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Sexy Intel Computer Design Worth Big Bucks
An anonymous reader writes From a BBC article, "Intel is offering $1m in prizes to designers and manufacturers who can come up with sexier alternatives to the "big beige box".
The competition is open to PC designers and manufacturers worldwide and each company may submit up to five different designs.
The grand prize winner will receive $300,000 (£159,000) to enable the mass production of the system and $400,000 (£212,000) to co-market the design with Intel. The runner-up will receive up to $300,000 to help with manufacturing costs."
I hate looking at some gaudy colored box in some has-been trendy shade.
The only think worse, is when they have an odd shape so that a CD case slides off the top. If it is going to be ugly you might as well be able to stack stuff on it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Are its machines not "sexy alternatives to the big, grey box?"
They run Intel processors, too.
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people with more space and money than brains. males under 17 years old, and tarty females of all ages
The Barbie PC: Proof that a curvy pink box can be less sexy than a plain beige box.
I would have said it is Dell's wolf gray and black box that rules.
Have you SEEN the Mac Pro? I know a lot of people like it, but I really don't. I think it's rather utliarian, grey and ugly.
Go ahead, Apple fanbois, mod me down!
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I think folks underestimate how striking completely transparent PC cases can look ...
The FCC called; they want their radio frequency spectrum back.
I would, and so would most married women.
Someone who can design on small, quite, and as few cords as possible would be a winner.
Mac Mini is a great design for 80% of computer users.
The remainder will build there own anyways.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...stupid "get a Mac if you want curves" comments, and many being modded as insightful. Granted, there have been very few Intel based PCs that have been contenders to win design awards but I've seen a few that are easily as good looking as many believe the Mac to be. Dell's M2010 is far better looking than then notebooks being sold by Apple. The Sony RS Series and LS Series are great looking desktops, the LS being the all-in-one like the iMac. The Sony Digital Living System is a great looking media center PC. It's all a matter of taste.
One of my favorite comments was this one, "Hopefully we get some different options from this, but speaking generally, how much can you do different?" Ummm, perhaps you are a) not the target for PCs like this and b) are not creative enough to design an elegant, stylish PC case. I'm always amazed with this attitude from geeks given that they'd be extremely passionate if one we re to say something equally as inane as, "why spend billions of dollars to go to the Moon or Mars? They're just lifeless rocks with no interest to anyone."
That's really not the point.
I don't think Intel's looking for flashy. That would be like Volkswagen hiring a team ofricers to design their cars. Alienware's PCs are certainly flashy, and they certainly look like crap.
I think Intel wants something sophisticated and subdued. Apple's got this down perfectly with their aluminum enclosures, and it's pretty hard to deny the the G5, Mac Pro, and Mac Mini are damned sexy machines.
I simply don't get why dell can't just produce machines with clean lines and subdued colors. Minimalism is the easiest school of art to imitate.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Math is hard, so the Barbie PC uses the Pentium to guess at the answer in software.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
You may not give a shit about what your case looks like, but in the retail market where PC's sit on shelves the shoppers do care more about how their PC looks then really what it does.
Just recently I build a computer for a friends parents with a nice low profile Micro-ATX desktop/tower case and a 19" LCD monitor. It replaced a huge white box & 17" CRT on their desk and after some cabling cleanup it made their study look bigger and much nicer.
They were so impressed they showed it off to their friends, and within a week I had requests for 4 more.
People do care about the asthetics of what they buy when they want it for more then just basic functionality, the computer speed & jargon goes right over their head and they just want something that works well and looks good.
Anybody remember the last time intel came up with a sexy new desktop design
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
That is the real trick isn't it? Getting the smaller curvier ones to take all of your bits without drama...
We are all just people.
So give Apple props for the iMac design instead.
Why? It's basically a big, ugly, white slab. You can't adjust the height of the display, and like a PC from 1998, all the ports are on the back. You have to move the entire computer to point the iSight camera at something. Open it up, and there isn't any thing you can add except for more ram. I don't really see the appeal of the iMac's design myself.