posted Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:21:01 +1200 by Jed
tagged The Nerdery Nexus Magazine
Let's start this week off with a little quiz. When buying an expensive piece of electronics with your freshly borrowed "course related costs", do you expect to find;
- An Apple-inspired design
- Blatant branding to remind you it's not made by Apple
- Blue LEDs, which indicate that it's obviously high-tech
If you answered C, you deserve a slap, as you're the reason why myself and many others like me (i'll explain) are either;
- Voiding warranties by opening up things and replacing the LEDs with a more sensible colour
- Putting electrical tape over all the blue LEDs
So, for those who don't quite get my rampage, let me explain something. Blue light has a short wavelength, which makes it really hard for your eye to focus on. So, for an ambient light, like the type which alerts me to know my speakers are on, blue light is really bad in terms of overall interface design. It's irritating to the eye. There's a reason why you don't normally see blue lights in car dashboards; it's dangerous, especially for night driving. And yet, over the last few years, consumers have come to expect lots of blue LEDs in their products, because it looks cool.
If done correctly, there's nothing wrong with using colour lights. But please, why do you think it's necessary to shine blue light in my eyes when I'm just trying to listen to music? Not to mention, not only does it look "high-tech" to consumers, but marketers have also decided that it sounds high-tech as well. BlueTooth headset anyone? Maybe a Blu-Ray player? When will the madness end!
But, then again, most of the tech world is crap, and if it wasn't for the sea of crap we wouldn't have the shining stars. So really, what can one really expect from our generation?
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I don't go for devices that have blue LEDs, but if they are visually appealing. If anything, I like the recent trend of having no lights at all when the device is on. My Freeview|HD box and Samsung TV both have little red LEDs (both rather dim, which is nice), and they turn off when they are ON. It confused my previous, non-tech savvie, flatmates who thought that because the LED was on it was on and they were confused as to why they couldn't use it.
Then I have my Z-5500's. A little orange light when they are off, but, BLUE when they are on, even the LCD screen has a blue tint about it. I find it annoyingly bright, which isn't helpful when I watch movies in darkened rooms!
What made me comment on this is my hunt for a larger, widescreen, LCD monitor and I see a Samsung 22" which makes it a feature that it has a blue LED. Ironically... "Gentle edges and softer contours make it easy on the eyes in more ways than one. The translucent blue LED power button adds a refined finish to the smooth, sleek shell."