Oct
A buddy of mine called me up the other day and asked me to help him purchase a PC. He stated that he didn’t need anything extravagant and all he used his now defunct PC for is trading in the stock market and surfing the net. His sole requirement was that the computer needed to have a decent amount of RAM to support 2 monitors and a few resource hungry applications running at the same time. No problem.
I accompanied him to our local Best Buy to look at his options, and man did he have options! We were confronted with a sea of black & grey boxes from HP, Acer, Gateway, and Compaq. Here’s the revelation. Neither of us cared what the brand was; as long as the PC had a minimum of 2GB of RAM, he was fine. There are no differentiating factors between any of the PCs aside from price, configuration, and whether or not Best Buy had it in stock.
This brings me to why I never really loved my PC.
The Looks
It’s so hard to love something that is so indistinguishable from everything else. If you had stacked hundreds of PC towers next to each other in a line and through mine into the mix, it would take close inspection to actually pick mine out of the pack. There is only so much a PC manufacturer can do to stand out – manufacturing a cleverly hidden media card reader or replacing a side panel with see-through glass is not innovation. It’s a lame attempt at punching a customer hard enough for them to give their box a passing look.
The Operating System
I can probably reuse the above example in describing the operating system. Windows XP is not exciting, it suffices a need that doesn’t over-deliver. It looks identical on every machine, no matter who manufacturers it (Sony’s desktops may look a bit different on a first boot thanks to all the bloatware). After you boot into XP, you forget what brand your PC is until you reach for the power button to turn it back off. And let’s not forget Windows Vista here. Sure, Windows Vista looks a bit different than Windows XP but is it really worth it? In fact, Microsoft has been consistently extending Windows XP expiration dates because of how much users hate Vista!
The Community
When was the last time that someone referred to an HP community? How many times have you heard people exclaiming that they loved their Acer? People don’t love their PCs. How could you love something if you don’t know its name? There is not a single PC manufacturer that differentiates themselves enough from the pack that would enable a user to justify their admiration. Their HP does exactly the same thing as their neighbor’s Dell.
The Buying Experience
I’ll go back to my opening story for this one. My buddy and I decided to approach a salesman to discuss some options. Keep in mind here that Best Buy salespeople make no commission whatsoever so his recommendations were less biased. In suggesting a PC, he paid no mention to the manufacturer and solely focused on finding one that had at least 2GB of RAM and was in stock. He had found a few contenders and then begun to narrow them down by which one had the best offer and came with a decent monitor. When asked what differentiated the computers from each other, he proceeded to read from the specs sheet in front of the PC.
The Conclusion
PC’s are just not that exciting. You get one when you need it and it fullfills a need. You never learn its name, find out where it came from, or how it gets along with your family. It’s very difficult on the first date(s), doesn’t pay for itself, and never kisses you back. How is it that we can have so many manufacturers using the same exact skin (operating system) that have not figured out a way to differentiate themselves from everyone else?
Let’s take Windows Mobile as a quick example. Manufacturers do all they can to differentiate themselves by releasing handsome hardware and some have truly succeeded! However, one manufacturer took that one step farther. Not only did they create some of the sexiest handsets we have ever seen, but they also reskinned the operating system in a much sleeker presentation. It’s no secret why HTC sells so many damn Windows Mobile phones – it’s different from the rest!
Why is the iMac so damn successful? Well, let’s see: it’s beautiful, easy, and it’s not Windows XP! Here we have an alternative to an otherwise drab set of look-alikes. It’s no wonder why people that want a Mac will settle for nothing but. In cellphones, HTC has carved a name for itself by differentiating its hardware and skinning Microsoft’s software. What PC manufacturer has the balls to do it on a PC?
