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Black Is The New Beige
An anonymous submitter writes: "Spurred by Apple's innovations and the dangers of commoditization, computer makers are finally moving beyond beige. Rather than exploring diverse ideas, however, they have made a decision reminiscent of the fashionistas: black is the new beige (a NYTimes story)."
If you're looking to go beyond the boring black and/or beige, here are a few nice case sources:
www.lovermecases.com
www.colorcases.com
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
And in the future, all RAM is going to come in a hypointelligent shade of the colour purple to complement the neon-red motherboard, the puke green power supply and the XP-ugly os on most computers. Now aren't you glad you didn't get a clear box?
Insanity is contagious. - Yossarian
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
That's okay, for a while White was the new Beige. Briefly, it looked like Purple might be the new Beige, and if you consult my young daughter, green-bug-shaped is her idea of the new Beige. No doubt barbie-Pink will be the new Beige for some subset of computing.
And, in about six months, there will be a retro trend, and Beige will be heralded as the new Beige!
Ah, fashion, you have arrived in the techie world!
A.
someone had to say it : Steve Jobs pushed black design for NeXT cubes, and Apple had a black Performa 6200 series along time ago.
Although I consider black to be an advantage over beige since you don't see coffe or cola stains that much, I really doubt that a new color will boost PC sales all that much. If there's one thing that Apple does right, it's 'everything' : just changing colors won't do. The iMac was (and is again) a new formfactor, a new system, new bus (USB/firewire) new drives (slot loading iMacs)
And anywhow, nothing beats a TiBook...
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Years ago I was working for a company that did computerised music systems for bars (hey Beckers!). We wanted to stand out from our competitors so we decided to try and use PC's with black cases rather than beige (which after a year in a smoky bar, tend to get nicotine stained).
The only people who did black cases then were Fujitsu, and they charged an extra ~$300 per monitor. And they blew up after a year. So what did we do? Yep....some masking tape and newspaper over the screen and then we sprayed them black - and charged our customers extra! Nice to see the rest of the world finally catching up!
I'm managing a small network.. my boss ordered that every new system will be out of the EVO line from Compaq.. "stylisch black with a scent of silver". I'm allready bored by this fenomenon as i was with the beige outfits.. but anything beats the lollypop colors mixed with beige you see on the list of all those case manufacturers in an attempt to look a bit more fashionable...
Google cache to avoid registration
Mmmmmmm
Wait, so can I still wear white once the summer is over? I'm confused!
... all the cases were huge things, usually powder-coated in dark brown or black "crackle-effect" stuff. Big chunky CP/M machines came on the market with black anodised aluminium front panels, big LED's and wood-effect outer cases. Now *they* were cool cases...
In other news, the Universe itself moved from green to grey :)
So don't throw away your stuff... it will be trendy again.
if you use a good enough junk-filter, slashdot.org will display a single, *blank*, page
Give me transparent or brushed metal cases any day.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
The old apple iMac was one of the few times when a computer company changed the colour from beige. Also, the NeXT was black, one of the earlier depatures from the standard beige. Apple is certainly innovative.
BTW: does anyone know why beige is the standard colour and how it got there? (is it because it is colou of the universe, from some old slashdot post?)
BBTW: I would love to get the new iMac in a different colour (leopardskin maybe?). If appple wants to really get the market by the throat that would a good move.
...in the article about the toolbox PC that the guy used some sort of vinyl color from an auto paint store. So the question become, why not change the color yourself? Case mods are case mods after all.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
"It's a new library; it's even black"
"That means it's new, does it?"
"Oh, yes!"
To be honest, I find the black better; we have a ton of older IBM kit and it just looks... well, old. The black looks more modern.
Of course, the problem many of us will have with our PCs is a Frankenstein system as we have a beige case with black CD/floppy drives (or vice versa) as we upgrade. We're already having issues like that with some Sun Ultra 80s having black DVD drives (to match the Sunblades and servers).
The new machine isn't quite as "high-end" as the old one was: we can only accelerate particles to 1/100th the speed of light. But at least we don't have a beige monster to deal with--and I hated tripping over those cords all the time.
Will we ever see easy to change CD-Rom drive front covers to match your beige/black computer?
If anything the clash of drive covers with anything other than the "standard" colors has made the move to a rainbow of colors.
Perhaps a non-mono-color design would help, with black as the base color in order to more easily match drives, but with other colors accenting the machine to keep it from being the same dull design as the beige boxes?
PC Fashionistas exclaim, "Black is the new Beige!"
I sure hope we're not going to read an article two weeks from now which explains some computing error, and how the new fashionable color is actually something one could describe as a dusty mint color.
And please don't let them correct themselves again claiming that it's chic to use a sort of salmon/melon/peach color. I couldn't stand to boot up a computer of which the casing reminded me of tuna sashimi.
[
Is it wide? On my computer it just looks long. No side-scrolling here. And the "Read the rest of this comment" thing just truncates it less than halfway down.
I guess you're going to have to try harder to get the non-IE browsers.
I don't know why the article doesn't mention it, but it seems obvious that the post 9/11 fashion craze is that working for the spook shops is cool and that therefore we're all going black with NeXT Cube Retro. It's sort of like McCarthyesque 50's Retro but with that "Think Different" counter-culture 'tude.
Seastead this.
Hehe, when I first saw the headline, I thought the color of the universe had changed again.
I took an old PC case I had and used some stone spray (with the rough stone particles in it) on it. It looked like granite afterwards, pretty cool. The case was heavy anyway, so it was quite fitting :D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Can't we all just be color-blind?
/. does not need to get into race issues...
I truly feel that
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Troll modding begins...Come on people, get real...
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Why can't computers companies get this fine point of consumerism right?
