This week I appeared on James Bilsbrough’s podcast, Crossed Wires. He’s a great host and we had a fantastic time talking about old Macs, the desktop publishing and prepress industry, and how Americans and Britons can connect over their shared love of old computers.
Head on over to the Crossed Wires website to give it a listen! Or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, et cetera.
Here in Userlandia, I think I’m a clone now.
Welcome back to Computers of Significant History, an analysis of the history of computing in terms of how it affected the life of one writer/podcaster. In previous episodes, we looked at two pivotal computers from 1983, when I was a baby. Now let's jump forward to 1993, when I was in grade school. The unpredictable and chaotic market for personal computers had settled into a respectable groove. IBM compatibles were number one in home and business computers, with the Macintosh plodding slowly behind them. High powered RISC workstations from Sun, Silicon Graphics, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard had completely overtaken the high end of the market. Commodore was in a death spiral, and Atari had already crashed and burned. Acorn hadn't dropped out of the desktop market just yet, but was finding more success in licensing their ARM architecture for portable devices. Other companies had switched to making their own IBM PC clones… if they hadn't given up on computers entirely. If you wanted to replace your aging Eighties machine, you could get an IBM compatible, or you could get a Mac, or you could sit back and not complain because there were starving children in other countries who didn't have any computers at all.
Jack Welch, recurring guest on the hit TV show 30 Rock. Boo this man.
Attribution: Hamilton83, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
As I mentioned a few episodes back, my family kept a Commodore 64 as our primary computer until nineteen ninety-seven. Actually replacing the old Commodore was difficult from a financial standpoint despite its growing obsolescence. True, that old C64 was becoming more obsolete every day, but two thousand dollars—in early nineties money—was a tough ask for a working-class family like mine, because General Electric CEO and cartoonish supervillain Jack Welch was busy destroying tens of thousands of lives in his ruthless quest for efficiency and profit. Not that I'm bitter. Jack started his professional life in my hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, but fond nostalgia didn't stop him from lopping off various parts of the city's industrial apparatus and selling them to the highest bidder. First to go was GE’s electric transformer factory, which was raided, closed, and left to rot. Next in line was the defense business, sold to Martin Marietta for three billion dollars. Only GE's plastics division—which, by pure coincidence, is where Welch got his start—was spared. My father was one of thousands laid off from their well-paying blue collar industrial jobs at "the GE.” My dad joined GE straight out of high school, and 25 years later it was all he knew. He had to scrounge for work, and my mom had to start a career too. My oldest brother was a freshman in college, and tuition was priority number one. Big-ticket items like a new computer were way down the list.
A PS/2 Model 30/286. My own photo, but not my own machine.
When mom and dad can’t open their wallets, enterprising teens look for alternatives. Sometime in the spring of 1997 I rescued an IBM PS/2 Model 30/286 from my middle school’s e-waste pile. My tech teacher discreetly permitted this misappropriation of school property, telling me it was better that I took it than it wind up on the scrap pile. With two whole megabytes of RAM and a whopping great 10MHz 286, that machine could run Windows 3.1… technically. And, technically, you can still listen to music on a hand-cranked gramophone. Running MS-DOS in 1997 wasn’t much of an improvement over the C64 status quo, but there was one thing I could do with the PS/2 that I couldn’t with the Commodore: I could dial into bulletin boards. But those tales are best saved for another day, and perhaps another episode.
The PS/2 and the C64 were uneasy roommates until October 1997, when my uncle made a surprise visit. In the back of his Ford Taurus was none other than his Compaq ProLinea 4/33 with Super VGA monitor and Panasonic color dot matrix printer. He had recently bought a shiny new Pentium II minitower, you see, and the Compaq needed a new home. I was thrilled—I finally had a computer that could run modern software! I didn’t have to stay late after school anymore to write papers in a real word processor. More importantly, the internal 28.8K modem was twelve times faster than the 2400 bits per second slowpoke I’d been using over the summer. I handed the Commodore and PS/2 their eviction notices and installed the Compaq in its rightful spot on the downstairs computer desk.
Next up was a thorough inspection of this new-to-me PC. The ProLinea's exterior was… well, it was an exterior. While Compaq had their own stable of design cues, they’re all in service of maintaining the PC status quo. Sure, there are horizontal air vents and an integrated floppy drive, but Compaq’s desktops don’t stand out from the crowd of Dell, Gateway, and AST. Say what you will about IBM, but at least they have a distinct sense of industrial design. You’re more likely to notice the ProLinea’s height, or lack thereof—it was significantly thinner than the average PC clone. An embossed 4/33 case badge proudly announced an Intel 33MHz 486DX inside, but there’s more to a computer than the CPU. How much RAM and hard drive space did it have? What about its graphics and sound capabilities? None of that can be gleaned from the exterior, and the only way to know was to crack open the case.
The ProLinea’s exterior. A well-worn example seen on RecycledGoods.com.
If you're like me—and, let's face it, if you're reading this you probably are—then you would have done what I did: after a few days of using my new computer, I opened it up to see what was inside. Undoing three screws and sliding the cover off was all it took to gain entry. Compaq utilized several tricks to minimize exterior footprint and maximize internal volume. Floppy drives were stacked on top of each other, the power supply occupied the space behind them, and the hard drive stole space above the motherboard. Beside the hard drive is a riser card, which shaved height off the case by changing the orientation of the expansion slots. Three standard 16 bit ISA slots lived on side A of the riser, and one decidedly non-standard half-height ISA slot for Compaq’s proprietary modems lived on side B. One of the full-height slots was populated with a US Robotics 28.8K modem, which was decent for the time. Four SIMMs of 4MB each lived in four slots for a total of 16 megs of memory. A 240MB Quantum hard drive left the PS/2’s 20 meg drive in the dust.
