The Beige Box Fades to Black (2002)
Warning, big, bitter rant.  Given the OP, it&#x27;s long past time for this rant:<p>I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise black desktop PC cases.  I prefer beige, white, bare metal, or nearly anything else.<p>I need to assemble a new desktop PC from parts, and if I have to get a black case, then I will paint it white or beige, remove the black paint and paint it beige or white, or some such.  For the paint quality, I don&#x27;t care:  I&#x27;ll put up with blobs of paint, runs, drips, a really bad paint job, maybe some dead insects stuck in the paint, etc., ANYTHING but black.  I don&#x27;t much care what the thing looks like, except I don&#x27;t want black.<p>Black is about the worst possible color for a desktop PC case.<p>Why?  Style, fashion, emotion?  Nope.  Instead, rock solid, crucial functionality, practicality, and utility.<p>For the needed equipment for my business, in particular, my first server for my startup, any effort to emphasize style, etc. and ignore utility, etc. is really offensive, infuriating, dysfunctional, outrageous.<p>Makers of black desktop PC cases, shut up, sit down, and listen up:  Can I order a case totally unpainted?  I&#x27;ll pay extra for unpainted.  Will pay still more for beige or white.  For your black case, I HATE your product.<p>Why do I hate black PC cases?  Simple.  Dirt simple.  Really simple:  I have to build the PC and then maintain that PC.  To do that I need to be able to SEE the parts.  But with a black case, it&#x27;s just super tough to see the parts.  Being able to see  the parts is just CRUCIAL.  With a black PC, to work on it, commonly I will need 200-400 W of incandescent light, which heats up the work area and gets in the way of the work, just to SEE.  Then commonly I bump into one of the lights and break the filament of the bulb.  Bummer.<p>E.g., go to Web sites of companies that sell desktop PC cases and look at their pictures of their cases.  Sure, for the black cases, about all you can see are big, black blobs with essentially all details hidden.  Especially for the insides, when shopping, building, or maintaining, I need to see clearly.<p>Is any water torture severe enough punishment for the people painting desktop PC cases black?<p>Again, offer an option of a case with no paint at all.  Or, for the best option, sure, return to a beige case.<p>And, one more, for the industrial designers that try to make the cases look like something from <i>Star Wars</i>, with swoops, sweeps, other dramatic nonsense, to heck with it.  Instead, the case is a mechanical tool.  I no more want the emotional droppings of industrial designers on my desktop PC case -- any such is patronizing -- than I want them on my set of metric socket wrenches, a sledge hammer, a circle saw, etc.  Keep the artistic industrial designers far away from the desktop PC case I need for my next computer, a server for my startup.  Or just borrow case design themes from, say, Supermicro.<p>If I want art, then I&#x27;ll select my own, thank you.  For a PC case, I want just a tool, like a socket wrench, and not some wacko effort at style, fashion, or art.<p>For the bad art, I&#x27;ll upchuck but put up with it.  For black, I won&#x27;t put up with it, will shop (I have, for hours) for beige and otherwise, if I have to accept black, will remove the paint, repaint it, or paint over it.<p>This is a rant, but long needed to be said, too long, and especially needed now given the OP.<p>One more:  I don&#x27;t want my keyboard black either.  In year 2000, I ordered three beige keyboards from Gateway.  At this point, one of the three still works well, and for that I&#x27;ve had to use epoxy to repair the broken bearing for the wire <i>stabilizer</i> of the space bar.  Why keep the old beige keyboards?  Sure, easy:  I want to be able to see the keys; I do know <i>touch typing</i> but only for keys a-z ; for most of the rest, I have to look so want to be able to see.<p>&#x2F;rant