_ __
Dell is a perfect example. I think that the Optiplex series make fine corporate desktops. Still the latest black case with a slightly odd front shape does not make it stylish in the least. In fact, in some ways they are actually uglier than the plain jane Optiplex GX110 I have in my cube.
I don't care if its a cube or aluminum or has a winodw in the side or some combo. It seems that people like Compaq and Dell ought to have enough money to hire some industrial designers to come up with a nicier looking more functional case.
_______________________________________________
ACK
AMEN MEN
btw, dont forget that slashdot is the cause of the male erection.
goatse.cx link hidden in Google URL above.
Yes folks its Cosmos "Desktop and Tower Outfits for the girl about town"
Feb: Black is back, everything will be black for ever
May: Beige is the new Black
June: Curved monitors are the new Flat Screens
July: Oooh look at the pretty iMac and "how to make your keyboard match your nail polish"
Sept: Black is back
November: The must have USB accessories of the season, can you use your USB security key as an earing.. ifs its the D&G one you can
December: Your Colour Therapy Horoscope for the coming year, how the colour of your PC case can change your life.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...the original Apple II in 1977. Steve Jobs wanted a neutral color that would blend in to the average home.
Indeed. My current case is black, and I bought it in '98. It was one of the last models of Escom, a company that had its first big success by selling a (then) high-end 80386 game system in black.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Back in the days before the PC architecture became king, Radio Shack used to sell computers with SILVER CASES. I distinctly remember people taking sandpaper to the cases to get to the BLACK primer underneath.
There was also a number of WHITE cases sold by the various clone manufacturers during the mid 1990's.
The picture in the NY Times article shoes a person painting a PC case. Perhaps that's the way to go. Someone should offer HANDPAINTED PC cases to people. You could have themes endorsed by various celebrities and artists.
Red is the new blue, green is the new purple, white is the new black, which just happens to be the new beige, so that means white is also the new beige (transitive rule) and aquamarine is the new dandelion.
CRAYOLA ROCKS.
not possible. non-IE browsers are immune.
anyway, who uses IE anymore?
in conclusion: i mean, really.
bye now!
Not too much I can say besides that.
the beige color on a PC would most likely make an excellent background for a desert style camo repainting.
This
Not that I'm a cynic, but I just read the 'Black is the new beige' article and noticed that the advert at the top of the page was for this place
-- Mike
I remember reading in my "Fire in the Valley" book (the book that pirates of silicon valley is based off) That the apple ][ was the first computer to be put in it's own plastic case, which just happened to be beige.
Funny they didn't mention Dell, since they are one of the largest retailers. I don't think any of their stuff is beige anymore.
your mid-east solution is dead on.
choose your murdering moron: Arafat or Sharon... what's the diff?
Hey how 'bout a tranpatent cases in colors like steaky soft quadra green or that light icy cool blue. ;) kidding
I made one for myself and using it and showing off since last 3 years. You people woke up just now.
Does this mean, I will always remain the first and best
Computer Help
I even make purchases of sound cards/gfx cards depending on their color, nice black case, black DVD drive, black floppy drive, black sound card, black gfx card, black keyboard, black mouse, against my black desk. Getting to the point I have to move my monitor 10 feet away to let light escape!
Laptop Reviews
They are at 100% minority status, since they are all homosexual.
Black cases have been available for years from such companies as Antec, Siliconrax, and others for years. How is this different?
There are also numerous industrial PC companies that are happy to provide cases in whatever color the buyer chooses. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing why this piece is newsworthy...?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
the rest imitate.
see ya, lusers!
Any more ideas?
..why my new iBook is white?
Favorite UT skin holding a chain gun is the new beige.
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
First some obligatory reminissing...
I remember my first PC (a 386) which had a dark green case, a dark green monitor, and a matching keyboard and mouse... It was fun, not because it was green, but because it was different (and anything that was computer related seemed cool to me). To bad I blew the thing up (long story).
But back on-topic. I only have beige/white cases at home, but over the years they've turned darker and darker, so I'll just wait until they turn black all by themselves. And in a couple of years, when the retro-look is hip, I'll do what my wife suggests and dust 'em off, so I'll have that retro-beige again.
Beige was ok, when new, but so much of it seemd to discolor, like it had been breathed on by heavy smokers, after a while. There's also the variance in this beige and that beige, when you line up a few drives in the front of a cabinet and their color is off by a slight amount. Maybe it'll be all the rage, next, to have mixed and matched. Kinda a retro 70's style.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Buy our salmon-colored case! Scientifically proven to be the color of the universe.
(Actually, I don't really remember what color they finally settled on they changed their minds so many times.)
Take a look at the stuff by Mathias Wengler at Aminet.
Hell, I just went out and bought a 21" beige monitor. I plan on keeping it for quite a while - that's the thing about monitors, they can last through several upgrades. Anyway, let's say my next PC is black, which is what the industry is dictating. My monitor, CD drives, even my mouse no longer match.
So what I propose is that the industry release everything dual-colored at the same time. If IBM makes a model Z7 monitor, they should make a model Z7-Bl and Z7-Bg. Everything would be identical, except one would be for black and the other non-black. Inventory management wouldn't be all that difficult, you just divide the warehouse into a black section and a beige section. Same thing when you load them onto a semi - put the black in the back and the beige towards the front. If a school district is using old beige PCs, just ship the blacks in.
But it is important that we don't mix the black and beige PCs. They are different - you don't see the Macs and PCs doing it in nature, do you?
"I think Beige has the most RAM..." -- Dilbert's Boss
:)
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
In my opinion Coolermaster makes the best damn cases I've ever seen. Combine that with an enermax power supply and your in business. The Cooler Master ATC-210 is particularly awesome. You can buy them at a good price from monarch.