The slots and ports on the ProLinea.
These were sensible specifications for the affordable 486’s golden age of 1992 or ‘93. Aside from a faster CPU, most 486-based computers had two major advancements over their 386 predecessors: an external SRAM cache and VESA local bus graphics. Unfortunately, there’s no level 2 cache in the ProLinea, which puts a bit of a damper on the 486’s performance. Was this lowering the barrier of entry, or artificial segmentation to push people towards a pricier mid-range Deskpro/I? You decide. At least Compaq included local bus graphics by integrating a Tseng Labs ET4000/W32 graphics chip and 1MB of dedicated graphics memory to the motherboard. Windows performance was more important than ever in 1993, and the W32 variant included Windows graphics acceleration without sacrificing performance in DOS. A lack of cache hurts Excel, but a wimpy graphics processor hurts every application.
But at the time I got this computer, none of that mattered. Cache or no cache, a 33MHz 486 couldn’t hang with a 233MHz Pentium II. Still, it was rare for most PCs to live through the 90s without getting upgrades to extend their lives, and my ProLinea was no exception. I was constantly tinkering with it from the day my uncle gave it to me until its retirement in 2002. After surveying what I had, I prioritized two specific upgrades: a sound card and a CD-ROM drive. Compaq didn’t include any onboard sound in the ProLinea except for the buzzy internal PC speaker. Since the hand-cranked gramophones weren't compatible, you had two choices for better sound: buy an optional sound card or spend even more money on a Deskpro/I with integrated sound I’m sure Compaq would have preferred the latter.
As a broke teenager, my goal was to get some form of sound card and CD-ROM drive without spending a lot of money. In those days, eBay was still just a startup—I’d never heard of it—so that meant a trip to our local used computer store: ReCompute. Located on First Street in beautiful downtown Pittsfield, ReCompute bought and sold all kinds of old computers and parts. The clerk recommended a double-speed Creative Labs CD-ROM drive which connected to—you guessed it—a Creative Labs SoundBlaster. Sound cards back in the day often had ports to connect a CD-ROM drive and companies like Creative sold “multimedia upgrade kits” combining a sound card, CD-ROM, cheap speakers, and software. Sometimes you'd get lucky and get a nice Encyclopedia and a copy of Sam & Max Hit the Road, other times it'd just be a clump of shovelware to inflate that dollars of value sticker.
Before ATAPI, installing a CD-ROM drive into a PC required either a SCSI adapter or a proprietary interface card. There were some sound cards that had cut-down SCSI controllers, but SCSI is overkill for attaching a single CD-ROM drive. If you're selling low-cost upgrade kits, though, every penny matters, so a costly SCSI controller doesn’t make much sense. Luckily, Creative had a margin-padding solution at the ready. Panasonic, the company actually building Creative-branded drives, had their own proprietary CD-ROM interface. It was cheaper than SCSI, used familiar 40 pin ATA cables, and took up minimal board space. Panasonic’s interface lacked SCSI's messy complexity like terminators, so it was simple to install too. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that Panasonic’s interface was compatible with ATA, even though they used the same cables. The downside to proprietary is that without a matching card—in this case, a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0—the drive might as well be a doorstop. I don’t remember the cost—it couldn’t have been much, honestly—but it was enough that I had to borrow a few dollars from one of my brothers to close the sale.
Then again, you get what you pay for—even if, to 15-year-old me, that was a major investment—and my wonderful bargain of a Creative Combo turned out to be on the unreliable side. It got exasperating, having to fix the speaker jack again and again and again and again. Fortunately, after a rather frustrating year audio-wise, I had both a new 16-bit ESS sound card with wavetable synthesis and a faster 24X ATAPI CD-ROM drive—thank you, birthday and Christmas presents. The 28.8K modem gave way to 56K, which eventually gave way to an ethernet card to connect to a cable modem. Yes, these were all very sensible upgrades, but they’re like adding suspension parts to a car: they’re helpful for handling, but they won’t give the car more power. The ProLinea needed more power, and this brings us to the most momentous upgrade of them all: a Kingston TurboChip.
Kingston’s Air Force ad for the TurboChip.
Based on a 133MHz AMD Am5x86, the TurboChip was a drop-in upgrade CPU that was four times faster than my 33MHz 486. Although it ran at 133MHz, its architecture is derived from a 486 so its level of performance is similar a 75MHz Pentium. At a cost of $100 in 1999, the TurboChip was considerably less money than a new computer. Even though upgrade processors are never as good as a new system, it still gave the ProLinea a much needed boost. A 33MHz 486 barely met the minimum requirements for Office 97 and Internet Explorer 4.0, let alone IE 5.0. The TurboChip breathed new life into the sputtering ProLinea, improving performance in those apps and opening doors to new ones. Somehow this computer managed to play a video of the South Park movie, which I'm sure I obtained legally even if I don't remember precisely how. Such a feat would've been impossible without the upgrades. Where the TurboChip wasn’t as helpful was in gaming. Even a speedy 486 couldn’t keep up with the superior floating point performance of a Pentium. Games like Quake were a choppy mess, but I wasn’t missing that much since I could, uh, borrow my brother’s PlayStation.
TigerDirect ad for another Am5x86-based accelerator. AMD sold these processors to companies like Evergreen, PNY, Kingston, and Trinity Works.
But no matter how many upgrades I stuffed into the ProLinea, time was catching up to the aging PC. No further CPU upgrades were available, and that proprietary motherboard layout with the riser card meant I couldn’t swap in a new board without impractical modifications. The hard drive was slow and cramped and the BIOS complained loudly about drives larger than 500MB. I couldn’t fight reality anymore—I needed a whole new computer. Millions of people across America were facing the same conundrum, and wouldn’t you know it, companies like Compaq were right there waiting to give them a hand. They ranked number one in marketshare from 1994 to 2000, and only disappeared from the chart after merging with HP. But they wouldn’t have achieved that market dominance without the ProLinea. How’d they manage that, anyway? Would you believe… boardroom backstabbing?
