I am a rational guy. I consider things objectively and hopefully take the time to weigh things on their relative merit.
But bring in a big honkin’ faux stainless steel PC case with glowing lights and black venting and I’m all a shudder.
You could almost hear the screams of petrified laptops and notebooks everywhere scurrying for cover when my co-worker unboxed his new Dell XPS 710 desktop.
I haven’t seen a pc-case so tall and massive since we got rid of our 486 towers from 10 years back. It’s so ominous and evil-looking that it’s a crying shame that it’ll be tucked under a desk. You want this baby out in the open - just to intimidate people.
To add insult to injury, he also got a 24” Dell LCD monitor to go along with it. Cripes it’s nice. Now I squint at my 19” LCD as if it were a postage stamp.
Such is the pissing match that goes on in a small office full of pseudo tech guys.
It almost feels like the equivalent of a 16 cylinder Bugatti in a room full of Honda Accords. And don’t get me wrong, I know that in another 2 years it will be strictly middle of the road. There will be faster laptops sold at Staples for 500 bucks, but damn is it nice. 
And as garish as front panel lights, ominous black grillage and faux stainless steel might be, they’ve actually done something smart which I haven’t seen before (although this might not be a first..): they put white LED lights on the *back* panel shining down on to the peripheral ports. So when you’re hunting around under desk to plug something in, you can actually see what you’re doing - although the power must be running to do so.
It’s a crying shame that XP (64bit) will be put on this machine. I’d love to smuggle it home and Ubuntify it. But I’d likely need a pickup…