. com/powersupply.htmlc om
http://www.coolermaster.com
http://www.xpcgear
http://www.monarchcomputer.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
It's not black, and it's not beige, but it's damn sexy
I worked at the offices of a major cosmetics firm that had an all-black dress code. I started buying people iPaq desktops, which are black and silver, and they loved it. Personally, I got sick of having a monochromatic wardrobe, but there's no actual proof that being a fashionista means that you have actual TASTE. Consider some of the god-awful things coming out of the fashion world.
Oh, and I bought a couple of tangerine iBooks too, for those who wanted to subvert the system.
Well, at first when i saw that people were starting to bring out Black cases I thought it was neat that there was variety. Now though if thats just going to be the new standard.. it kinda sucks.. Really I mean black.. you can't paint on that. One of the greatest things about beige is that its a perfect primer color. So maybe you're not artistic (like me), beige makes a great background for many a cool sticker. I personally have everything from rock bands to the infimous Dogbert "Out Out You demon's of stupidity" plastered on the side of my case (which by the way I know I wasn't the only one to invent the idea of making that into a sticker .. but I did come up with it on my own a few years ago.. literally like two minutes after I saw the comic).
Anyway.. don't know exactly how black would fit into the whole sticker scheme.. probably wouldn't look right to me at least.
Well who knows maybe in a few years the computer companies will steal the idea of the phone companies and start making designer shells for the PC with all kinds of pictures and all you gotta do is snap it on the side of the box.
Who makes you Sig?
"Beige shall be the colour of computers, and the colour of computers shall be beige. Black shalt they not be, neither shalt they be gray, excepting that thou then painteth them beige. Translucent is right out." (Saw this somewhere on the web one time. Forgot the original poster's name though...)
Anyways, his answer:
"When you put a black computer on a desk in an office near a window, the thing will melt."
Kind of an issue...
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Back to the days of the ZX Spectrum, eh? :)
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Who cares about black? I want computers that look like these. May also have the benifit of being theft proof without a forklift, and plenty of room for the tank of liquid nitrogen to cool that over-clocked Athlon
silver is the new black.
I guess I have to go back to kindergarten.
Kiss my bass.
The school I work for has tons of black Dell Optiplex machines sitting near windows without any issues.
Ugh. This reminds me of the horror stories I had back when I was home-delivering computers for CompUSSR...
Horror Story 1: Delivered an HP something-or-other with 15" monitor to some 40 year old yuppie woman. She wants the thing setup on her roll-top desk. Only problem is that with the monitor setup, the roll-top wouldn't close. Rather than just leaving the roll-top open, though, or moving the computer to some other desk (of which she had plenty), we had to find her a monitor that would fit under that roll-top. We end up putting a floor model 15" that had a slightly different form, but was over a year older. All because the roll-top had to close.
Horror Story 2: Another female yuppie comes in and drops 3 grand on the hottest piece of Compaq hardware in the place. Top of the line everything (at that time, forget the specs). She also gets a big-ass nice monitor, Laserjet, scanner, the whole nine yards. Home-Office setup to the max.
I show up and start setting up this computer underneath the desk she wants her monitor/scanner/etc on, but no, it can't go under there. The tower has to be in that closet 8 feet away. And I want to be able to keep the door closed at all times too. Oh, and I want the speakers on these two little end-tables on opposite ends of the room. We end up drilling a fucking whole through the wall, running a big mass of extender cables underneath the carpet, and giving this ho a free pair of wireless speakers to accomodate her. And because we had to extend the video so far, a $500 monitor with hot-shit video card ends up looking like a color television from 1955. But that's OK, because the computer has to be in the closet out of site, instead of just underneath the computer desk which was designed to have a computer underneath it.
It hurts when I pee.
It's sitting underneath your desk. I have more important things to do than say:
"Hey, look at my fucking computer. Look at that shit right there. You see that, motherfucker? That's a sweet looking machine. It's sweet enough that I could fuck one of its ports in the back. And look at that fucking neon light in it! Bad ass! You see how I ran my cables right there? Fucking 'leet, ain't it? And look at this shit over here, that's a goddamn SCSI card, bitch. You see the little red light on the card? That shit actually came with it, those fuckers at Adaptec already slammed the card before I even got it! Hey, shitface, get back over here, I'm not done showing you my 'rig'. That right there is a fucking CD burner, ass-fucker. You see that? I can burn a CD so fucking fast it'd scare the fucking RIAA, man. And would you fucking look at this shit! Holy fucking shit! This is a fucking DVD-ROM drive. I can watch fucking *movies* and shit on this motherfucker. *MOVIES*! And look right here. This case has no fewer than fucking 10 fans! 10, motherfucker! It sounds like a goddamn freight train up in this motherfucker! Or a fucking plane taking off at the fucking airport! Hey, bitch, speaking of airport, let me show you my slammed fucking laptop, this damn this is choice..."
This is a necessary change as computers move more into the living room. So far computer equipment has been colour coordinated for the office; but now as more and more people move to having computers in there living room for game play, internet, mp3 play, etc; computer equipment needs to be colour coordinated with other living room appliances, where the standard is black (so that they don't stick out as much).
:)
In the living room, people care about these kinds of things more than they might in an office.
I gotta say, reading that almost made my fall out of my seat laughing. Flamebait, yes, but it should get a balancing "Funny" moderation as well, because come on, folks, that shit is funny!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Back when I first started using computers in the early 80's, my middle school had some Apple ][+'s. But one of them was made by another company (I think it was HP?) It was black. (We always just called it the "black apple".)