…Of course you would.
With years of hindsight, it’s easy to say that Compaq would dominate the PC clone world. After all, they started the fire by building the first commercially successful IBM compatible computer that could withstand legal challenges from Big Blue. But that’s the thing about cloning—once you’ve proven it can be done, someone’s going to copy your copy. Compaq handled competition the best way it could: by becoming a leader. Soon it was IBM against Compaq and the horde of cloners fighting for control of the Intel-based MS-DOS ecosystem. Compaq took the performance crown by shipping the first 80386 PC in 1986, showing that IBM was no longer in control of their own platform.
One reason Compaq beat IBM to the punch was that they were iterating on an already proven design. The Deskpro 386 didn’t have fancy new slots and it wasn’t inventing new video standards. IBM, on the other hand, was hard at work on what they believed would be the true next generation of PCs. Announced in April 1987—seven months after Compaq announced the Deskpro 386—IBM’s Personal System/2 was a declaration that Big Blue was still the leader in personal computing. The PS/2 wasn’t just a new PC AT—it was an actual next generation PC platform. It introduced standards that lasted for decades, like VGA graphics and their eponymous keyboard and mouse ports. With such a show of engineering force, IBM was sure that all of those copycat cloners would fall in behind the might of Big Blue. How else could they stay “IBM compatible?”
IBM’s grand plan for regaining control of the PC platform came in the form of Micro Channel Architecture. While Compaq beat IBM to shipping a 386 PC, they did so by using the same 16-bit AT bus—better known as ISA… or eye-sah… however it’s pronounced—found in every other PC clone. Of course, the Industry Standard Architecture wasn't industry standard because it was particularly good. It was industry standard because IBM's Boca Raton dev team decided to publish the specs for anyone to read and copy, royalty-free. The explosive popularity of IBM’s PC and PC AT combined with a royalty-free bus created a fertile field for all kinds of add-in cards. Its open nature also meant a cloner could include ISA slots on a motherboard. But ISA had its limits. With a maximum width of 16 bits and sensitive clock timing, ISA was too slow to take full advantage of the 386. Plus, Installing ISA cards required arcane rituals like setting jumpers or DIP switches to configure memory addresses and interrupt requests—and woe betide you if those settings were hard-wired.
Micro Channel Slots. Attribution: Appaloosa, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In 1986, shipping a machine with the ISA bus was a smart choice despite its limitations. 32-bit memory could be put on SIMMs or proprietary memory boards and avoid the worst of ISA’s speed penalties while keeping ISA slots free for peripheral cards. Even if a 32-bit bus was available, most peripherals of the era wouldn’t saturate it. For the time being, keeping compatibility with existing cards was the winning move for Compaq. But that wouldn’t always be true—ISA needed to be replaced some day. IBM decided that day was April 2, 1987—the PS/2’s launch—and the boys from Boca thought they had a winner. MCA slots had advanced features like plug-and-play software configuration, 32-bit bus width, and more megahertz for more throughput. But all these benefits came with a catch: MCA used a completely different connector than ISA, breaking compatibility with existing cards. That wouldn’t have been so bad if IBM had included an ISA slot or two in MCA PCs, but MCA was an all-or-nothing proposition. Software configuration required system-specific disks that you’d better not lose, unlike the literal plug-and-play found in NuBus on the Mac or Zorro on the Amiga. But the most aggravating thing of all was that IBM patented Micro Channel. After all, MCA took a lot of research and development, and that didn’t come for free. They thought everybody would line up to integrate this next-generation bus and wouldn’t mind paying for the privilege.
8-bit ISA, 16-bit ISA, and 32-bit EISA cards.
Attribution: Nightflyer, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
It wasn’t long before IBM’s grand plan collapsed under the weight of their hubris. Compaq and the other cloners weren’t willing to give IBM a chunk of money for every machine they built. Instead, Compaq led a group of eight other companies in designing their own 32-bit expansion slot called the Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture, or EISA. Or “Eee-sah.” Still not sure how that’s pronounced. Backwards compatible and royalty free, EISA meant that no one needed to license Micro Channel, and MCA slots never went mainstream. Then again, EISA never went mainstream either; it was mostly found in workstations and servers. Most PCs would have to wait until the arrival of PCI to finally kill ISA dead.
While Compaq was a market leader, they weren’t without their faults. Truthfully, they weren’t that different from Apple in terms of how they pitched and priced their products. Compaq’s main clientele were businesses, power users, and professionals who demanded powerful machines that cost less than IBM’s. Other cloners, like AST, Dell, and Zenith were all competing with Compaq in that same market, but they were more popular in mid-range segments where they were constantly undercutting each other. If you’re too thrifty for a name brand, white-label PCs from places like Bob's House of Genuine Computer Parts, wink wink, or Mad Macy’s Mail Order Motherboards were always an option. Buyer beware, though—most of these small fry lacked the kind of warranty or support that you’d get from a brand name company.
Everything changed when Packard Bell and Gateway 2000 attacked. These upstarts were building computers with specs that could trade blows with the more prestigious companies while selling at white-label prices. Gateway was a mail-order operation, while Packard Bell attacked the growing big-box retail segment. Dell, AST, and other cloners responded by lowering prices and building cheaper PCs. Compaq didn’t, and their balance sheet suffered accordingly. Boardroom battles erupted in 1991 between chairman Ben Rosen and CEO Rod Canion. Rosen wanted Compaq to aggressively pursue the home and entry-level markets, while Canion wanted to stay the course. He was one of Compaq’s founders, and the company had amazing success under his leadership. Compaq was still making money hand-over-fist, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right?
