sells all kinds of cool stuff to trick out your PC. I'm talking big plexiglass windows. Neon! Aluminum cases! Lights! I see a link to thinkgeek but I guess TG doesn't carry thier stuff yet. Way cool though. But, a company called Plycon has their stuff and other cool stuff. So go accessorize that case cowboy!" Ant also sent in a story on the creation of a portable desktop - inside of an aluminum briefcase. Supercool as well.
Well, I'm not seeing many defending style, so I will. A disclaimer though - when I spend my computing dollars, I'll get a larger monitor, faster processor, and more memory before any stylistic considerations (and often, style doesn't make it onto the list).
The argument "Style over substance" is valid when marketing and design is used to make a sub-standard product look better simply by improving it's physical appearance. I cringe when relatives buy a poor performing PC, simply because it looked sexier than the alternatives.
But you don't have to sacrifice style for performance. The performance of a PC is not inversely proportional to how good it looks. Some of you have probably seen some pretty sexy looking heavy metal, and some of the highest performing notebooks also look pretty sharp.
We've all been duped by experience to trust that ugly=value. That's from the days when the big domestic guys were making pretty and expensive boxes, while the overseas guys were making ugly and cheap boxes. If you had tech skill, you passed on the pretty hand-holding models and went straight for the foreign boxes, with questionable configurations and lots of driver disks.
We no longer live in those times. You can buy an excellent PC over the Internet, that's fully functional. If you want to build one yourself, you can do that, but often the savings isn't worth the time (the people that know how to do it are worth quite a bit per hour).
So, why are PC's still ugly? Because we still buy them ugly, 'cause we think ugly=value=power. That's a larger factor than other considerations, especially since a little design may even help with cooling problems.
I much prefer my 1930's house with ivy and a little yard to a warehouse with a raised floor for easy cable access. I prefer my hardwood floors to 1/16 inch, easy to vacuum carpet. If prefer my home office, with a view of my yard and my dogs, to my cubicle at work (even though the cubicle is nice as cubicles go). I prefer my slashdot posts with nice formatting, well-thought out ideas, and most of the grammar and spelling checked to three-second post and links to naughty cx domains.
Why don't these ascetic tastes spill over into the PC domain? Mostly because the people that make them have bought into the style vs. substance war, and you can either buy an ugly but powerful system, or a pretty but brain-dead system. Well, you can have it both ways. To think otherwise is to still live in a world where people can be either intelligent but unattractive, or beautiful but dumb. Well, I have a little more hope for the world.
I'm slowly becoming a style convert, and my wife has helped a lot. It's not that expensive anymore, and it's becoming cheaper every day. You can still be a geek, too. Just run the wire through the walls rather than over the floors, and get some help when shopping for clothes.
Check out an organization that's trying to bring some design into our lives. They had a contest to design a better power meter, with some interesting results. (If anyone can find the slashdot article that first linked it, please tell me).
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned about my computers, but am I the only one who thinks that it's not what's on the outside that counts, but what's on the inside? Who honestly cares what your machine looks like as long as it can compile the latest Linux kernel in less than a quarter of an hour?
I mean, you could spend the cash some of these cases cost on far more important things like more memory, a new hard drive or even a graphics card if you're not into so much serious stuff. But trying to turn your PC into some shrine to aesthetics is just silly.
So much for geeks being some of the last people to appreciate substance over style. What's next, "How Flash can liven up your website!"?
The people who buy this crap are probably the same people who cut the springs on their Honda, bolt on an angry-beehive exhaust, slap on some stickers, light up their dash with neon, put on big shiny chrome wheels that weight 30lbs a piece and then try to drag race me from every damn traffic light!
JUST SAY NO!
Before anyone buys any of this stuff, think about the terrible habit you're starting. Take up crack or heroin, or extacy. There are rehab centers to help you get off of that, but nothing can cure bad taste! Look at this site and you can see how bad this addiction can really become! A five inch tailpipe can't make your car faster or look better, and a hole in your computer case won't either!
I think Jon Katz needs to write a series on it, Stories from the World of No Taste.
While I think the window looks cool, esepcially with the light, wouldn't chopping a huge chunk of metal from the side of the case and replacing it with glass leave a gap for electronic emissions? I thought the idea was to create a faraday cage to restrict this? Anyone know what affect this would have?
More neon lights and bizarre cases than you're ever likely to see
http://www.virtualhideout.net/cool_case/