THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509090002
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
SOURCE: PATRICK K. LACKEY, staff writer
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
The world isn't ready for this.
There is no demonstrable need for this.
Only pain and suffering can result from this.
Last week a Taiwanese company named Acer began selling the first personal computers with colored casings.
What is wrong with boring beige, the ultraneutral color of virtually all PCs up till now?
The last thing someone buying a computer needs is another choice to make.
Already you have to consider speed and power and memory and type of screen and printer. Do you need a mouse? What software will be required? How fast a modem? You can't just walk into a store and order a computer for school or work. You have to know roughly a dozen things and speak a language that is not English.
And now they want you to choose a color. It's just one more thing a married couple must agree on.
The first Acers, as the colored PCs are called, come in that charcoal black popular in stereos and also in a dark emerald.
The door has been opened for other colors and even combinations. Soon there will be yellow polka-dot computers for teenagers.
Decades ago, in a better time, all telephones were black. Then colored phones were introduced, and at first they cost more than the black ones. Naturally the phone company, a monopoly, did everything in its power to make you lease one of the colored models. Only the strongest-willed consumers had black phones.
My father saw no reason to pay extra for a colored phone, since he was going to talk into it, not admire it. Just when a phone company representative was in full cry extolling the virtues of modern colored phones and damning old-fashioned black ones, my father would say sweetly, ``No, I want one of those pretty ebony ones.''
Now the times call for everyone to stick together and buy only computers of the same color. Color coordinate your wardrobe, your house, your car, your flower bed, almost everything. But boring beige is the right color for computers. by CNB