Conference 7.286::digital

    1) I agree with you on some items, but not Digital products in general.
    2) Yes, the aesthetical aspect is quite important.
    
         I thought the aesthetics were a tiny factor until I noticed
    people's reaction to the boxes enclosing Gateway 2000 computers and
    those encasing IBM PS/2 computers.  The former being rather a smooth
    and flowing design and the latter being hideously boxy.
    
         Most people seem to want good quality and a good price, but will
    forgo the best of those aspects for a slightly better-looking device.
    
         Some of Digital's products are remarkably well-designed and 
    aesthetically pleasing.  The Alpha server and disk storage unit I saw
    recently at a customer site looked excellent.  I understand the Storage
    group got some kind of industry design award for that unit.
    
                                        Greg

    "if a happy customer was to tell 10 of his/her friends of his/her new
    and latest CPU purchase, then having the Alpha BOX look at least modern
    and good looking will only help."
    
    Personal opinion ... we need better looking, modern boxes and better 
    finishing, like the new 'black' AS/400 series.
    
    The need for modern looking boxes is componded for our AlphaStation
    monitors !! These things are meant for the desktops, and at one glance,
    should scream "LATEST, FASTEST and GREATEST".
    
    
    
    
    

    Hey, what's this about the 2100 being ugly??
    
    The last time I remember seeing something that looked like this was the
    front grill on my uncle's '48 Buick!!
    
    Now that's a real classic.
    
    

    I like the appearance of Dec's pc products.  I have a "traditional"
    home, and I don't want some nightmare :-) of a modern art-like
    computer case in black or red or whatever sticking out like a sore
    thumb.
    

    I think aethetics are important, and I've always thought DEC's
    products to be much better looking than the competition (hardly an
    un-biased opinion, however).
    
    Ken....
    

    
    I remember the BA123 (world box).. Ken Olsen had his hand in designing
    it.. He insisted on a butcher block top on the box...  There were still
    a few protos on MLO5-5 before we all got moved out..
    
    Jon
    

    Aesthetics are important but one of the other essential truths at work
    here is that you can't please all of the people all of the time. For
    instance I have a customer who absolutely hit the roof when the first
    DEC7000 hit his computer room and it was a different colour than
    everything else, got seriously angry, actually tried to force the
    account manager to have CSS paint the skins good old putty.
    
    As for the 2100 I like it, compared to the COBRA it's downright
    beautiful. Would like to see more consistancy though, put a 1000, 2000
    and 2100 together and they look like they came from three different
    manufacturers.  

    It may be worth watching what happens with the new ACER Home Computer
    line. Acer has put these boxes out with radically different looking
    cases and choices of three different colors. Given that most PC's share
    relatively common componentry, the ACER design differences are the only
    real point of differentiation. They certainly catch the eye when
    browsing throught the local Best Buy.
    
    I suppose the Forest Gumps`of the world would reply to the base noter
    that "ugly is as ugly does" and try to change the point of the
    conversation towards performance and other meaningful topics. I
    certainly would support the notion that design esthetics can and should
    be an important part of any product. You have to look pretty close at
    most of the cases and monitors to even tell which vendors system you're
    looking at these days (SGI boxes excepted). A little design
    differentiation couldn't hurt.
    
    -OFWAMI-
            

    
    I agree.
    
    The 2100 is just soooo damn ugly, I wouldn't have one in my house.
    Clash with the Hi-Fi, and the colors clash with the curtains. And no
    remote control. How on earth do we sell any ?
    
    AW
    
    
    
    

    
     RE: .9
    
         I saw those Acer units, and they are interesting.  I like the
    trend.  Even if the current Acer designs don't sell wildly, other
    companies are probably already working on new looks.
    
         Digital doesn't need to go quite so far, but as was mentioned
    before, family resemblances would be nice in many areas.  Also a little less
    boxiness is the way of the future.
    
                                     Greg

    How about "mood ring" surfaces?
    The color will change according to the emotions of the user.
    
    :-0

     .0   1/ Do you share my aesthetical appraisal of Digital Hardware?
    
     No - the outside of the box could be camo for all I care.   It's not 
     the box you buy its what's inside of it.  Besides as far as a shell of 
     a box could be pleasing to the eye the Alpha box & artwork work for me.  
    
     .0   2/ Can aesthetics be a discriminator on our market(s)?
    
     aesthetics - Of or pertaining to the sense of the beautiful.
    
