Laptops Look Like Racecars — and Not in a Good Way
Tony Avelar/Bloomberg Customers may hate stickers on laptops, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going away anytime soon.
At a meeting with Advanced Micro Devices the other day, representatives talked to me about chip sets and clock speeds, of discrete graphics and die sizes. But in passing, they mentioned an additional company initiative that really perked me up: laptop stickers.
When you buy a new Windows PC, as you probably know, it comes festooned with little (or not so little) stickers on the palm rests. There’s one for Windows, one for Skype, one for Intel, one for the laptop company, maybe an Energy Star sticker and so on.
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.
Never mind that all of this promotional garbage already appears on the box. Do you really need it physically affixed to the actual computer?
Physically — and semi-permanently? I tried to fingernail some of the stickers off that H.P. laptop, and it was a disaster. You can peel them up, but they shred, and they leave adhesive crud behind. When you’ve just spent big bucks on a laptop, should you really be obligated to spend the first 20 minutes trying to dissolve away the sticker goop with WD40? (There’s a missed promotional opportunity for H.P.)
A.M.D.’s research shows that consumers hate the stickers (duh). But they’re not going away, for one simple reason: There’s big money involved. Intel, Microsoft, Skype and whoever else is represented by the stickers actually pay the computer companies for the billboard space. That’s why H.P., for example, would tolerate gumming up its laptops’ good looks with crass ads. (Apple refuses to put Intel stickers on its computers, even though there’s Intel inside. In doing so, it leaves millions of dollars a year on the table.)
I’m not even sure it’s money well spent. If you buy a Windows laptop, it’s pretty obvious you’re going to get Windows on it. If the computer box says “Intel inside,” you pretty much already know that when you open the box.
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Another reason among many to buy a Mac instead of a P.C.
John H. Armwood
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