Compaq's corporate reckoning came on October 23, 1991, halfway through that year's Fall COMDEX. Faced with the company's first quarterly loss, Rod Canion had to take serious action. The next day he laid off over 1,400 employees and then presented an eighteen month plan to attack the entry level market. For most companies this would have been a sensible turnaround plan. But what Canion didn’t know was that Rosen had dispatched a team to Las Vegas to covertly attend COMDEX and do a little recon. That secret team put together an alternate plan that could bring a low-cost PC to market by the summer of 1992—half the time of Canion’s proposal. With his new strategy in place, Rosen and the board fired Canion on October 25th, 1991—the final day of COMDEX.
The ultra-slim ProLinea 3/25ZS as seen in a Compaq brochure.
Compaq’s COO Eckhard Pfeiffer was promoted to CEO and the company poured everything it had into building a new low-cost product line. Announced on June 15, 1992, Compaq’s new ProLinea range of personal computers arrived a month ahead of schedule and with much fanfare for the press. Tech company press releases can get pretty schlocky, and Compaq’s were no exception. A nameless Compaq executive really thought they hit the jackpot with “the Goldilocks strategy” of offering papa, mama, and baby computers. That’s not subtext, it’s actual text! I don’t like this analogy for a variety of reasons, mainly because it’s creatively bankrupt and condescending. I’m sure the nameless executive thought this was their most brilliant idea, even though they fundamentally misunderstood both the setup and moral of Goldilocks and The Three Bears.
Still, you gotta work with what they give you. If the existing Deskpro/M was Papa Bear, the new Deskpro/I was Mama Bear and the ProLinea was Baby Bear. Starting at $899, the tiny two-slot ProLinea 3/25ZS was a warning to other low-cost makers that Compaq was ready for war—price war. Joining the compact ZS series was a bigger three-slot ProLinea S desktop with a 5 1/4” drive bay and options for more powerful processors. If either of those weren’t enough for you, the Deskpro/I and /M were there to satisfy all your power user needs. It was up to you to determine which machine was Just Right… and then eat its porridge and sleep in its bed? My opinion of fairy-tale-based marketing strategies aside, these machines were an immediate hit. Compaq didn’t let off the gas, either—a year later in 1993 they simplified the lineup by retiring the 386 CPUs and ditching the undersized ZS model, so that was goodbye to one of the baby bears. The S model was now the standard ProLinea, featuring CPUs ranging from a 25MHz 486SX to a 66MHz 486DX2. 4 megabytes of RAM came standard, and hard drive sizes ranged from 120 to 340 MB. In addition to all the standard specs, Compaq had a long options list of modems, storage, networking, and multimedia.
A Compaq Ad from 1993 featuring the new ProLinea and Deskpro families.
How much did my uncle pay for his sensible mid-range computer in 1993? I hit the books and found several reviews of the ProLinea 4/33. My old standby of PC/Computing reviewed the 1992 models, which had plenty of useful information, but for accuracy’s sake I needed a 1993 review. PC Magazine’s September 1993 value PC roundup had just what I needed. Roundup reviews like these are a fun relic of the electronics press—a time long past when budgets were big enough that editors could write a bunch of checks to review ten computers at once. PC Magazine staff writer Oliver Rist was generally positive on the ProLinea, citing its competitive performance at a low price along with Compaq’s above-average service and support. His only knock was against the video chipset, which doesn’t really square with the results in the benchmark charts. The ProLinea is right in the middle of the pack for the Graphics WinMark scores, with only a few outliers completely destroying the rest of the competition.
PC Mag’s ProLinea came with 8 megs of RAM, a 240MB hard drive, dual floppies, and a monitor for the cool cost of $2300. That was still a decent chunk of change for a computer, but a year earlier a powerful Compaq Deskpro with a 33MHZ 486DX cost nearly three times as much. Now ordinary people could buy Windows PCs that could run multiple applications simultaneously with an.... acceptable level of performance! Until the machine crashed or froze, of course, because we're still talking about Windows 3.1. Still, you could do a lot worse in 1993 than these PCs.
The ProLinea was step one in Compaq’s multi-point plan for world domination. If the new game was being number one in marketshare, then so be it, they would be number one. First, Compaq changed their sales strategies by adding new channels in addition to their traditional dealer network. The most obvious move was creating a new factory direct sales operation to compete head-to-head with Gateway and Dell. Next, they needed to counter Packard Bell in the growing big box retail segment. Stores like Circuit City, Nobody Beats the Wiz, and even Sears were pushing computers as they became cheaper and more mainstream. Apple Performas and IBM PS/1s were already in stores, and Compaq joined the fray with the Presario in 1993. Originally an all-in-one model, the Presario name grew to represent Compaq’s entry-level retail brand. For a while the same desktops and towers were labeled as ProLinea or Presario depending on whether they were sold in dealer or retail channels, but by the end of 1996, Compaq realized that was silly and condensed everything under the Presario label.
Think about famous computer names—ThinkPad, Macintosh, Vaio. All of those brands conjure up something specific, something emotional. ThinkPad is a black-and-red machine that means business and reliability. Macintosh means style, ease of use, and “it just works.” Vaio evokes cutting-edge hi-fi design and multimedia prowess. When I hear Presario, I think of nondescript beige boxes that were no different than a dozen other PCs. Far more important than the Presario's B-list name was its A-list marketing strategy, though. Compaq’s aggressive marketing combined with just the right level of hardware for the average user meant that millions of people connected to the web for the first time thanks to a Compaq computer. Presario had enough recognition to get some eulogies when HP retired the Compaq and Presario names in 2013. The ProLinea, though... as far as I can tell, nobody cared enough to write an article, or even a press release, about the retirement of Compaq's first entry-level computer brand.