It had other cool stuff too, mainly it had an extra module covering the back, which had a volume knob on it among other things; the standard apple ][+'s had no volume knob. I always liked the black apple better than the beige apples.
Also, if anybody knows of any cool rackmount gadgets (either semiuseful, like a serial LCD scroller, or downward pointing lightbar to illuminate controls) or useless (blinkenlights), or cheap blank plates to dremel and insert your own stuff, that'd be cool too.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Anyone ever used their desk as a computer case?
/DEV/FAN)
Maybe give your CDROM a wood casing and have it pop out of your desk like a drawer? (Have the computer speakers play a sound of a drawer opening when you press eject.)
Ever make your room appliances controlled by the PC? (/DEV/LAMP or
Know of any clever tricks for concealing wires? (for things like power supplies, not like your keyboard which can be wireless.)
When your not using it, could you make your monitor look like a picture frame, or your mouse look like some other peice of desk art?
The coolest case is always going to be the one you make yourself. At least I think so. It may not be the coolest to others, but if you take your time, it will be worth the effort. I have done several myself, but the best gallery around to gather ideas from is the Cool Case Gallery run by the folks at VH
visit my free wallpaper collection, wp.erasei.com
Ok Moderators, I know I'm gonna get modded down for that, but I REALLY did mean to post that as AC. I guess I have yet to learn the difference between the ENTER and TAB keys...
Yea red blue and beige looks pretty, and this is what the manufacturers are doing, i hope they come up with some colorful technologies. The direction is just souping up the existing box, no new direction is emerging, and finally i think we are pretty near saturation, for how long can you soup up GHz. So now they are presenting colors. If more effort was devoted to architechtures rather thn looks, i would be more happy
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
the Apple II was issued in black version a by Bell and Howe,this was in the early 1980's
Free cell phone tracking
What I want to know is... What the hell happened all of the desktop cases? It's getting hard to find a good looking case that is made to sit on it's side. I would like to include a pc as part of my home audio equipment, but I don't want to shell out a metric shitload of money for a decent case. This is probably the best looking one I have found so far, but the cheapest I can find it for is $225. I know I could just use a standard rack mounted case, but I wan't something that will match my other components.
When I want your opinion I will beat it out of you.
user:slashdot314 pass:slashdot
Apple manager dude: "How are our new colors coming?"
Jr Tech dude: "OK, sir. Should we start working on the features of the system?"
Apple manager dude: "NO!! Just make the damn thing look pretty! We will sell millions of em!!!"
Blarf.
Joe: Here are your names: Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Pink.
Mr. Pink: Why am I Mr. Pink?
Joe: Because you're a faggot alright.
Mr. White: You're not going to fucking die, kid alright. Listen to me, your going to be fine, along with the kneecap the gut is the most painful area a guy can get shot in.
Mr. Orange: No shit.
Mr. White: But it takes a long time to die from it, I'm talking days. You're gonna wish you were dead, but it takes days to die from your wounds, time is on your side.
Mr. White: Shit.....you shoot me in a dream you better wake up and apologize.
Mr. Brown: Yeah but Mr. Brown, that's a little to close to Mr. Shit.
-
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Who cares what the case looks like. It should be on the floor out of the way. How shallow have we gotten that the color of our computer case matters.
Look, guys... It's a computer. It's a tool, not an objet d'art. Shove it under your desk and forget about it already! Who cares what flippin' color it is? In a couple months it'll have that "accumulated dust" veneer anyway.
Now, quit messing with those case mods and get back to something important. Like desktop themes.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
that Pink was the new Black?!?!!
*must turn in goth membership card*
Has someone been watching Josie & The Pussie Cats?
That movie was horrid!
Originally, the new PC color was TURQUOISE.
However, after an extensive study, researches at the Fashion Dept. at John Hopkins University discovered a slight color-wheel miscalculation in their assessment of the Spring 2002 PC line.
It turns out now, that Beige is the new black.
Remember the Kaypro 386? To make it stand out it was black or grey with blue letters. It made quite the stir. It was the second 386 on the market I believe.
Unless you got sucked into the apple marketing hype, color probably the last thing you think about when you select a computer. If you think about it at all.
It's an amusing read, like all of those articles...
So is David Kelley the guy behind the stupid SGI cases with the rounded tops? It's always seemed a real pity that you can't stack external drives or papers on top of the blue O2 boxen.
PC Designers: "Black is the new beige w00t!"
Astronomers: "Beige is the new black w00t!"
I think they got that backwards...
Isn't beige the new black ??
Hopefully all these computer case and peripheral companies will have a standard black. On all the computers I own I have every single beige in the spectrum from dark to almost off-white. Almost none of the parts, from CD drives to case share the same "standard color." I also think I remember that Ford used black on its Model T's because it made production faster, being that the color black dried quicker than other colors, and I believe is cheaper to produce. Is this a way for companies to increase production and lower costs as well?
http://www.acornworld.net/~jmayrand/B%26H.html
OK, yeah we all hate yuppies, and LUsers as well, but geez, who cares what these women (and yes, you seem to think their gender is relevant here) want to do with their _own property_? If they want to run 8 feet of video cable to their monitor, and you get paid to do it, where's the bad? These are mass-manufactured objects, it's not like a work of art is being shut away in that closet... And personally, if I had a roll top desk, I'd want it to close too. They're cool. Granted, the design pre-dates PC's, but if this lady wanted the two to work together, good for her. Don't be so judgmental, a contemptuous geek is not a pretty thing :-(
Freedom: "I won't!"
black computer cases,
what a novel idea...
oh wait, i was playing the orignal
doom demo on one...
