Softening the Edges of Technology 122
Tired of the generic grey boxes that fill corporate offices? A New York Times piece looks at the efforts by some hardware resellers to soften the edges of the PC with elements from nature. The piece goes over the efforts of places like Suissa Computers, which offers 'desktop computers in cases of oak, walnut, zebrawood, purpleheart, mahogany, maple and leopardwood'. Likewise, Holzkontor of Neustadt and the company Wood Contour offers keyboard and monitor sets that adds a naturalistic touch to the average soulless desktop setup. They don't just touch on commercial options, talking briefly about homebrew case-mods: "Nicholas Falzone, 20, a third-year architectural student at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is just putting the finishing touches on the second computer case he's made. 'It's taken me at least a thousand hours,' he said. The case has an aluminum interior frame to support the computer workings. The outer frame is made of koa and maple. Mr. Falzone did the rough cuts with a table saw; after that, almost all the work was done with hand tools. 'Each joint has multiple mortises and tenons,' he said. 'I didn't use any screws or glue.'" Interesting to see the beautification of PC cases in the pages of the old grey lady.
Re:Waste of money (Score:3, Insightful)
Is metal more "plain" than wood? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you really wanted "utilitarian", you wouldn't even have boxes. An empty frame is cheaper, simpler, and easier to work with. Computers didn't use to come in cases, you know.
I like grey and black computers.
Bang, there's your preference. It's about as easy to make a wood frame as a metal one -- they're equally "utilitarian". Do you like grey and black for any particular reason, or simply because that's what you're used to?
I respect the fact that some people like for their computers to mesh with the decor of the room in which they are placed but for me, I don't want my computing equipment to be a decorative statement. I just want it to work.
That's kind of irrelevant: I do believe that a computer in a wood case will work as well as one in a steel case.
As much as you may hate to admit it, putting it a grey or black metal box is also a "decorative statement". It may be the computing equivalent of "exposed bricks", but it's a statement, nonetheless.
Daft... (Score:4, Insightful)
As for wood, it is both a saftey hazard and useless as a computer case material, it won't block any EM interference at all, and it's a fire hazard.
I don't want to think what a few year's worth of heat, dust and static will do to your lovely wood panelled box.
Money could be better spent elsewhere...
Read the article:
The prices for the computers, which include a monitor, keyboard, mouse and some service, start at about $5,740.
Re:Waste of money (Score:3, Insightful)
And should 'your companies' also dump their nice oak desks, and Aeron chairs for Ikea crap?
Many of these custom cases take standard sized mother boards, power supplies, and drives. I suspect that a 10 year life span is reasonable for anyone with even a moderate ability to swap out components for newer editions. The only difficulty I see is adapting to newer ports - at some point USB will be as much of a legacy port as a PS2 keyboard port, and it might take a bit more ability to stay current.
Although you might have a point - I'm often surprised by a $200,000 office suite with a $700 crap HP mini tower sitting on a $20,000 desk.
Re:Wooden cases... (Score:3, Insightful)