I moved on from the trusty ProLinea in the year 2000 when I bought a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion with a 600MHz Pentium III, using my salary as a supermarket cashier. My dad kept the Compaq as his own personal machine, but even his tolerance for slow computers had a limit. He replaced it in October 2002 with a Compaq Presario from Staples—something in the 5000 series that had a white case with transparent gray plastic. What happened to the ProLinea after that? I have no idea. I was off to college at the time, and my younger sister wasn’t far behind. With the last of their children ready to leave the nest, my parents cleaned out the detritus generated by three sons and a daughter. Maybe it went to some e-waste pile, or maybe it was picked up by someone who cared about old technology. Hopefully it was the latter.
Unlike the move from the Commodore to the Compaq, my next PC wasn’t as much of a quantum leap. It still ran Windows, it still connected to the internet, and it still played games—it just did them all faster and with more bells and whistles. By the late 90s most traces of personality were beaten out of most PCs, leaving the workstation makers and Steve Jobs’ resurgent Apple as the only real purveyors of character. I suppose that’s the nature of many mass-market products—a Sony Walkman was a novel idea, and then the portable tape player market slowly grew stale as manufacturers built disposable items at the lowest possible cost. To their credit, Sony kept at it until the bitter end, and they still manage to put a bit of character in everything they make.
A portrait of the author’s uncle as a younger man.
So why does this boring bland basic beige box—which didn’t stick out from the crowd at all—still have a place in my heart? It’s because it was from my uncle, of course. As a microbiologist, he was deeply involved with science and technology. He saw my growing love of computers and tech and wanted to help me towards a career in that field. Yes, he knew I would spend just as much time playing games or surfing online than using it for schoolwork. But that’s OK—just having an environment to explore was enough. The world was growing more connected by the day, and you could get on board, or be left behind.
It’s hard not to look at the millions of Wintel machines shipped during the nineties and ask “where’s the character?” After all, they looked the same, used the same processors, and ran the same operating systems. Few manufacturers innovated and many ended up chasing trends, Compaq included. But the mistake I made was not recognizing that even the most neutral of computers is colored by its user. Every vintage PC I’ve picked up has some story to tell. A machine with bone-stock hardware can have the wildest software lurking on its hard drive. An unassuming beige box can conceal massive modifications. There was nothing unique or special about this particular computer—at least, not until I hot-rodded it with a bunch of upgrades. It didn’t really matter that it was a Compaq—the role could have been played by a Gateway, Packard Bell, or even a Zeos and the show would have gone on. I would’ve upgraded and stretched out any PC I owned, because it’s my nature.
I’ve grumbled quite a bit in various episodes about what we’ve lost from the golden age of microcomputing. I can’t help it; middle-age nostalgia is brain poison, and it’ll infect you if it hasn’t already. But as I’ve gotten back into serious computer history research, my old man yells at cloud instincts have given way to a more pleasant sense of wonder. By itself, a computer is just a steel box with some sand inside of it. Whether it’s a common Compaq or a colossal Cray, a computer can’t do anything without a person behind it. That was true in the eighties during the golden age, it was true in the nineties, and it’s still true today.
So even though Windows was kinda crashy and software never quite worked the way it was supposed to, things in the nineties were a Hell of a lot easier to use than they were in the eighties—and more reliable to boot. Maybe the lack of platform diversity was worse for us nerds, but it was better for society for us to settle down a bit and not introduce mutually incompatible computers every couple of years. All of the criticisms of machines like the ProLinea, and the Presarios that replaced, it were correct. Without this army of beige PCs heralded by Compaq, maybe the world wide web wouldn’t have taken off like it did. Maybe I’ve been a little too hard on beige. But at the end of the day, we all want something that gets out of our way and lets us be who we are. What’s more beige than that?
Ah, paying for software. Nobody likes doing it, but programmers gotta eat. And we can’t forget about those poor executives! After all, their private jets won’t fuel themselves, and that expensive C-check is coming up soon. There’s many different ways to buy and sell software, whether it’s a one-time license, shareware, free-to-play with in-app purchases, subscription, or just giving it away. Some companies, like Adobe, charge an ongoing subscription fee that kills your software when you stop paying. Other companies, like Serif, are “major versions cost money to upgrade, but minor versions are free updates,” even if they haven’t released a new “major version” yet.
There’s also the maverick option of “pay once and all updates are free, forever.” It’s the model used by Apple’s App Store (and some other places), but individual developers have used this method in the past. It’s also the method used by Celsys, the developer of Clip Studio Paint. In the olden days, Manga Studio (and Clip Studio) were iterative versions where you paid for new major releases, and Celsys usually put one out every year. This changed in 2013 with the new Clip Studio Paint, after which subsequent updates were free of charge. Back in 2020, they annnounced monthly subscription plans which allowed for one-price usage across multiple devices and operating systems. Afterwards you had the option of buying a perpetual license for Clip Studio, or paying a monthly or yearly subscription fee.
But on August 22nd, Celsys announced the upcoming release of Clip Studio Paint 2.0, and with it major changes to their licensing scheme. Subscription users won’t see any difference; they’ll keep paying $5 a month or $25 a year to keep using CSP and stay current. But if you were used to free feature updates for your perpetually licensed copy of Clip Studio 1.x, get ready for some changes. CSP 2.0 will introduce something called an Update Pass. Almost immediately most CSP users I follow on Twitter were in a panic, thinking that this means an Adobe-like licensing scheme, where CSP will stop working if you stop paying for an update pass. I don’t think that’s what will happen, but Celsys’ communications on the licensing changes are so terrible that I can’t believe they let them go live. What most people see right away on the announcement page is this maddening chart.