    As much as a computer can be considered 'beautiful' - taking into
    consideration what is on the inside and outside I believe we do
    well.  
    
    .0 a question - what in your opinion is the best looking PC and why
    is it so?  

	Those styling decisions involve real engineering compromises.
	The industrial designers I've worked with were always trying
	to minimize air vents, which certainly complicated my job as
	a thermal engineer! Those nifty design features always cost
	something, either in real $ or in volume, footprint, or
	some other aspect. How much are you willing to pay?

	Given that PC's are consumer products rather than capital
	equipment, maybe the market is willing to pay significantly.
	Henry Ford liked black, but once the auto market expanded
	into the general consumer space, styling became a key
	differentiator.

	On the "family look" factor, the Industrial Design group
	always pushed this. I observed it was the addition of one or 
	another new engineering feature demanded by the Product Manager 
	which disrupted the intergenerational family resemblence.
	The "family look" reached its zenith in 1992 with KO's Towers, 
	Tall Medium and Short, into which all new DEC equipment were to
	be packaged. With the demise of KO, his favored design group
	EMDS and its subset, the Industrial Design group, lost
	influence. While I am no longer involved in the design of
	PC's or servers, I hear word of mouth that Enrico exercises
	influence over the styling of all new designs in his space.


				John

    
    Many years ago, the Ericsson Portable (8088, 512 kb, 1 5 1/4 FHD) had -
    IMHO - a superbous design. And a few later the Compaq Portable III (the
    first one with the plasma display, I am not sure of the name) was
    another wonderful one.
    

    What would sell better: a corvette, or a car that has a corvette's
    innards, and the body of a Hyundai pony?  Obviously the former.  Yes,
    we have good machines, but if they are esthetically pleasing to boot,
    what is holding us back?  Beauty (among other things) sells.  If Henry
    Ford had offered more than just black, I suspect he'd have sold more. 
    It'll be interesting to a) actually see one of the non-beige coloured
    boxes, and b) see how they are received in teh market place.
    
    In the meantime, what is preventing someone from painting their PC and
    monitor to match their decor?  Just make sure it is powered off, and
    nothing drips inside, it should be doable right?  The note about having
    Norm build it may not be that far off - IMHO it would look better in my
    den.
    
    Doug

    I have a VT05 in my office...Now that is/was an attention getter...but
    I also like my 1957 Buick....so much for my taste...

Form follows function.

As stated before, compare a 2100 to a Cobra...no comparison.
I think Digital PC's are very distinguishable from the comp.
and a lot better looking too.

I like our Celebris, Venturis and Starion systems very much,
classic looking redesigns from the DECpc systems, like when BMW or Mercedes
revamps a line, they try to retain a classic shape...

The Acer systems remind me of all of those bright green and salmon colored
cars being sold of late.  It's just a fad.

-Stephen

    I can't believe no one's mentioned the HiNote Ultra.  
    
    Poetry in mega-functional plastic, metal, and silicon.
    
    I love it!!!!
    

    <what is holding us back?  Beauty (among other things) sells.  If Henry
    <Ford had offered more than just black, I suspect he'd have sold more. 
    
    
    naaah!  colors hadn't been invented yet.

    you read entirely too much calvin/hobbes ...

    RE: 16
    
    Solid logic on the Corvette analogy.  To carry it further, our shipping 
    packages pale in comparison to other market leaders.  Go into a CompUSA, 
    where many of the shipping containers are in sight of the shoppers.  
    Our's - classic kraft color with some cheesy black print and a pressure 
    sensitive color label.  Theirs - high litho-quality graphics, consumer 
    oriented.

    Re: shipping containers
    
    Sometimes snazzy colored designs on shipping containers mean the
    containers can't be recycled as "cardboard" due to the effect of the
    colored inks, etc.
     

    
    	Besides, you can always put a small label on the box that says,
    
    	"Shipped in a plain brown wrapper - contents TO HOT TO HANDLE"
    
    	Now can I get one of them marketing jobs, too....
    
    
    			the Greyhawk

    whilst shopping for a computer for my wife's brother back a month or so
    ago...
    
    both my wife (ex-DEC) and her brother (auto mechanic) thought the HP
    Pavilion systems were "fairly ugly" and the new Acer systems "very
    ugly". They both thought the Starion was the best looking of the
    bunch; clean lines, no nonsense.
    
