31 Jan
2007
31 Jan
'07
3:18 a.m.
No, the company whose systems scream LOOK AT ME would
be Sun. Have you ever
seen the SunBlade 1500 with about half the front panel in bright red, and
"Sun" in huge letters? Sun almost puts more style in to a lot of thier rack
mounted systems than thier desktops! I would be inclined to put the SGI
Fuel in this catagory though.
I've *NEVER* seen one single IBM system I'd consider to be "art", I
have
seen a few that are interesting. DEC/Compaq/HP same thing.
Sun and IBM during the 1990s should get some credit for going against
the flow with their cases. Sun, with SPARCstations, and well into the
Ultra era, refused to cave into the trendy curves-and-blobs look that
nearly everyone else did. Look at the cases - lots of straight lines,
and that sort of girder looking theme the early Ultras had (most
pronounced on some of the rack systems). Going the curves-and blobs
route that nearly everyone else took was mostly for economics -
cheaper cases. The die makers finally could make weird shaped molds
consistently and cheaply, and when the plastic parts have lots of
curves, they come out of the molds much easier and faster. In the
plastics industry, the cost of a part is driven more by the time spent
in the mold than the amount of material used. Cheaper cases - but call
it industrial design.
IBM should get an award for bringing black back into the computer
center. It is never out of fashion...
Lets face it, most computers, no matter how beautiful
the design, are really
quite ugly on the exterior.
Yes, my original point.
--
Will