It’s safe to say that anytime you need a flowchart to explain your licensing scheme, you’ve already lost. Celsys’ FAQ doesn’t do much to clarify how things will work, and no pricing has been announced either. Given how many people have been burned by software companies suddenly shifting business models, it’s the responsibility of Celsys to clearly communicate these changes, and they’ve failed spectacularly.
Let’s go step by step through the announcement page’s FAQ.
Clip Studio Paint Version 2.0 will offer a slate of new features to make use of in your digital art. At this time there are no major changes planned to the existing features or the UI. If you are a current user of Version 1.x and would like to use Version 2.0 without purchasing an additional perpetual license, you can purchase an Update Pass (annual), which will be on offer from next year. Customers with an Update Pass or a Monthly Plan (purchased through app stores or the Clip Studio Paint site) will be able to use the most up-to-date version of the app for as long as their plan or pass is valid. Version 2.0 will also be available as a one-time purchase (perpetual license).
You will be able to use Version 1.x forever provided it works on your device. We will continue to provide free updates with new features until the end of the year, before the app moves to Version 2.0. We will also provide free stability updates for major bugs or errors caused by the OS or specific devices, into next year and beyond the transition to Version 2.0. There are no planned changes to the access of Clip Studio Assets, or any of our other services including technical support. They will continue to be available during and beyond the transition to Version 2.0.
Well, this is clear as mud, but there’s a few key points buried within. Namely, CSP 1.X will continue working in perpetuity and it’ll stop getting feature updates when 2.0 is released. However, CSP 1.X will receive maintenance/OS compatibility updates until CSP version 3.0 comes out. No clue when that’ll happen, but it’s better than saying “whenever.” Subscription users will continue to get all feature updates so long as they pay their monthly or yearly subscriptions, so nothing’s different there.
What’s unclear is how Update Pass will work with retaining feature updates “paid for” in version 2.0. There’s a sensible way of doing this—which is how I think Celsys will do it—and there’s a silly way. But we’ll get to that later The next entry in the FAQ just raises further questions.
What will happen if I do not renew my Update Pass?
You will no longer be able to use the latest version, but may continue to use the last perpetual version you had. If the latest perpetual version you purchased was Version 1.x, you will be able to go back and continue using Version 1.x. If you do not renew your Update Pass at the time of expiry, you can always purchase a new one at a later date.
This is a completely silly answer! Apparently Celsys is allowing users of 1.X to buy Update passes, which will grant them access to version 2.x and its feature updates. But if they stop paying for that update pass, then their installation of 2.X will stop working, and they’ll be forced back to version 1.X. This is dumb. Either make people buy a full price upgrade to 2.x and then update passes for that, or have them subscribe instead. And then there’s whatever the hell THIS table is.
Is version 1.X getting update passes as well? Why? That’s dumb. Just rip off the band-aid. You’re not fooling anybody.
Speaking of upgrade pricing…
Will I be able to pay for an upgrade from Version 1.x to Version 2.0?
No. To update your app to the latest version, please purchase an Update Pass, or purchase the latest one-time purchase version of the app (Version 2.0).
Again, this is a bad answer to this question! What they’re trying to say is that there is no special upgrade pricing for version 2.X. If you own a perpetual license for 1.X, you will need to buy a brand new perpetual license for 2.X at full price. Or wait for it to go on sale, but still. Owning 1.X gives you no special benefits when it comes time to buy 2.X.
Will I still get free bug fixes for the perpetual version?
Yes. The perpetual version will still get free stability updates when necessary to address major bugs in the app. Version 1.x will be supported in this way until Version 3.0 is released in the future. Moving forward we will provide this support for the current and previous major version of the app. So, until Version 3.0 is released, Version 1.x will continue to receive stability updates. However, even after support is discontinued, you are still free to use the permanent license of Version 1.x for as long as you like, provided your device and OS can run it.
What this means is that if you have Version 2.X and let your update pass expire, you will still receive new stability/bugfix patches, but not further feature updates. Version 1.X will also receive maintenance/bugfix patches until the release of version 3.0. After version 3.0’s release, version 2.X will continue to get maintenance/bugfix patches, and so on.
Will I still be able to get free feature updates as I do now?
New features for the perpetual version will be included in each major version (2.0, 3.0, etc.), however, new feature updates will not be provided free of charge. Even if you have purchased the perpetual version of Version 2.0, you will still need to purchase an Update Pass in order to get access to new feature updates. If you are a Monthly Usage Plan or Update Pass customer, you will receive access to new feature updates (2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, etc.) as they become available for no extra charge.
The feature update train is over without an update pass. 1.x will get no more feature updates after 2.0 is released (I think, more on that in a second), and if you’re on 2.0 you need to pony up for an update pass to get feature updates. However, this doesn’t answer a critical question: what happens to the feature updates you paid for when your update pass expires?
“What happens when I stop paying for update passes?” is a very important question that the flowchart tries to answer but fails to do so in an extremely awful way. For decades most software was sold under a “Buy a major version, then pay slightly less money for an upgrade version later on” model. Then software subscriptions came along, which demanded monthly payments while holding your programs (and therefore your work) ransom if you stopped paying. But these aren’t the only ways of paying for software. Even most “free as in speech” software is bound to some form of license, like the GNU Public License or BSD License. Unless the software is in the public domain, it’s under some form of copyright, and copyright means a license gets involved sooner or later. In the realm of commercial software, there’s a lot of ways to pay for a license. Freeware, shareware, nagware, subscription, perpetual with forever updates, perpetual with minor updates, or even time-limited that expires after a one-time fee.
Most people are used to buying software at retail (even if retail means a website or app store). Outside the world of retail software, there’s many ways to sell a license. Dongles are still a thing, acting as physical keys for niche and expensive software. Another method popular in enterprise software is the maintenance license model. Different companies might call it by different names—software assurance, update guarantees, whatever—but the idea’s pretty straightforward. You buy the software, and then you pay a quarterly/yearly/some number of years for a maintenance license. The vast majority of these products work on a date entitlement system, where your license key works on versions released up to a certain date.
