Checkout a photo - https://imgur.com/a/nWz95Ex
They're like $15 on Amazon and I honestly don't mind that people can see them since the laptop is going to be covered in stickers and won't be looking like something off the shelf anyway.'
Without giving it much thought you place people in a 'category' that only exists in your mind.
There are a million reasons why people put stickers on laptops. And also a million why people don't.
I guess it's best to keep an open mind and don't think you know why people sticker.
Well, let's not get carried away. There are a handful of reasons at best:
1) they feel the laptop is drab/empty and want to decorate it
2) they are fans of an artist/band and want to promote it
3) they want to broadcast the world the company they work for and/or their choice of frameworks and tools
4) they want to cover some scratch
And that's pretty much it
Some time ago a work colleague went on this rant about how stickers are dumb. Only to find a sticker on his laptop when he got back from lunch. He thought it was funny and it became a running joke for a while that everyone who went to a conference would add a sticker to his collection while he was not looking.
I put a layer of aluminium foil (held by double faced adhesive tape) because that's the thinnest completely opaque material I could come up with, and put a sticker on it because it was quite ugly otherwise.
At my previous company we all had stickers on the laptops that showed they were company property.
You could easily order any kind of sticker printed and put them on your computer, but that would be cheating. Back in the days when I interacted with the tech community in my city more, there was this assumption that any sticker you have is a proof that you've been somewhere, or hanged with some crowd.
(I sometimes miss times when I had a laptop. I have a collection of stickers with stories with nowhere to put.)
43) They want to cover up the manufacturers logo on principle
43.5) They want to cover up the brand logo because people keep asking what "yoga" has to do with a laptop.
46) They figure it's a good idea to look "patriotic" about their company (but unlike 3 their work laptop is basically never seen in public)
I just use it to mark my ownership and I like to see them as a visual marker of the times and places I had been to during the usage of that laptop.
There are many more reasons to put stickers on stuff.
Being a software dev has taken me around the world and given me many opportunities, those "stickers" are to remind me how lucky I am.
uh, honestly, i put a stick on my laptop just so i can tell it apart from the other macbooks in my office.
After all, we have seen both kinds in our workplaces and they sometimes have certain attributes?
Like those who do it are shills, easily influenced, sheeps, etc - and the ones who don't are completely immune to any branding/advertising/marketing, because of reasons (usually there's a sense of superiority bound to it).
Funny enough, this is just an illusion to them, because it doesn't matter what they think, they're still influenced by brands, by the simple fact that every single product/service is branded and signals something to someone, even if the signaling is "I don't buy into corporate brands". Because that's how humans work, with symbols and signals.
To make matters worst, it's when you think you're immune to such thing that you're most vulnerable. It's like you're a sitting duck.
The sooner you embrace we're influenced everyday, the sooner you'll be more aware of it and prepared for it.
Also, when you put your merit badges on your sash, they're placed in an orderly fashion, 3 per row. They aren't just slapped on there randomly, some partially covering others, oriented in different directions, etc. With stickers on laptops, they always just look like a big jumble.
If this company came up with merit badge-like stickers for all these technologies and had people place them on their laptops in even rows, oriented the same direction, then I would be for it. But the way I see people use stickers on laptops now, it just looks trashy.
> * Damage - There is a worry that some stickers may leave a horrible hard-to-remove residue, or maybe leave a discolouration to the aluminium.
To which may be added a third - your Mac gets sent off for repair, but repair nowadays means "we take the hard drive out and put it in another Mac because even we can't fix them"
I guess the takeaway is that if you document everything and complain loudly when something goes wrong you might actually get decent customer service.
Rrr... We must extinguish this lie! It is illegal in the US for companies to do this.
Even the SSD is soldered in now
3M 38983 General Purpose Adhesive Remover - 12 oz. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EBNTYK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_cU...
For contrast, "Goo Gone" is mostly naptha-like light petroleum distillate with small fractions of limonene and orange extract[2].
1. https://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?mwsId=SSSSSuUn_...
2. https://googone.com/mr_sds/data/2018-06-14%2013:44:51/GG_Ori...
edit: I misread xylene as toluene, whoops! It still isn't the most paint-friendly if you don't have a durable surface though.
I'm not averse to "chemicals" per se, but I like to minimize the number of different specialty liquids I have to find a place for in my house.
Having said that it works fine applied via a rag so you can avoid overspray issues.
(Tip: If you have a Swiss Army knife with the plastic toothpick, the flat point of that toothpick is a perfect tool for lifting a corner of a sticker.)
