RSSDell plans a new set of artistically customized laptops
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published May 7, 2008, 6:45 PM
Dell has touted the concept of personalized PCs ever since it began business as "PCs Limited." But now, it's experimenting with taking that philosophy to new levels, offering a peek at new laptops with custom artwork on their cases.
NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - "'One' is the number we eventually envision," said Anne Camden, during a Dell press event in New York City yesterday. Dell's senior PR manager was referring to plans by Dell to use the Special Art Edition Inspiron 1525 laptops rolled out this week as a launchpad for offering totally customized, build-to-order laptop covers at some point down the road.
Shown to journalists at the event in Manhattan, the limited edition Special Art laptops come with a choice of two cover designs -- "Sea Sky" and "Bunch O Surfers" -- and both designs are the work of an artist named Mike Ming.
But Camden told BetaNews during the event that Dell intends to increase the number of products available with artistically inspired covers by August of this year. A wider choice of artists and designs is also on the way. Beyond that, she said, Dell wants to extend the technology utilized for "tatooing" Ming's designs into "total personalization" of laptop covers.
Under this strategy, customers will send in a photo or some other type of image to Dell. Dell will then proceed to emblazon the picture on to the cover of the computer.
After all, Dell got started as a "build-to-order" company, Camden noted. But she declined to reveal the name of the company behind the technology Dell is using for tatooing Ming's art work onto the Special Edition 1525s.
Ming himself was also on hand at the event in Manhattan. "I've always done a lot of custom art work for surfboards and skateboards," he said, in an interview with BetaNews.
"I think it's really cool to be doing the same kind of thing now for laptops. I feel really proud," the artist added.
Priced starting at $699 and described by Dell as "graffiti-inspired," the initial Special Art Edition notebooks are now available for order at http://www.dell.com/art.
I prefer ThinkPad matte black.
Well, it's actually cool. If they would loose the Dell button in the middle that is...
Score: 0
|Only available in 1525? That sucks. The art is cool, hopeful it will make available to the other lines, and keep the price low.
Score: 0
|Looks great on the outside, but Dell needs to get rid of that ugly arctic silver color scheme on the inside.
Score: 0
|Actually, my current notebook has the "Apple" white gloss lid and silver on the inside. I like the light colors way more than gloss black, which my Toshiba Tecra was.
My HP is some silly "limited edition" version with a pattern printed on the lid in silver ink. I think they limited it to about 50,000,000 as it's still a current model over a year later and about $200 cheaper than when I bought it.
HP dv6000 series, rock solid, fast, built in webcam, LightScribe, 2GB RAM, 1.7Mhz quad core AMD, nVidia card, Multi DVD recorder, Vista Home Premium and Media Center. My 360 connects directly to MC, which is pretty cool.
Score: 0
|Personally, I prefer a color scheme with a silver keyboard surrounded by glossy black on the inside. A white keyboard surrounded by glossy black wouldn't be too bad either. As for your HP dv6000 series laptop, does AMD even make mobile quad core CPU's? I though their Phenom quad cores were currently only for desktops.
Score: 0
|Sorry, dual core Turion64x2 not quad core. I'm turning into dingo over here.
Score: 0
|TBH, I reckon that's actually pretty cool. And I *really* don't like Dell. Dell AU is just a nasty piece of work.
Score: 0
|Turd polish.
Score: 0
|I like shiny turds.
Except Vista.
Score: 0
|"I like shiny turds."
Then I guess you'll love the Golden Stool ... (The one that is "made of gold" and "so sacred that no one has ever sat on it")
Take a look: http://di ckinsg.intrasun.tcnj.edu/diaspora/part1/pwrpnt/Asante/sld002.htm
(Space between the "i" and the "c" added to avoid BN's "censorship", but the website exists and is legitimate, remove the space to visit it)
Score: 0
|Surely the pictures will need to be pretty large and at a high pixels per inch for this to look reasonable?
There's not going to be a lot of people that realise this or know how to do it.
Score: 0
|Nice. I don't like Dell much, but this is something new at least :)
Score: 0
|