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AMD Hates Laptop Stickers As Much As You Do 597

pickens writes "David Pogue writes in the NY Times that when you buy a new Windows PC, it comes festooned with stickers on the palm rests: one for Windows, one for Skype, one for Intel, one for the laptop company, maybe an Energy Star sticker and so on. 'It's like buying a new, luxury car — and discovering that it comes with non-removable bumper stickers that promote the motor oil, the floor mat maker, the windshield-fluid company and the pine tree air freshener you have no intention of ever using,' writes Pogue. But the worst thing is that when you peel them off, they shred, leaving adhesive crud behind. 'When you've just spent big bucks on a laptop, should you really be obligated to spend the first 20 minutes trying to dissolve away the sticker goop with WD40?' But AMD has a solution. Starting next year, AMD will switch to new stickers that peel off easily, leaving no residue; after that, it's considering eliminating the sticker program altogether."
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AMD Hates Laptop Stickers As Much As You Do

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  • AMD? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ltap ( 1572175 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @02:45PM (#33455046) Homepage
    It makes sense, but aren't the ones who add the stickers the manufacturers? Also, I assumed the stickers were there by the request of the component manufacturers, how can they be so easily "eliminated"?
  • by Pojut ( 1027544 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @02:45PM (#33455050) Homepage

    Never mind the fact that AMD will be the source of confusion for "normal" folks in the not-too-distant future [anandtech.com]. Yay for having Intel and AMD stickers on the same system!

    Note: yes, I'm aware that most nerds won't be affected by this...but it will certainly confuse some normal folk, I guarantee it.

  • by Chemicles ( 771024 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @02:54PM (#33455244)

    Agreed. The reason WD40, baby oil, and rubbing alcohol all work great (as opposed to water) is because they are much more non-polar than water and dissolve the adhesives and other goop from the stickers much more easily. Anyone remember "like dissolves like" from general chemistry?

    Rubbing alcohol is my preferred goop cleaner because, as the parent says, it's cheap and lasts for years.

  • by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @02:55PM (#33455254) Homepage Journal

    Unless you have a laptop with a lacquered finish where the rubbing alcohol will affect the lacquer, which will either lose its lustre, or start peeling off three months down the road due to your alcohol abuse today.

    IME, the best thing to use to remove residual glue is the sticker itself. Press it back on, lift, repeat until all the glue is gone.

  • Re:WD40 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:00PM (#33455348) Journal

    Jojoba oil. Expensive, but a little dab 'l do ya. Also, natural, sustainable and sometimes "organic". Most retail jojoba is "cosmetic grade" so it shouldn't bother your skin either. In fact, it's chemicly similar to the oils that come out of your skin anyway.

    I haven't actually tried it on laptop stickers; but it does an excellent job of emulsifying the fat/charcoal combination you get from your gril. It also lubed a sticky pantry door latch for at least a year now, with just one drop. It would be brilliant if the people who make electric razors would put a small tube of jojoba in the package instead of that nasty mineral stuff that has toxic warnings on it. You can *drink* jojoba and they say it'll give you the runs like Olestra chips; but it's generally non-toxic.

  • by IICV ( 652597 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:03PM (#33455394)

    And if you put it in a spray bottle (99 cents) and mix it with a lighter (another 99 cents) you've got hours and hours of entertainment! The fire is relatively low-temperature, so you can do stupid shit like put some on your hand and light it. Burns really cleanly too, so it doesn't set off most fire alarms.

    And if you put some rubbing alcohol into one of those 5 gallon drums, shake it up to disperse the stuff well, then drop a match into the throat you'll get a pretty awesome gout of flame. Just, you know, make sure you're not aiming it at anything you care about.

    Basically, pyromania knows no bounds with rubbing alcohol.

  • by men0s ( 1413347 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:13PM (#33455542)
    After putting together my last full tower, I ended up having various stickers from all the components I bought (power supply, CPU, RAM, motherboard, and even the CPU cooler). Since I'm a bit of a pack-rat, and tend to not like throwing things out, I decided I wanted to put them somewhere on my nice and clean brushed aluminum case. Turns out the full tower had one of those front panels that swings open to reveal the air intake and drive bays, so I decided to place all the stickers on the inside of that. It'll be nice to keep adding more stickers as I keep the case and upgrade/refresh the components.
  • Re:WD40 (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:18PM (#33455638)
    I frequently use near-anhydrous acetone (the 99% kind) to clean glass as well as a bunch of other stuff. Any advice on how not to blow myself up? It has always seemed fairly stable to me.
  • by meerling ( 1487879 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:25PM (#33455734)
    It's not like the technology hasn't been around and in use for the past couple decades or anything...
  • Re:WD40 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maxwells_deamon ( 221474 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:50PM (#33456154) Homepage

    Peanut butter is the best stuff for removing sticky. The mix of polar and dipolar in a thick paste will cut everything in a mild way. Then sponge off with soapy water.

    Really, it works

  • Re:WD40 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pspahn ( 1175617 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @03:50PM (#33456158)

    When I lived in Tahoe, we would go up to Boreal Ski Area in the late afternoon and ask the people leaving for their tickets. Crank the heater up in the truck and put the ticket+wicket over the heat for a few minutes and you could peel it right off and stick it on a new wicket and ride for free when the mountain was open at night.

    I'm sure that by now they use those perforated tickets, so probably not feasible anymore. Good times while they lasted.

  • by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @04:04PM (#33456414) Homepage Journal

    What the hell are you talking about Mr Mac-Hating Fanboy?

    I switched to Mac in 2001 because I could run the entire LAMP stack without emulation or dual-booting and access it from a commandline and whatever GUI tools while being able to run apps like Creative Suite that were a 100% requirement. That's something you can't do on either Linux or Windows. And that's what I paid for. Nice looks, good UI and lightweight form-factor are all just icing on the cake.

    So maybe your needs aren't as intensive as mine, but when it comes to a professional solution for software architects and web developers, OS X is the best platform out there hands down.

    FYI, Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP on a Next, which is essentially the precursor to OS X.
    So in a way, you owe those shiny apples your ability to post your bullshit drivel on this site to begin with.

  • by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Thursday September 02, 2010 @04:45PM (#33456954)

    We're just as a part of nature as bees and lemon trees, so why is stuff we made suddenly unnatural?

    Mainly because our minds can invent new things faster than our bodies can adapt to them, thus something invented by us is more likely to cause serious trouble for our metabolism than something that bees or trees invented millions of years ago.

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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