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
....from 1990 http://www.sincity.com/penn-n-teller/pcc/paintit.h tml
I remember working on a teal blue Indy & purple Indigo2 at my old job in the mid-nineties. But sgi always did colored workstation cases way back in the 80's (check out the brown & red Iris Crimson & the Blue Indigo1). People used to always comment on how unique(they either loved 'em or laughed at 'em) our computers were. We were all designers, so aesthetics of the boxes were important to us. That's why we picked sgi---they had the coolest looking ones.
I doubt it. Once you go black, you'll never go back.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Who care what color the case is - The computer is in one of two states:
1)It's under the desk, and you can't see it
2)It's on top of the desk, and the cover is off
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Beige is the color of dust. Look at a beige PC. Now look at a black PC. Now wait a month and look at them again. See the difference? That's why, when you're deploying a few hundred boxes to an office full of humans, clothes, and carpeting, you want them beige.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
2 Years ago I took apart my case, took it outside and spraypainted it black. I did the same with the drive bezels and the keyboard (but not the keys). There was a grey panel for the switches, leds, fan, etc. that was grey. I painted it a nice, slightly orange, yellow, the only other color I had at the time. After reassembling it, and replacing the Tux doll sitting on top, I was astonished at how well the colors/proportions/locations matched. I had inadvertantly created a computer that looked like Tux. I wish I had taken pictures. Unfortuneately, that computer is dead, replaced by a shiny heavy duty brushed aluminum vault from coolermaster. Various parts of "Tux" were scavenged to put a computer inside an aluminum briefcase. Oh well.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
If you're wearing all black then it's Okey Dokey to button up that top button on your shirt!
But be warned - wearing short pants that expose hairy calves is still considered gauche!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This is nice until I want to upgrade my brand new black machine. I go to Best Buy and pull the latest bargain drive off the shelf, put it in my box, and stare at my new black-and-beige creation, ugly as hell.
I suppose I could always paint it, but I never had to do that before and I don't really want to now. I suppose I could switch to all external devices *sigh*.
Eventually everything'll be in a closet somewhere and you'll be wanting to get a new pair of wireless VR glasses..."I really like those new RayBans, the ones with the widescreen option. Do they come in tortise-shell?"
...until women stopped looking for the "little black dress". Now they'll be shopping for the "little black box".
Beware the Alienware warranty: "If you have a defective or damaged component, we will send a technician to your location to replace it the next business day."
That doesn't mean that if your box dies on Monday that a guy will be out there to fix it Tuesday. It means that after all other options to diagnose the problem by phone have been exhausted, and after authorization's made to send a technician, and after the replacement part is shipped to the technician, and after the tech recieves the part, that then the tech will come the next business day to fix your computer.
Be sure to also check the Alienware Sucks page for more details, quick---before Alienware shuts it down.
i'm surprised that nobody mentioned this case:U S/prd_376.jpg"> :-)
<a href="http://www.wjasp.com.tw/upload/a0000010/en_
PC-75 from Lian-Li</a> it's the nicest thing i've ever seen and has enought room for a raid array!
By the way, does anyone knows which card is better for hardware ATA RAID? I've found review talking about the adapted 2400A and i was wondering who was maintaining the driver for it? (2.4.x driver that is)
PC-75 from Lian-Li
Don't you read Dilbert?
I think black boxen look great, but if you have a dust problem, you will end up cleaning your boxen every day. This problem is especially apparent if you have multiple boxen in a small confined area. My black Klipsch promedia speakers look filfy, 24 hours after cleaning them. Beige works well because it hides the dirt. It may not be pretty, but it sure is practical.
I got my NeXT poster framed on my wall.
It says:
October 12, 1988
Computer Advances To
The NeXT Level
The cube, printer, monitor, mouse, and keyboard are all black. Just like my slab, may it Rest In Peace.
My suggested fashion statement: "Beige Is The New Black!"
Mark
... I thought this was another article about the color of the universe changing.
Again.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
I have had my 500Mhz Titanium PowerBook for a little more than a year now, and I love it. There is nothing that I need to do that I cannot do on my PowerBook. Granted, I don't play UT or Q3, but it does run the occasional shareware dungeon-crawling games like Geneforge or Avernum2.
:) I agree that if the computer cases are black, beige, white, or grey - it will not help PC sales in business. Your IT Manager is not going to requisition hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy new PCs just because the cases are now black.
Actually, I believe the masses will pretty much buy whatever is out there because they don't know any better. Most companies just want them all to be the same. They don't want a quilt-like array of colors in their offices. They want uniformity and conformity, and don't we know it!
Personally, for home use, I prefer comuters with style. Some want function over form. I want both. Right now, Apple provides that to me in the form of the aforementioned Titanium PowerBook G4.
-- Those of you who think you know it all are very annoying to those of us who do.
If everyone used #000000 black, it would be fine. All black things would be black. But Dell's black is really dark grey, and someone else's black is really navy blue, and someone else's is a lighter dark grey. Looks almost as silly as having 4 drives that are 4 different shades of beige, none of which are the shade of the case.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
This article has an interesting sidebar in the paper edition regarding the Altair which chose "a classy powder blue exterior" instead of beige as the color for it's pc's.
Best quote: "..the company chose blue because of the blue mainframe computers used by IBM, as if to suggest that the inexpensive, general-purpose Altair microcomputer was also a real computer"
Why couldn't they just make things easy to paint? Yeah, the case is simple for anyone and everyone... but things like drives, why don't they make the plastics easier to remove andput back in.
Do that, and then there's no problems with colours... paint it hwever you want.
