What's triggers "gadget lust"?

I found Larry Dignan's post about Dell's struggle to infect their products with "gadget lust" to be an interesting read. But what's really behind "gadget lust"?

Let's take notebooks. The trick that most OEMs are now trying to to make their products stand out using color. Dell using vivid colors, while HP goes for the metallic look. Sure, these look good but do I lust for a color? Nah. Acer took the color thing further and not only licenses Ferrari red, plastered the Ferrari logo on the shell. Hmmm ... (Can anyone come up with a tackier idea for promoting a bit of tech?)

We're now also seeing color making its way onto the desktop. Again, it seems that Dell is leading the way here with systems such as the XPS. Sure, they look good but I'm unmoved as far as purchasing a system based on color is concerned.

Remember when iPods were white? Now black seems to have become the new white. Odd how tastes change.

While I'm pretty unmoved by the color of my tech (I'm happy with black for my PCs and notebooks), people involved in marketing for companies such as Dell must feel that having access to more colors would improve sales.

The last gadget that I truly lusted for was the iPod touch. It wasn't the style or the thinness or the Apple logo that hooked me, but the idea of being able to access the web using a decent web browser (while I hate Safari on the desktop, even on the Mac, I quite like it on the iPod touch). That and the amazing screen got me hooked right from the start.

A gadget that I lust over periodically is the Panasonic Toughbook (like the one Hawkins had in Jericho), but I can't justify the price, no matter how hard I try. One day ...

Note: Just to be clear, this isn't "gadget lust" based on product placement - I've jsuted over the Toughbook for years.

What is it that triggers "gadget lust" in you? Is it color, or style, product placement or something completely different?