The one exception was when I realized I was using my late 2013 MacBook Pro in Windows more than in OS X. I thought it would be fun to turn it into a WinBook Pro, so I got a Windows 10 decal for it:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B014I1ICX8/
I lined it up just right so the machine lights up the Windows logo as if it had always been there.
I guess this wouldn't work so good on the new MacBooks...
I ask because I have a suspicion that CA law bans them. Either that, or our culture is so anti-dealer-decal that none dare try to add them. (Every decal I've ever seen has been from out of state)
This I think people have less of a problem with, as your stickers add a bit of personality.
The guys with GitHub, redis and a chrome logo however...
I generally don't get a tech related sticker either. Instead I buy a sticker of an animal or something. Of my current laptops, one has an owl, one has a cat, and one has a flying fish.
https: //www.dnalounge.com/store/stickers.html
For some reason I just don't see the value in covering it with stickers.
Although I did put two stickers on the laptop I'm using at a client's office. Maybe they'll help draw some attention to our team and product, and inform people which department I'm working for.
We usually just drop our macbooks somewhere if we attend an event, or a meeting, or go for lunch in our building.
Not having stickers (or any other unique feature) makes it very difficult to find your computer.
Overall, I like to do it because I've done it since my high school folders. I used to tape magazine clippings all over it and even made a small amount of money doing it for others at my school.
On my current machine I have a Rick, the Micropython logo and a sticker from my Moped gang.
Stickers of companies are not the only ones existing.
I’m with you on advertising - not interested.
Kids sticker my daughters put there, cartoon like power rangers(some new one but same concept) Trail running club that I ran some races with Some star wars sticker Friends startup company Postgress meetup(cool design) Few coworking spaces I been to Muai Thai stadium in Bangkok Couple conference stickers(swift and ml) Running sandals that I like Couple ski resort stickers that I bought for my kids and they put it on my laptop Climbing festival Canadian Alpine club
Only one that is company advertisement for free is Mammut outdoor brand. I really like their branding for whatever reason, so I have few of their things
I feel the same way. I also stopped using T-shirts with stuff related to companies, technology and any kind of pop culture for the same reason.
And, aesthetically I find the clean laptop more elegant.
Commercial products to me seem similar to wearing brand names.
So you won't advertise for free, but you'll pay the company to advertise for them?
That could mean yours, or your rival's; I leave that part of the decision to you.
What if I'm covering up the free advertising built into the machine? I like how my triforce sticker looks a lot more than the dell logo it replaced.
This is what I do. My current MacBook has a single unbranded sticker of a hop (from Double Mountain Brewery) to cover up the Apple Logo.
What's the point? Everyone already agrees with you. You're just patting yourself on the back for thinking correctly, like the 99% of others.
Totally unrelated: I feel the same about tattoos.
I saw the same thing. If I am going to be decorated like a NASCAR driver, I would much rather paid for that.
If OP is in this thread, check out 3M 1080 (or newer) series. It is used on cars, designed to not bubble or leave residue, and comes in clear.
Example: https://cl.ly/f5e28bc2db85
- orange peel refers to any paint layer, not just clearcoat. (almost all, if not all, cars today are shot with at least 2 stage, but older and maybe some cars may be a single paint coat, where orange peel can still be exhibited).
- it's not from spraying it improperly, which can be a cause, but more typically that the spraying conditions (from paint mix to atmospheric conditions, even inside a booth) aren't "ideal". most new cars are robot sprayed with perfect spray control, and almost all new cars exhibit a small degree of orange peel.
even ferraris have orange peel from the factory. this is why high dollar detailers do a "paint correction" as part of their work, even on a brand new car.
https://imgur.com/gallery/TTlSdKK
Grab some magnet sheets, place sticker, and cut out. Makes them a bit more durable in that you can move them around, rather than only being able to stick once.
I was looking at the skins sold on eBay, and wondering whether they'd mar the coating. The old coatings hold up very nicely for over a decade, and I don't want the skin to react with the coating, nor to later leave behind an adhesive that can't be removed without ruining the coating.
I'm also wondering whether the skins could be transplanted, like if one laptop breaks in a hard-to-repair way, so you move your SSD and skin full of decals to the replacement laptop.
(I have an unapplied backlog of nerdy decals, to make the perfect social nerd cafe laptop out of a spare Coreboot X200. So long as being social doesn't mar the coating, because priorities.)
Even for the “bad” ones that leave residue there are plenty of products for this purpose that won’t damage the metal.
I got an Incase one from the Apple Store:
https://www.apple.com/shop/mac/mac-accessories/cases-protect...
https://www.incase.com/devices/macbook/mackbook-pro-2016-wit...
https://www.bestskinsever.com/macbook-pro-15-inch-with-touch...