Operation Infinite Loop!! paint yer server Camo. Let's see we have desert grey, desert blue, desert brown, brown, green, green brown, brown grey, granite, low contrast dusk, black grey, air superiority grey and sunday finest redneck gold
Conversely, Henry Ford was credited with saying, "You can have any color you like, as long as it's black." In the context of things, it was important to be able to get a car first, then if you had the money, get something more to your tastes. Beige, has actually been the OLD black. Once other nameplates arrives, with even beige color, Ford's inflexible thinking saw his company eclipsed by GM, which even today seems to push image over substance (but that's my humble opinion from living in the heart of GM country for 37 years.)
A few smaller makers, their names escape me because they pretty much disappeared years ago, predated Apple with attempts to make fashionable computers. Imagine a cabinet with walnut trim and chrome, eh? The personal computer has arrived as such a commodity that style is getting some serious effort. Probably more important among those who don't actually do anything, but just like waving the toy under someone else's nose (i.e. another executive.)
Evolution of the Hobby/Personal Compute:
Open case on a table or work bench, i.e. an OSI 540 board decked out with 12K static RAM, hooked up to jury-rigged composite input in a 12" b/w tv, bundle of wire to an open air keyboard, running off a couple HeathKit power supplies, storing/reading programs off a cassette recorder bought at JC Penney
Same computer mounted in a recovered cabinet from some idustrial electronics and bought at a HamFest, maybe even a short Relay Rack if you're c00l
Ugly TRS 80, Beige Apple ][, PET computers blocky, but who cares, you're too busy turning the whites of your eyes red staring at the screen all hours of the day and night.
IBM PC XT and AT hit the workplace, IBM could have said, "You can have any color you want, as long as it's beige."
Atari and C64 two-tone computers show up, both manufacturers start to dable with slick designs, but colors don't get much better.
A few niche makers offer cabinets, monitors, keyboards, etc. with different looks, but most are gone and forgotten because at the cost of computers and with the fascination of actually getting it to do things overrides appearance.
Fastforward to the late 90's, everyone's getting computers, the market is heavily commoditized, used computers with still some kick can be had for next to nothing, enter:case modders.
Hideous bulged, blobby looking cases appear on Compaqs, Dells, HP's, etc. trying to get away from the rigid geometric shape in favor of something that won't fit well on your desk, but might look impressive to anyone without a milligram of taste.
Really cool cabinets, which actually cost a few $$$ arrive and in the gap left between cost of a "pretty good" PC and $1,000 can be filled by putting a sharp looking case on it. Or black plastic if you're Dell.
Manufacturers selling over the web offer you a choice of color and or style for your plain vanilla computer guts? Why not. To a limited degree this is probably happening, but not by major players, yet.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
My next case will probbaly be a Lian-Li PC68, brushed aluminum. Yeah it's going to be a bitch to find drive faces to match but it'll destroy my current beige box in every way.
I can find rounded cables galore now, so why is it so hard to find a DVD drive with an aluminum faceplate?
Yeah, I remember that article! Penn's articles were always amusing, but I never understood why he was writing for a computer magazine. My personal favorite was the spell-checker article.
Every component I buy seems to be a different shade of beige. If stuff comes in black, I guess exactly the same thing is going to start happening.
:)
Eventually I got it all sorted: all you need is a can of spray-paint. (though remember to tape shut that floppy flap kiddies!)
Hmm... maybe be it's just me, but making a translucent case doesn't strike me as being terribly innovative. Stylish is more accurate (IMHO).
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I don't get why you are complaining. I'm certainly glad not everyone is a lemming and does things they way they are 'supposed to do. Also, I don't know the pay structure at CompUSA, but if there wasn't a flat fee for doing work like this, who cares...and if there was, thats just stupid. :)
;)
8 Feet isn't that far away, I've seen lots of cables longer than that which didn't have any signal degredation.
Finally, I'd want the roll-top to close if I had one.
Oh yah, I have a G4, but its one of the few non-beige things aside from my speakers.
I thought it would be an interesting idea to build a case out of legos.
Star Pirates
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
The Wiz Picture the CEOs of all the desktop computer manufactures striding around the central crystal as the disembodied voice of the 'Wiz' announes the 'current' hot color. Wouldn't be dead in Red, Wouldn't be Seen in Green...
A couple of computer shows ago, someone was hawking custom hand-painted beige boxes - with landscapes, dragons, etc. It was an... interesting... look. Just the front bezel was painted. Sort of 70's retro in a way - it reminded me of all those van murals you used to see. He hasn't been at the last few shows I went to, so perhaps the idea never took off.
...a lot like todays audio equipment. The crap will look like this and the better stuff like this. Expect all visible surfaces to be manufactured from brushed aluminium, chrome and glass. The quality of the product will be inverse to the number of blinking lights in the front.
_________________________
Spelling and grammar mistakes left as an exercise for the reader.
here and here
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
The real problem with beige is not, in my opinion, the initial color. Well, beige is not really pretty, but heck, it's not really hideous. However, the problem resides in what beige becomes with aging. After 4-5 years, the "color" degrades to take a darker, greener shade (just look at old Macintoshes!). It's simply disgusting. In french, this color has a name: "caca-d'oie", which means roughly "goose shit". At least I don't see how black could take such a shade.
;-)
Apart from that, when I saw the title, I tought: "Well, black is the new beige: finally they realized that the Universe IS black, not turquoise or salmon!"
Perhaps people are taking more pride in their computers. http://www.thinkgeek/com has a bunch of mods, cases and accessories for computers that are not required for a computer. Or perhaps we just like computers more.
cool commercially moded cases
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
We all know that aluminum is the new black. Plus it has the practical advantage of being light.
"Don't worry, it's not loaded." --Terry Kath
--The Guide
Goddamn I loved that man.
Jimmy _______ | | | \__/
"It's like space without the stars."
"It's like a pastel black."
"How much more black could this be? And the answer is... none... none more black."
-- SpinalTap (reminiscing on the color black.)