Let’s take a very popular example: VMWare. You can buy the cheapest VMWare package, vSphere Essentials, for a very reasonable price. It’s great for small shops that aren’t running multiple huge clusters but still need to run several virtual machines on up to three nodes. When you buy vSphere Essentials, you’re presented with two purchase options: a one year or three year software support term. vSphere itself is perpetually licensed under this model, meaning that when you buy it, the server software won’t expire or stop working at an arbitrary date. Rather, the support terms are for how long you’re entitled to major new versions of vSphere.
So if I buy vSphere essentials with a one year support agreement, it means that I’m entitled to all new versions of ESXi and vCenter for one year. When I purchased the app, version 7.1 was the current version. Six months later, version 7.2 is released, and I’m good to run version 7.2 forever. But another seven months go by and version 7.5 is released. I’m out of luck—its release date is after the expiration of my support agreement. Version 7.5 will refuse to run without the new license key from VMWare’s software support. A package with a one year agreement costs around $575, while the three year agreement is around $686. I bet most people opt for the three-year upgrade support option. Regardless, your VMware host doesn’t turn into a pumpkin after that update support expires. VMWare is also good about releasing patches or update rollups for older point releases, and those aren’t bound by that time limit—at least, they weren’t when I was administrating VMWare.
I worked for companies that used this same kind of structure, except we called it an “annual maintenance license” or “service contract.” Those agreements usually included technical support in addition to software updates, but the idea is to have the customer pay for the ongoing development of the software without threatening them with a deactivation if they stop. At one company we sold “major” versions with point releases included in the service agreement. For example, you’d pay $5,000 to upgrade to version 12.0, and you paid $1,750 yearly to get access to any point releases in that major version. You could decline to renew your support contract the next year, and your software would continue to work, but we’d stop mailing you new software update disks. Another company I worked for used the same method, except they didn’t charge for “major” versions and had a more expensive annual maintenance license. That AML meant you could run any version released up to AML’s expiration date. Once it expired, your software would continue to work, but the installers for new versions would bark and say “Hey! Your AML is out of date, you can’t install this.”
I believe this is the model that Celsys is moving to with Clip Studio. It makes the most sense from a “you get what you pay for” standpoint. If I pay for version 2.0 and it comes with a one year update pass, I expect that whatever version comes out at the end of that pass—let’s say, 2.2—will continue working after the update pass expires. You would also get the bugfix/maintenance releases for 2.2 afterwards even without an update pass. The alternative—forcing you back to version 2.0—is so pants-on-head stupid that I can’t believe it would happen, but Celsys’ communication is so bad that I can’t rule it out completely.
With how confusing their FAQ was and the even more baffling flowchart, Twitter and Reddit naturally went nuts. Celsys bought themselves a lot of goodwill over the past few years with their update policy for CSP 1.X, and it’s all gone up in smoke because people are assuming the worst. I don’t blame users for those assumptions—Adobe, Avid, and other companies have become software landlords that grew fat off the back of subscription revenues. Celsys took advantage of growing anti-Adobe sentiment and positioned Clip Studio as not just a better product than Photoshop for comics and illustration, but that they were a better company. Well, time’s up on that. Celsys had their chance to properly explain things, and they blew it.
Celsys is a Japanese company; they’re not in America let alone Silicon Valley. The kinds of market pressures that are exerted on American companies are different than Japanese ones. But at the end of the day, revenue in must be greater than expenses out, and I’m not surprised that version 2.0 is seeing changes to the licensing model. “Free updates forever” is always too good to be true. I’m sure the suits at Celsys knew there would be some backlash to this, but the backlash is worse than it should have been because their announcement was terrible. Even if they come out and clarify things, they will have irrevocably lost some users, especially vocal fans.
The reality is that software development costs money. It’s entirely Celsys’ own fault for the situation they’re in, and update passes are absolutely a way to wring more money out of people. But I’m not immediately opposed to this kind of licensing scheme, especially if it just means “Oh, I can buy an update pass once in a while when I feel like I need it.” The software will still work, I can still get work done, and I can get on with my life. After all, I charge royalties and licensing fees for my photographs—I know the struggle. I also work for a software company for my day job, so I’m intimately familiar with cost structures and the problem with ongoing revenue. Products cost time and money to maintain, and no piece of software lives forever. But it’s monumentally stupid to announce this change without also giving people an idea on pricing and how many feature updates are expected per year, let alone how many bugfixes will come for each release.
So if people wanted to switch, where would they go?
Adobe isn’t really an option. Photoshop is pure subscription, it’s more expensive than Clip Studio, and it’s missing a lot of features that CSP users love.
“Well, I’ll just switch to Serif!” you say, and fair enough, but keep in mind that while Serif sells perpetual licenses for the Affinity suite, they are working in a “major versions require a paid upgrade” model. All of their updates to date have been “minor” or feature upgrades, so they have yet to charge for an update. But a day will come when they release 2.X, and that will be a paid upgrade. I doubt it’ll be full price if you own the current version, but it’s only a matter of when, not if. So don’t get mad when 2.0 comes out and it costs money to upgrade. The Affinity Suite is a good Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign fighter, but it’s not a suitable replacement for CSP.
Krita is free and open source, and while it’s gotten better over time, it’s still not as good as CSP. Still, it’s very usable and has an excellent community. It’s worth an evaluation, at least. For now, I’d stay put until pricing details come out and Celsys clarifies how feature updates interact with Update Passes.
There’s always Paint Shop Pro, I guess. But we all know that’s not a serious option.
Storyboard Pro, Sketchbook Pro, and other options might fulfill other users’ needs, but their licensing schemes aren’t much better than Adobe’s or the proposed one for Clip Studio.
