Slashdot Mirror
AMD Hates Laptop Stickers As Much As You Do
pickens writes "David Pogue writes in the NY Times that when you buy a new Windows PC, it comes festooned with stickers on the palm rests: one for Windows, one for Skype, one for Intel, one for the laptop company, maybe an Energy Star sticker and so on. 'It's like buying a new, luxury car — and discovering that it comes with non-removable bumper stickers that promote the motor oil, the floor mat maker, the windshield-fluid company and the pine tree air freshener you have no intention of ever using,' writes Pogue. But the worst thing is that when you peel them off, they shred, leaving adhesive crud behind. 'When you've just spent big bucks on a laptop, should you really be obligated to spend the first 20 minutes trying to dissolve away the sticker goop with WD40?' But AMD has a solution. Starting next year, AMD will switch to new stickers that peel off easily, leaving no residue; after that, it's considering eliminating the sticker program altogether."
A bottle of rubbing alcohol costs 99 cents. Lasts for years. A tiny dab on a microfiber cloth and that sticky residue is history. Takes about 30 seconds. Leaves your laptop looking nice and bare.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Makes me feel like a NASCAR driver. Vrooom...vroooom!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wow great! So I can buy a shiny new laptop and not have to spend the first twenty minutes of its life removing the ugly mess of stickers that the manufacturer seems obliged to festoon upon its creation? Or no, I just have one fewer to remove because AMD is just one company (or two, I suppose, depending on the motherboard chipset and graphics subsystem). So all that would be left for many is that ugly "Windows" sticker...
Wonder if AMD will do anything about that? Sure would be nice to be able to buy a shiny new laptop and not have to spend the first hours of its new life formatting and loading an operating system that doesn't suck.
Ah, who am I kidding? It could come loaded with the latest and greatest uber-Ubuntu and I'd still reload it just because it's not partitioned the way I want it...
This is one place where apple really shines. You buy a new machine, it comes with no stickers on it. It looks really sleek. No stickers, nice clean lines, really helps the machine look nice. I don't know why none of the PC makers can do this. Make a machine that is esthetically pleasing, and don't mess it up with stickers. Also, does anybody find it odd how they related it to cars? When you buy a car, it has the manufacturer's logo, possibly a hood ornament, the type of car (sunbird, tempo, Ranger), the model of the car (SX,ZX,whatever). Also you get the dealership slapping their name on it too. Often the dealer will not only put their name on the body of the car, but also around the license plate. It's basically a billboard for the manufacturer and the dealership. I kind of equate it to buying a $50 t-shirt with some designer name printed across the front. Basically you're a walking billboard. I would love to be able to buy a car with no markings at all on it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I wouldn't mind a single technical information summary sticker on the underside of the laptop. You know, where the manufacturer typically puts a sticker with serial number, model number, etc.? Something which is sort of the computer equivalent of the 'nutrition facts' box on food packaging, which included info about:
* CPU make/model/revision/speed/number of cores.
* Amount of RAM originally installed
* List of built-in devices (wifi chip, ethernet chip, audio chip, GPU, memory card reader chip, etc)
Only thing is, I think putting all that info on a sticker, in text large enough to read, would lead to a giant sticker, which might interfere with things like removable batteries, removable access panels (e.g. the panel you normally remove to access the memory slots, etc), cooling vents, removable drives, etc, which are all usually accessed on the bottom of the laptop.
Apple makes money because people don't buy hardware specs, they buy function.
And aside from that, a PC running Windows plus a bunch of YourPCNameHere bloatware plus all the requisite security software might have better specs, but it may or may not run any faster.
"A GB is a GB" is a myopic way to look at things.
Perhaps the most annoying sticker placement I have ever encountered is on the mating surface of copper plumbing fittings. Makes a 10 second cleaning job into a five minute ordeal. Any other sad or funny stories?
No, I'm gonna spend 20 minutes sandblasting them.
It shouldn't have exploded but merely felt a nice breeze as something went sailing over your head.
Whether or not it's "natural" depends entirely on your definition of the word.
Are we going to start calling citric acid artificial because a lemon tree made it? Or call honey artificial, because a bunch of bees made it?
We're just as a part of nature as bees and lemon trees, so why is stuff we made suddenly unnatural?
Moreover, since it's completely arbitrary, why does it matter where we draw the line?
It's a completely useless definition. That is, unless you want to make millions off of people who think "natural" things are better than "unnatural" things. Barnum called those people "suckers".
Question everything
Modern staple foods are almost universally descended from plants that were deliberately exposed to high levels of artificial ionizing radiation or chemical mutagens in order to induce mutations. Mankind induced the mutations, then mankind artificially and selectively bred the mutations into the food supply. Outside a few minor heirloom varieties, there is virtually no maize, wheat, rice, or soy on the planet which isn't the result of these artificially-induced alterations of the plant genomes.
Which is to say, no, there is almost nothing you can eat "which is part of the ecosystem without human intervention." It's all been meddled with.