Some blush at the touch. Others hum softly into the night. All of them, with their sensuous curves and luminescent faces, beg to be beheld.
November 23, 2006 (Press Release) --
They are a new crop of personal computers that emphasize the personal. With attention to form, texture and materials, these machines are intended to make a statement about their owners, much the way an elegant wristwatch, the cut and make of a fine suit or a stylish car can suggest taste and social station. These are PCs meant as much to be seen as to be used.
"It's differentiation through personalization," Xavier Lauwaert, product manager for the Sony VAIO line of computers, said of the deepening trend of greatly enhancing the aesthetics of contemporary computers for the home and office.
"But it is also through design," he said, adding that some people no longer want computers that are hard-edged black boxes--even if their prices are falling below $500. Lauwaert said the new stylish yet full-featured PC is a "kind of show-off piece," something that might cost the owner several thousand dollars but "creates envy in their friends so that now he wants something better; she wants something better."
This year, Sony introduced its VAIO LS1 PC/TV computer ($2,100), which seems to float in a sheet of clear plastic. Also this year, Sony released its VAIO N Series notebooks (about $1,000), which it said were "designed to complement any home's "motif" with "cool colors" and "smooth lines."
One color for the notebooks, "wenge brown," a creamy coffee color named for an African hardwood, is intended to help computers fit easily among wood-grain furnishings, Lauwaert said.
Combining performance with style, in an era when a basic computer can be both nameless and inexpensive, is a hedge against making the PC a mere commodity, Lauwaert said. Computers long ago ceased to be simply tools, many of their makers say. Instead, like digital music players and digital cameras, they are coming to reflect people's tastes and aspirations.
"I do think it's a great thing, designing them into looking like something you want as part of your décor," said Richard Mishaan, an interior designer in New York. "Everywhere nowadays you are seeing them in a multitude of rooms in the house. I think we were waiting for them to get to be flat-screened, black and cool-looking."
Mark Karnes, the general manager for the personal audio business division of Shure, the high-end earbud maker, said consumers were attracted to style in electronics. "It means something," he said.
Lauren Searl, a recent college graduate who studied graphic arts, said looks were important when she bought a notebook computer recently for her home in Washington.
"The big black computer was not aesthetically pleasing," she said. "I was more interested in how it would look in my home. That was really part of my purchasing process."
She bought an Apple MacBook--white, she noted, to complement the color scheme of her bedroom, where she would use it.
Apple Computer is widely credited with long ago shattering conventions that had for years dictated how a computer had to feel and look. Windows-based personal computers generally lagged far behind in fusing function with form in ways that consumers found exciting. But that is changing, executives from mainstay computer companies like Dell and Toshiba say.
Hybrids
One of the boldest of these new PCs is the Dell XPS M2010, which starts at $3,000. It is neither fully a desktop nor a notebook computer, but something Dell unofficially calls a "portable desktop."
Weighing in at 18 pounds, this is not a computer that could ever be tossed into a backpack and lugged to a coffeehouse for catching up on e-mail. It also has a 20.1-inch LCD monitor, giving it a large overall footprint. Yet when the monitor is folded down, the entire computer--the black, slab-like main body and wireless keyboard--seems to snap into a huge clamshell laptop.
"It's differentiation through personalization," Xavier Lauwaert, product manager for the Sony VAIO line of computers, said of the deepening trend of greatly enhancing the aesthetics of contemporary computers for the home and office.
"But it is also through design," he said, adding that some people no longer want computers that are hard-edged black boxes--even if their prices are falling below $500. Lauwaert said the new stylish yet full-featured PC is a "kind of show-off piece," something that might cost the owner several thousand dollars but "creates envy in their friends so that now he wants something better; she wants something better."
This year, Sony introduced its VAIO LS1 PC/TV computer ($2,100), which seems to float in a sheet of clear plastic. Also this year, Sony released its VAIO N Series notebooks (about $1,000), which it said were "designed to complement any home's "motif" with "cool colors" and "smooth lines."
One color for the notebooks, "wenge brown," a creamy coffee color named for an African hardwood, is intended to help computers fit easily among wood-grain furnishings, Lauwaert said.
Combining performance with style, in an era when a basic computer can be both nameless and inexpensive, is a hedge against making the PC a mere commodity, Lauwaert said. Computers long ago ceased to be simply tools, many of their makers say. Instead, like digital music players and digital cameras, they are coming to reflect people's tastes and aspirations.
"I do think it's a great thing, designing them into looking like something you want as part of your décor," said Richard Mishaan, an interior designer in New York. "Everywhere nowadays you are seeing them in a multitude of rooms in the house. I think we were waiting for them to get to be flat-screened, black and cool-looking."
Mark Karnes, the general manager for the personal audio business division of Shure, the high-end earbud maker, said consumers were attracted to style in electronics. "It means something," he said.
Lauren Searl, a recent college graduate who studied graphic arts, said looks were important when she bought a notebook computer recently for her home in Washington.
"The big black computer was not aesthetically pleasing," she said. "I was more interested in how it would look in my home. That was really part of my purchasing process."
She bought an Apple MacBook--white, she noted, to complement the color scheme of her bedroom, where she would use it.
Apple Computer is widely credited with long ago shattering conventions that had for years dictated how a computer had to feel and look. Windows-based personal computers generally lagged far behind in fusing function with form in ways that consumers found exciting. But that is changing, executives from mainstay computer companies like Dell and Toshiba say.
Hybrids
One of the boldest of these new PCs is the Dell XPS M2010, which starts at $3,000. It is neither fully a desktop nor a notebook computer, but something Dell unofficially calls a "portable desktop."
Weighing in at 18 pounds, this is not a computer that could ever be tossed into a backpack and lugged to a coffeehouse for catching up on e-mail. It also has a 20.1-inch LCD monitor, giving it a large overall footprint. Yet when the monitor is folded down, the entire computer--the black, slab-like main body and wireless keyboard--seems to snap into a huge clamshell laptop.
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