"And like that
Nikao cases. Thinks like the Zeus. Comes with a window pre-installed (Window, people, you know, the thing you look through), as well as a front USB/speaker panel.. And, covers for *-rom drives, that they might not look ass ugly when stuck into the case.
All this, plus thumbscrews and sharp edges inside.
Stow your lines of crap about Lian Li and all those floofy cases with rounded edges.
Real cases leave you bleeding after a hardware install.
Oddly enough, there was an electrical fire in the server room at my campus just a week ago, and I'm told the soot caked on the motherboards was "quite black."
Now that I know this sort of thing's fashionable, I might just have to take the time to set a few fires off around the office too....
"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life."
--- Steve Jobs on Design ---
Fortune Magazine: What has always distinguished the products of the
companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design
an inborn instinct or what?
Steve Jobs: We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing.
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating.
It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be
further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a
man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers
of the product or service. The iMac is not just the colour or translucence or
the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible
consumer computer in which each element plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is
much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time.
That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an
enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do
a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest
thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy
and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good
at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for
them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely
like it.
fortune - january 24, 2000
regards,
john penner
---| swoopy curves Are Not design |---
Certainly, the PC industry has never revered design, preferring blocky
beige boxes or, more recently, coloured go-faster curves devoid of real
function. He's scornful of those who use 'swoopy shapes to look good,
stuff that is so aggressively designed, just to catch the eye. I think
that's arrogance, it's not done for the benefit of the user.'
By contrast, he says, "you won't be able to find a single thing on an
Apple that hasn't had thought put into it"...
With the first iMac the goal wasn't to look different, but to build the
best integrated consumer computer we could. If as a consequence the shape
is different, then that's how it is. The thing is, it's very easy to be
different, but very difficult to be better. That's what we have tried to
do with the new iMac."
(THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, Interview with Jonathan Ive,
Charles Arthur talks to the designer of the iMac, January 14 2002)
--
regards,
john penner
I don't care if it's beige or flourscent orange. Just make it fast and fat. It sits under my desk, for Christ's sake.
If you want to concentrate on the design of the case, then try to make the computer quieter and cooler.
Color? Does it sell better if it matches your curtains?
Software Wars
I follow the Home Theater PC (HTPC) forum over at www.avsforum.com. Finding a case that matches well with you receiver, dvd player, amp etc is an ongoin quest. Some of the nicer looking ones can be found at http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Computer s/callisto.htm
and
http://www.moddin.net/review.asp?ReviewID=45
I've been using a black box since 1998 (an acer aspire). I never really thought twice about the color of it. I gotta say it is pretty sexy looking even without considering the color. All the right curves in all the right places.
There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling!
And for the fine detailing work, on things like nonremovable floppy and DVD drive bezels, get a matte or glossy black paint marker so that you can paint it in place without having to disassemble it.
I got my paint marker at a gun store, where they are sold as touchup markers to fill in scratches on black milspec finishes, but I think art stores carry them too.
Black is pretty sweet, especially once you get a black IBM monitor with a Trinitron tube, like my stealth black G96.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
IBM's high-end PCs ("workstations") have been black for years. So are most of their rackmount systems. This is news?
Anyone remember the P-133 Aptivas were black. They also had a "box" and "console" design, so your drives were in front of you but the case was on the ground. Cool idea, but they dropped it.
The last thing I want is the product
of technical AND stylistic obselescense.
I like beige. All my stuff is beige.
I don't want flashy, I like how
everthing matches - in BEIGE.
Does anybody else think it would be a good idea for Slashdot to introduce a new section called "New York Times"? These articles from the Circuits section of the NYT seem to come out weekly...
Spray-painting is kind of awkward, since to do it right you really have to disassemble the monitor, and there is apparently a shock hazard there.
Any experiences with other makes of black monitor? When I did my search, these were the companies I found that were selling black monitors:
I also found Directron to be handy, as they have a whole page full of black system components.
I haven't found a good black keyboard yet. Ideally, they'd start making the good IBM buckling-spring keyboards in black again, and it has been rumored they will, but I have yet to see them for sale. Right now I have a cheapo $19.00 IBM black keyboard, but it really sucks and I want to get rid of it.
Any suggestions? Spray paint is not a good suggestion for the keyboard, since you lose all the lettering.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
My friend and I decided to build new PCs at the same time to save cash on shipping etc. We both purchased Antec 1240 towers (If you've never seen them, these things are huge. The top of my machine has maybe a half inch of clearence with the bottom of my desk, and I have a rather tall desk.). The only dissapointment was that these cases weren't availible in black (through our supplier anyway). Anyway, my friend came up with a sweet idea for a case mod. First of all, we paint the cases black. The case is completely modular so we can remove everything and paint it seperately (except the top part, which involves removal of pop rivets). Then on one side, we dremel out a trapezoid (actually, we should do this before painting..). Then we take a sheet of non-yellowing Lucite, cut a trapezoid a bit larger on all sides then the one on the case. We stencil on a design, fill in some spaces with black paint, and mount it on the side, painted side facing inward, with 1/4 inch bolts with polished heads (for that industrial look). To complete the mod, we'll (eventually) purchase lights to mount in the top of the case. My friend's plan is to stencil a biohazard logo on the Lucite, black out the parts that are normally red on the logo, allowing yellow light to shine through the logo itself. Also, the light should be visible around the edges of the Lucite.
We went to the local Home Hardware a few weeks ago and already purchased some water-based (to avoid the chance of melting the plastic bezel because the cases are 300$CDN a piece) gloss black paint, a 2 foot x 4 foot sheet of Lucite, 16 polished 1/4 inch bolts, 16 1/4 inch nuts and 2 paint brushes. This should be enough to do the 2 Antecs as well as the case of my old Linux machine (as a test).
