New Optiplex towers go for Mac Pro look

Frankly, Dell's design strategy is just full of holes.

new Dell Optiplex systems... [Gizmodo]

[#1 posted by Gary61 , October 28, 2008 1:33 PM]

Wow - I can't believe that (2 of the 3)of these new Dell state-of-the-art computers ....
HAVE FLOPPY DRIVES!

[#2 posted by therevengor , October 28, 2008 1:36 PM]

I'll keep saying it -

brushed aluminum is to '00s as faux wood panel is to '70s.

lets turn the corner!

[#3 posted by OM , October 28, 2008 1:52 PM]

...Some marketing goon made the decision about this design, so don't blame the engineers. Just more proof that marketers and mid-level mismanagers have ruined Dell.

[#4 posted by TJ S , October 28, 2008 2:54 PM]

Wait, really? Floppy drives?

[#5 posted by Garr , October 28, 2008 2:59 PM]

Why is it that tech- and design people always feel obliged to compare everything to apple products?
It's like belittleing (be-little-ing) every new rock song because "that sound's been around since the 70's".
The way you apple fanboys ― sorry, but frankly this is what posts like this make you sound like ― sound so sure of yourselves, one would be lead to think that you've enough confidence to just be wisely silent about the issue, yet instead all you manage is a desperate- and forced-sounding comparison-thing all the time.

[#6 posted by Rob Beschizza , October 28, 2008 3:15 PM]

It did not strike Garr that the comparison's inference is that both the Dell and the Mac Pro are ugly. Fanboy accusations are the fanboy's prerogative.

My original inclination was to compare this to the design of a Philips voice recorder from the mid 1980s my dad gave me, or one of Lian Li's PC enclosures. But such things don't create an image in anyone's head, they just boast one's familiarity with arcanum.

[#7 posted by paradesign , October 28, 2008 3:38 PM]

Looks more like something Richard Sapper would do for IBM than Apple. Perforated metal ≠ Apple.

It is nice to see the average quality of design rising among consumer products, and perhaps we can 'blame' Apple for that.

[#8 posted by Jarvik7 , October 28, 2008 4:18 PM]

It looks like someone attacked a MacPro with a hacksaw, a 90s era desktop PC, and some glue.

[#9 posted by Rampant , October 28, 2008 4:26 PM]

They might have floppy disk drives to allow for properly 'downgrading' from Vista to XP, when the problem in changing OS occurs that requires a floppy disk, which has to be dealt with by an altered cd, which Microsoft would obviously not want you to do: however, since Microsoft would never want people 'downgrading' anyway, this is pretty unlikely!

[#10 posted by andyduncan , October 28, 2008 4:34 PM]

How am I supposed to copy files between floppies without a second floppy drive? This is bullshit.

[#11 posted by Garr , October 28, 2008 4:53 PM]

Rob, that's a matter of taste. I find neither ugly.

And just the way your description did not imply any inference at all, so didn't my post specify any explicit example, but rather elaborated on a more general issue.

But you're right in a way: any mention of the term "fanboy" is sure to elicit some kind of odd remark, or in the least a misunderstanding on the receiving part (which is why I slipped an apology right in to the beginning of that paragraph) :)

[#12 posted by nehpetsE , October 28, 2008 4:53 PM]

If you will all excuse me, i will now go down to the basement and spend the next three days critiquing the choice of gray enameled steel for the circuitbreaker boxes.
And why oh why they have to look so boxxy?

[#13 posted by Rob Beschizza , October 28, 2008 5:00 PM]

AMIGA FOREVER

[#14 posted by Rob Beschizza , October 28, 2008 5:01 PM]

Nehpetse, Grayfox makes the most attractive circuit breaker boxes. Settle for nothing less.

AMIGA FOREVER.

[#15 posted by spazzm , October 28, 2008 5:22 PM]

Looks nice enough to me.

But maybe that's because I care about other things more than looks in my pc boxes, such as:
Are they noisy?
Do they offer plenty of accessible connectors?
How easy are they to upgrade?

And if they are going for any 'look', it's the look of the Sun Fire series. Note the absence of handles.

[#16 posted by hep cat , October 28, 2008 8:09 PM]

Looks sorta like a Dynaco ST-70 amp to me.

http://www.tuberadios.com/dynaco/Dynaco2a.jpg

,or maybe a Wollensak T-1500 Reel To Reel. I like it

[#17 posted by chrisdodds , October 28, 2008 8:12 PM]

I'll second the Sun Fire comment. Although there's quite a bit of IBM AS400 in there too.

[#18 posted by Anonymous , October 28, 2008 9:11 PM]

Dell used to make ugly computers, but in recent years they have indeed stepped up on their design quite a bit - especially since they had let go their ugly sphere logo to be placed at dead center of everything.

I think people think it is ugly because it's a Dell, and think it is pretty because it's an Apple. This is called discrimination, a flaw or simply laziness in critical thinking in human brain for ages, like how the Midwest are all farmers or how Africans all dance naked.

I'm sure that if someone erases the Dell logo and replaces it with an Apple logo and posted on Engadget as some blurry pic, people will scream how pretty it is.

[#19 posted by icky2000 , October 29, 2008 1:37 AM]

The presence of the floppy drives is interesting. I notice that none of the PCs on Dell's site intended for home use include floppy drives in the marketing pictures. Still, if you go to Dell's site and click to order one of these business PCs, the default is always to not include a floppy drive. I suspect the floppies appearance in these pictures is simply because the folks taking the pictures thought filling that extra front slot looked better than not. Home PC pictures have a second optical drive in there but that isn't a common configuration for work computers. Even if the floppy drive plays a role in downgrading the OS as was mentioned above, I doubt many companies use that - most work PCs are imaged over the network.

[#20 posted by remmelt , October 29, 2008 6:27 AM]

New Optiplex towers go for Mac Pro look, fail.

[#21 posted by dculberson , October 29, 2008 7:31 AM]

It's not that unusual to see a floppy drive in a modern server.

[#22 posted by urshrew , October 29, 2008 8:30 AM]

Hideous. Absolutely Hideous.

[#23 posted by Anonymous , October 29, 2008 9:05 AM]

Don't copy that floppy!

[#24 posted by Anonymous , October 29, 2008 10:42 PM]

I'd gut the black partsand cram in a mac mini.

[#25 posted by jaakennuste , October 29, 2008 10:53 PM]

for me they are like Olivetti M24 computers from 1989-99 or so. Finding resemblence with Apple is far fetched.

Jack, http://seoapplied.blogspot.com/

[#26 posted by Anonymous , November 7, 2008 7:24 AM]

I think that these machine look like the older SUN Ultra machines. I actually really like it - looks like it has a purpose. I am sick of all the swoopy, curved, rounded designs of late. There is something refreshing about an industrial looking business PC.

Thats just my opinion.

-Jason