The framed set of stickers at the bottom is kinda what I have in mind.
leather and wood: https://www.rvinyl.com/Laptop-Wraps
Various skins, already tailored for specific models:
https://mightyskins.com/pages/laptop
And you can even create your own design:
https://mightyskins.com/collections/custom-laptop
Another one (Macbook):
https://dassidecal.com/collections/macbook-skins-cases
And yet another one:
Some keywords cones to mind based on my own feelings;
- software tribalism and identity signaling to peers. like a mini resumé.
- idealism and dreaming, the cool stuff I wish I was using (Who sticks a .NET logo there, right?)
- added uniqueness, my laptop is mine, my special tool, it is set up as an extention of my unique set of skills
From my impression and experience, it‘s like saying „I am root. This is MY device“ more than anything else. So I‘d say your last point applies in most cases. Although Salesforce-people seem to have a special relationship with their stickers [2]. They have tons of them, but usually none from other companies. They seem to be achievment-badges.
I can spot mine easily at a distance, and it's very unlikely that someone else will have theirs marked similarly. Useful in situations like security lines at airports (Please step to the side sir, while we pat you down and someone nicks your laptop from the baggage scanner), or even in an office where everyone has the same laptop.
But yeah, mostly what you mention.
Small remark, I've been rocking stickers on my macbook for years now and have "clean" periods in between, you can take stickers off the aluminum without any issue, and the few times I've had residue left it's easy to take it off with some alcohol or iso. After this it's 100% clean and you can't see there have been stickers on it, it's no issue at all
This "special" car vinyl with the air channels is 3M's Controltac product. You can find many sellers on eBay/AliExpress [1] or the myriad of other Chinese web stores offering this product.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/Surface-3M-Skin-Decal-Sticker-Cover...
Not too optimistic about getting them off undamaged, seeing as they've been caked into the ThinkPad plastic for a couple years, and some have even took some scratches and tears...
his only covers the top. i have top, bottom, keyboard surround, and trackpad covered.
i'm most ambivalent about the trackpad. the silky smooth texture of a naked pad is amazing. but i really hate how it picks up rub marks after a relatively short period.
I wanted to downsize my laptop recently and found that the places to sell hard to find amounts offered ...not worth it.
One thing I found amusing is that they sell whole packs of "laptop stickers" on Amazon. I just sort of assumed they were like travel stickers you gather over time but.... I guess not.
Apple gear resells really well, in Palo Alto I usually get 60-70% of the cost on resale. In some instances this makes it worth it to buy new gear every year (particularly with phones) to maximize the resale value and keep new hardware.
When I lived in Buffalo I couldn't sell anything.
Then I ordered a custom full-size sticker for my new macbook that has all the stickers of my old macbook. Then I kept stickering on top. Final result: https://photos.app.goo.gl/VQ75mPshvzs6ubf87
I am very happy with it, even though it doesn't look half as nice as what this person did. The combination of old and new stickers on the laptop is fun, and the whole thing took me 30 minutes to do.
If it was just used for the top case, I think it should be fine. Mine has yellowed, but was autographed by my favourite author. :)
Has anyone done anything really cool with automotive wraps and laptops? Not necessarily on Apple products but on PCs that don't have a tough aluminium shell?
(mostly) SFW google image search.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%E7%97%9B%E3%83%8E%E3%83%BC%...
Honestly, the compulsion to accuse others of narcissism for something as harmless as putting stickers on their personal property screams "LOOK AT ME, I'M SPECIAL" much more.
This was part of a long-running joke about my joining the Dark Side (I work for Microsoft), and was all the individuality my laptop really needed.
My last work MacBook had the same sigil stuck under the Apple logo (back when it was lit) and a couple of other stickers on the underside as well, just so I could single it out, but I never really went for glueing lots of stickers to my machines, and these days I carry a Surface Pro (which folds at the back) or a Surface Laptop (which I like for its clean looks), so stickers are mostly out (I make do with a big high-res Stormtrooper close-up photo on my login screens, which are usually the first thing people see when I set up for a presentation :))
I like the idea, though, and wonder if I will end up combining it with a large decal of some kind. Printing a partially opaque monochrome image on that big a Surface (pun not intended) is... interesting.
That said, I use a case and have no stickers. Everyone else I see has tons of stickers on their MacBooks, though nobody seems to put stickers on their Windows laptops.
I would love to know how they cut it so clean so I can attempt to make one for the XPS 13.
Or https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.627087627.9542/sss,small,wid...
The ones that really get me are the ones that use MS Office all day. Wrong computer for the job.
You could probably get them all at the same conference for free
If you try to size it perfectly, you'll get lifting eventually.
