Yesterday David Pogue of the New York Times blogged about how AMD aren’t all that keen on those stickers that are plastered onto notebooks, and want to phase out the use of stickers altogether. But I think there’s more to this move than meets the eye.
Here’s a little of what Pogue had to say:
The bizarre thing is that computer companies are trying to make their laptops beautiful these days. A.M.D. reps showed me, for example, a gorgeous new Hewlett-Packard ultralight laptop. Sleek. Shiny. Elegant. Yet grubbed up with a fruit salad of tasteless, competing stickers.
As A.M.D. points out, it’s like buying a new, luxury car — and discovering that it comes with nonremovable 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.
According to Pogue, AMD want to first introduce an easy-peel sticker in 2011, and then will consider eliminating stickers altogether.
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Notebook stickers - Do you ...
Interesting.
But there’s more going on here than making your notebook look pretty. What AMD is doing here is trying to start a public debate about stickers on PCs because of a certain kind of sticker that AMD don’t like to see on so many systems these days. The Intel sticker.
This is the sticker that AMD really wants to see gone, because you come across them far more often then you come across AMD stickers. Intel has a much larger market share than AMD does, and that means more Intel stickers in people’s view more of the time.
Stickers aren’t pointless, and the idea that AMD thinks that is crazy. AMD realizes that is has a smaller market share than Intel does, knows that it doesn’t have the same marketing budget, so is turning trying to appeal to people’s sense of style in order to try to get rid of them. After all, if AMD wants to pave the way in actually getting rid of stickers on notebooks and PCs, then why not just stop making them and giving them to OEMs to slap onto systems right now?
My guess, and it’s just a guess mind you, is that AMD has no intention of phasing out stickers. If anything, now that AMD has ditched the ATI brand altogether, you’re probably going to be seeing an extra sticker on systems you buy - the AMD sticker, which will more than likely be slapped right alongside the Intel sticker. It might be an easy-peel sticker, but I bet AMD hopes that you don’t peel it off.
These stickers are just another example of things that we have to get used to (or used to dealing with) these days. Everything is branded. Stuff costs more than it used to. Young people use curse words.
Oh, and by the way. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to remove the sticker residue like Pogue says it does. Yank the sticker off, apply a small dab of WD40, baby oil, orange oil, rubbing alcohol or Goo Gone (I prefer baby oil since it never seems to damage the finish) and wipe the mess away. Easy.
