Right now, somewhat outside of work (basically, when I don’t need a tablet or the software I have installed on it) I use a 13″ ultraportable Acer Timeline laptop. The idea of having a low power consumption, exceptionally light yet powerful-enough-for-Photoshop laptop for the price of two netbooks is actually a really wonderful thing; kind of like having a MacBook Air for a third the price. But this post isn’t about the laptop itself. It’s about buying the laptop.

To be more precise, my laptop is an Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810TZ-4925. Every single one of those numbers is somehow important. If I wanted a 6415 I would need to pay a different price. The only difference, besides the model numbers, is that they come with slightly different processors, hard drives and memory and maybe some of them don’t have bluetooth. I’m not really sure. Some part of that model number governs the screen size as well. I’m not really sure which part it is because, frankly, I didn’t want to bother.

If someone who has two degrees in mathematics and a mild dose of OCD doesn’t want to make sense of patterns and numbers then I seriously doubt that your average consumer will.

It seems that Asian companies are all pretty guilty of this model number business. Lenovo offers nine different lines of laptops and netbooks, each with three to five different submodels. Acer boasts enough models to fill up my screen, and remember that each of those models have about 4 to 6 submodels. Toshiba and Asus were equally infuriating—even within one model line—during my laptop search. Dell is slightly less infuriating since it attaches names as opposed to numbers or, in the case of Lenovo, letters—and remember that these numbers and letters do not actually map in a reasonable way to function!—to the different laptop lines and first ask you if you’re a home or business user. Even with widescreen monitors it’s pretty much impossible to compare all the laptops within the scope a consumer may want from one company side to side.

Oh. Also. Don’t get me started on Oriental MP3 players and cameras. Once, in the electronic mecca of Hong Kong, I swore that I’ll never buy a Korean or Japanese or Chinese MP3 player since it was impossible to distinguish between all the models. Phones are equally absurd but at least phone companies in the US always tend to sell you some flagship models that you can easily choose from. I’m pretty sure that comparing forty different incomprehensible model numbers is a culturally acceptable thing to do across the Pacific but I think I’ve grown a little too impatient over the years to deal with things like this.

The thing about this whole experience is that it makes me miss buying Apple products. Not actually using Apple products, but the process of buying them. When you want an Apple laptop you go “I want the good white Macbook” and poof, there it is. It makes buying electronics actually rather easy as long as Apple makes that product and you want it. I’m pretty sure that it’s much easier to say “I want a black Macbook for Christmas” than to say “I want an Acer Aspire AS3810TZ-4925 for Christmas”. Of course, that clarity is part of the services provided by the Apple price tag. Given that I don’t mind the spelunking for a bargain I think I came out ahead. Of course, not everyone is like me.

The question then is why aren’t companies simplifying their product lines like Apple did? Dell is doing it and the result seems to be that every not-tech-savvy person I know who has a laptop either has a Macbook or a Dell Inspiron. (And every not-tech-savvy person I know who has a lot of money has a Macbook Pro or a Macbook Air.) The exception are students who bought their laptops in Asia. Like the student who showed our IT folks the first low cost ultraportable laptop they’ve seen: the Toshiba Satellite T135-S1307. One of the 13s stands for “13 inch screen”, and not-very-regrettably I have forgotten which one it is. If you want to know, you’ll have to do your own research.

Wing :: Dec.29.2009 :: Posts :: No Comments »