Total cost: 50$ canadian total, so 25$ each (not including the lighting of course). And we should have more then enough Lucite left over to do at least a few more cases. So with a little luck, this might just pay for itself. We intend to do this sometime next month when it's dry enough out for the paint to dry quickly. These wicked cases just got a little more wicked.
Honestly, this is nothing new. IBM and Apple and I think one or two other companies have been making black computers for a while now.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Dr. Fun about the colors of personal computers.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
When George Fisher, the outgoing president of Motorola went to Kodak to help lead their "digital revolution," he was asked by the press what lesson he was taking. He said roughly, "For a technologist it was humbling to realize that you could triple the sales of a pager just by offering it colors other than black."
Unfortunately, the US Military disagrees:
So, while black may be the cool new color for computers, it's long since passe for pagers and cell phones, and in fact has become military-conservative.
I found it rather funny to hear the origina of this statement when I visited New York a few months ago. In case you haven't been there, people tend to wear dark clothes out of convenience, but every year there seems to be an article stating that "X is the new black" where X can be brown, gray, etc to keep the fashion industry on thier toes.
:-) stop the presses!
Of course, the killer article is when they proclaim every few years that "black is the new black"
Listen to my music.
Get yourself a high-style Lian Li or Sky Hawk aluminum case, and you'll still be one step ahead of the unwashed masses sporting their paltry, black neXt-ish gear :)
Some days you just have to say "NO" a lot... :)
Lern hwo to speel befroe postng ??!!
-f
Probably go to brushed stainless steel/brushed aluminum next. Always wanted a PC that looked like a DeLorean.
...that one or more of these "female yuppies" thought you were kind of cute and kept dreaming up little add-ons and carpentry projects to keep you around her apartment long enough to see what might happen next?
The first beige computer, was an early mainframe which had a color change via the advice of a female programmer, Betty Holberton. She was mentioned earlier on slashdot I am surprised that nobody caught the error.
I beg your pardon, it is quite possible to polish a NeXT cube, however it takes a lot of work. Check out this guys's NeXT cube case mod...simply amazing!
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
that he's been 54 for a few years now
News at 11
If your computer isn't colored like Apples are it shouldn't ahve a case. (IMNSHO, of course) Pi For Great Justice|ecitsuJ taerG roF
3Dcool makes some really cool looking modded cases using automotive paint but they're out of my price range :(.
is the new beige, with all these plexiglass cases, hell, anything is the new beige, except beige, no one has a beige computer anymore
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Beige gave way years ago. Remember when everything that was trying to be funky came out teal? Well, orange is the new teal. If you want to be funky and new at the moment, but not actually be risky and innovative, then go for orange.
my case is nicotine color, much like my monitor... oh wait; so are my nails and teeth. got all the matching apparel!!
I wish PC designers (as well as all consumer electronics designers) would experiment a little more with their designs.
It used to be all large TVs were in a wood cabinet. They were generally beautiful. Then sometime in the late 80s there were all sort of experiments in design, and it took several years for the winner to emerge; today's black molded plastic standard that pretty much all of our TVs are.
Around that same time, component stereo equipment switched from silver with the occasional wooden accents to the now standard black.
And that seems to be the lifespan of consumer electronics design. Functional-experiment-functional-stylish-functual black. Every so often somebody will break from the heard, but will eventually come back to the standards.
The Internet is generally stupid
People around the world have broken out of the standard case. Check out The PCDB which shows what PC cases really can and do look like and the crazy ways people cool them.
I have posted this before in long detail, so let me make it short;
:) It is pretty darn nifty how the color of computer cases has kept on getting lighter and lighter and lighter and then all of a sudden switched to black!
I FUCKING LIKE BEIGE BOXS DAMNIT
and if this gets moded to +1 funny like it did last time I am SOOO going to hurt someone, I AM SERIOUS. BEIGE IS GOOD DAMNIT.
Beige, Steel, Strong. Full tower, steel, beige cases rock.
Black computers, meh. I would rather go function over form.
Besides since I have computer equipment from so many different eras, I have a pretty darn nice gradient of beige.
No wait, that black part is bad.
I LIKE BEIGE DAMNIT.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Klerck, we love you!!!! We love you long time!
That raises the question. Will a black computer run cooler? Especially since black is a good radiator.
on the front page, you'll get a little insight into why boxes have remained beige for so long, and that a modest, nondescript color (black) is its most popular successor.
Most people don't intend to derive satisfaction from the case that holds their computer hardware. They would rather *do* something with their computer. A relatively basic familiarity with computers tends to associate computing with the output of the computer, and users will tend to look at the picture in the box on top of or beside or away from the computer case. (Maybe combining the monitor with the case is a symptom of an inferiority complex -- if you don't want to look at the case, maybe integrate the case with the screen so it looks like you're looking at it) -- within the UI itself, most people aren't too concerned about how the UI makes them feel inside, they are more interested in what it lets them do.
and the break key was red
Isnt there a config for IE browsers to stop this widening, so we can make a dumb fuck like klerck go away ?
Hi,
a nnerz.bmp (or .html)
I?m looking for a site or sites where I can link my cue barcode Code39 (03241981) to my website at http://www.geocities.com/jneal92/03241981.html for free without having to pay 50 a month like what digital convergence (cuecat) is asking. The barcode looks somewhat like this http://www.geocities.com/jneal92/jneal92_files/sk
Thanks,
- Jeremiah Oneal
- Cneal@fanciful.org
- [57th]cneal cneal@fanciful.org
Hi Oily Tuna
I wanted to ask - are you also Lunar82?
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
http://dansdata.com/black.htm