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Good Gadget Grief
In the ongoing saga of my acquisition of new computer equipment, all my new peripherals arrived at my home today while I was at work haggling with Apple and my credit card companies trying to sort out why it's so difficult for me to get them to accept the thousands of dollars I’m trying to spend. Luckily, I think we've got it all sorted out and the computer will go out tomorrow, so soon there'll be something to connect to all these new peripherals.
But let me rant for a bit about some distressing things I’ve noticed about this new wave of computer equipment design (bullets, P.J., it's all about the bullets):
- Big-ass AC adapters are not a good solution. sure, I’m sure a lot of these vendors are into the idea of making all these new candy-colored gadgets seem light and sleek by removing the heavy parts of the power supply, but those honkin' big adapters that came with my CD-RW, scanner, USB hub, router, DSL modem, et al., do not all fit on a power strip! Nothing was wrong with traditional power cords. Additional extension cords snaking around my floor will be problematic.
- And speaking of all this candy-colored nonsense, I find it pretty apalling that the iMac-ification of contemporary product design results in such a horrendous waste of plastic. I don't need a full set of replacement handles in all the colors of the rainbow for my scanner.
- And a waste of space! All this curviness that the kids dig these days is just a freakin' veneer that tries (ironically, while making the truth very obvious thanks to all the transparency) to disguise the fact that all these components are still little rectangular things on the inside. My CD burner is just a normal box, but it comes inside a big, curvy plastic shell that makes it unstackable and increases its volume needlessly by half. And the DSL modem, router, and USB hub are all just basically circuit boards of about the same size, but they all come in curvy plastic boxes of various shapes and sizes to ensure that I can't stack them in one neat little pile. There are smooth little plasticy things piled all the fuck over the place now. Pain in my butt.
- Ooooh, but I’m still so excited. I love new treats.