    YMMV
    
    ...tom

    Olivetti has launched a multi-media home PC (at least here in Europe)
    which somehow resembles old (20-30 years) Italian design (which was
    avant-garde then). It looks like a cross between a VCR, HiFi, Audio CD
    player, maybe a with a pinch of computer and microwave thrown in...
    somehow I have my doubts how it will do in the marketplace.

    I understand it's been done before, with little success... but, I don't
    understand the failure.
    
    I'd like to see PC's and peripherals come in a variety of colours.
    
    I mean... being a bit  long in the tooth myself... I rather enjoy it!
    
    tony

    When I buy a PC now, I do it in much the same way I buy a refrigerator
    or a television. It's got to have the performance I need, which is now
    always less than what the top of the line provides. Of equal importance
    is the fact that it's got to fit where I want to put it: color and
    shape are important. It must fit on or under my desk, and the color
    needs to be compatable with the room where it will be used. I also need
    to be sure that I can connect to peripherals like printers, scanners that
    I have.
    
    I thought that the new Packard Bell machine (at least new for me) that
    was designed to fit in a corner was interesting.
    
    For computers today, performace, styling, and features are all
    important, just like all other consumer products.
    
    Rich.
    

    I'm glad this has come up, because up until now I've been hesitant
    to comment on this in the various Starion topics.
    
    I'm among the apparent minority who does not care for the Starion's
    looks.  In particular, there are large noticeable gaps around the
    drives in all of the floor models I've seen, and the colors of the
    components (drives, cabinet, etc.) don't match.  Frankly it looks
    like someone's home-built system.  I expect a much tighter look
    from a machine with an integrated design, especially from a major
    company.
    
    The dimensions of the box also suggest to me that things might be
    a bit tight inside, a drawback for people like me who tinker around
    under the hood once in a while.  The overall shape looks somehow
    "unproportional", but then I'm accustomed to mid-size towers.
    
    I've liked the looks of almost all of Digital's other PC products,
    but this one was enough of a turn-off for me, which made me think that
    some prospective customers might feel likewise.  Of course there's
    probably a marketing survey somewhere that proves that customers
    love the look, so we can probably ignore what I'm saying here.
    
    The good news is that the HP Pavilion is far, far uglier than anything
    we could ever come up with in our wildest imaginations!  :-)  It looks
    like something that would match most people's bathroom decor.  I'm
    surprised that it doesn't come in pastel colors...
    
    Chris

    Can we mention what we want in some future product?
    
    I want a color flatpanel wall mounted behind my desk, say, 36", so
    I can use really big fonts and still have lots of windows up.  Why
    use desk space on a 75lb monitor?  Stick that sucker up on the wall.
    
    DougO

Doug,

  I think it's pretty well-accepted that flat-panel displays
  (probably but not necessarily TFT LCDs) will replace CRTs
  just as soon as it's practical. Whether wall-hung or desk-
  mounted, the thinness, light weight, durability, insensitivity
  to stray magnetic fields, low emissions, and low power consumption
  are very strong positives favoring the flat-panel display.

  Right now, at VG and SVGA densities, the economics still
  favor the CRT by about 2:1 or 3:1. And at megapixel densities,
  the economics are more like 10:1. And there aren't any really
  large flat-panel displays.

  But this is all coming. Somewhere between FEDs, MMDs, LCDs, and
  whatever else gets invented RSN, the CRT market *WILL* eventually
  implode.

                                   Atlant


FED = Field Emission Display (a flat-panel CRT technology)
MMD = Micro-Mirror Device (developed by Texas Instruments)
TFT LCD = Thin-Film Transistor (i.e. "Active Matrix") Liquid Crystal Display

    Style is important from a feel good factor point of view.  If a
    customer has just purchased the server, say, which he/she feels does the
    best job at the just price performance on the whole planet, we should
    reinforce that goodness when he/she takes the wraps off.  In fact, the
    wraps need to be pleasing as well.  Suggest to users that they feel good,
    and they more than likely will.
    
    When you look at, say, an AlphaServer, can you tell it one of the
    world's fastest systems?  I think the packaging needs to convey this,
    tastefully.
    
    I am told, but have not witnessed, that SGI are particular strong in
    advertising/feel good on their shipment containers.
    
    In short, we should view every machine as an advertising site!  This
    can be discrete yet effective.
    
    Cheers - Ken
                                  
     

The 2100 is the most pig ugly system I've ever seen!  Can't comment on the 
Starion, I've never seen one.

Chris.

re.33:

You're probably too young to remember Wang kit then.

Dave ;-)

    I don't care how ugly it is - I'd take one if it was offered
    
    Alan