I commend you on making it through all that. Celsys really stepped in it this time, and their confusing FAQ is part for the course with communications from these Japanese development houses. This was an entirely self-inflicted wound that could have been avoided with better communication on their part. At the end of the day, what they’re proposing isn’t a subscription like Adobe, it’s a maintenance plan for a perpetually licensed piece of software. It won’t explode if you stop paying, which is the real problem with Adobe’s subscription plan. In fact, I’ve seen this very idea for a perpetual license with optional maintenance put forward by people who use Adobe software! So whether this is a dealbreaker or just the cost of doing business is subjective. I paid for CSP ages ago and use it infrequently. I’ll probably hang on to 1.x and upgrade to 2.x when it’s on sale. I doubt I’ll buy update passes regularly.
If I was on Celsys’ team, here’s the plan I would have devised for their new perpetual licenses.
First, Clip Studio 1.x would stop getting feature updates upon the release of 2.0. Maintenance (bugfixes) would carry on until the release of 3.0, whenever that may be. There would be no update passes for 1.x.
When users buy version 2.0, they get one or two years of update passes included in the price. You are entitled to whatever feature releases come out during your Update Pass(es). After the update passes expire, whatever version was the last one before the expiration date continues to run. You are entitled to any maintenance/minor bugfix releases to that version as well. If you buy another update pass, you’re now clear to get updates again until the pass expires, at which point your latest version is the one you keep.
When version 3.0 comes out, rinse and repeat the process for 2.0.
This is the sanest, simplest way to do what Celsys wants to do. It’ll still piss some people off who thought they were getting updates for CSP for eternity, but as far as update service agreements go, it’s pretty tame and pretty balanced in terms of user need / development cost. And until we actually know how much update passes and version 2.0 costs, we’re all just kind of spitballing here.
As far as communicating to customers, here’s an FAQ that would actually answer relevant questions.
I own Clip Studio 1.x. What does this mean for me? Clip Studio 1.X perpetual licenses will continue to work! After the release of Clip Studio 2.0, version 1.X will receive no further feature updates. Bugfix/maintenance patches for version 1.x will continue until the release of Clip Studio 3.0, at which point support for version 1.X will be discontinued.
Can I upgrade to Clip Studio 2.0 for a reduced price? No. You must purchase a new perpetual license for Clip Studio 2.0 if you are an existing owner of Clip Studio 1.x.
When my Update Pass expires, what happens to my current version of software? You can run the latest feature version of Clip Studio Paint that was released before your Update Pass expired. For example, if CSP 2.2 came out on August 17, 2022, and your Update Pass expired on August 22, you can still run CSP 2.2 perpetually. However, if Clip Studio 2.3 came out on September 22, 2022, you would not be able to run version 2.3 without purchasing another Update Pass.
What about bugfix (X.X.1) releases? Even if your update pass is expired, you are entitled to bugfix releases for your version of CSP. For example, if you are licensed for version 2.2, then you would be eligible for versions 2.2.1, 2.2.2, and so on.
Can version 1.X open files created in version 2.X? Yes. However, some features may not be available. These limitations will be announced at a later date.
Will anything change for monthly or yearly subscription users? Nope! You’ll always receive the latest version as long as you have an active subscription.
If Celsys is reading this (highly unlikely), you can still clarify things and simplify your licensing arrangements. Make it clear that this is not a subscription, and that people’s software will still work when Update Passes expire. Don’t offer update passes for version 1.X. Offer a cheaper upgrade option for 1.x users to get a 2.x perpetual license. That would be enough to cool people’s jets and clear the air.
Let’s hope Celsys clears the air. I don’t work for them, so my interpretations could be wrong. But given my experience in working for software companies, I’m pretty confident in what’s actually happening. Also, a few apologies wouldn’t hurt. I’ll be sure to update this in the future when more clarifications come from Celsys.
From the desk of Userlandia…
When I was a kid, TV and movies told me tales about the study: a mythical room in the house just for dear old Dad. An invitation to a man’s study was an invitation to his inner sanctum, where you would walk among rows of bookshelves, tiny ships in bottles, and elaborately framed artworks. While surely nice in their own right, these were the supporting cast to the real star: the desk. Crafted from cherry, walnut, or mighty oak, a stately desk tied the whole room together. Where else could you build tiny ships in bottles after writing a day’s worth of correspondence? But like most things on television, that study was a comforting fiction. Most American fathers were lucky to have a corner of the garage to themselves. But underneath all that Hollywood varnish was a woodgrain of truth: a good desk is the foundation of your workspace..
After years of making do with merely adequate desks, I was ready to invest in something more substantial. One reason I stuck with merely adequate desks for so long was a lack of space. My previous apartment was pretty cramped—at around 600 square feet there wasn’t much room for fancy setups. I was recording podcasts in the living room and my computer area was just big enough for a table and some shelves. All that changed in February 2020 when I moved to my current place. With double the square footage, I now had a second bedroom large enough to be a home office. There’d even be space left over for my vintage computer collection! A cheap tabletop with legs would no longer be appropriate. It was time for a real, honest-to-God desk.
As tasteful a design as its name implies.
With all this newfound space, I knew the right kind of desk for the job: a corner-spanning L-shaped workstation. Normally this would be a job for the Ikea Galant system. With modular legs, frames, and tabletops, you could build a Galant desk to your exact specifications. L-shaped? Lovely. U-shaped? You got it. Even an ultra-long wall-spanning horizontal desk was possible, if that was your thing. Any of these configurations could be had at a reasonable price just by mixing and matching parts. Unfortunately for the Galant and its fans, Ikea replaced it in 2014 with the inferior Bekant system. The change wasn’t all bad—Bekant legs and frames are fairly sturdy, and the new sit-stand mechanisms were an improvement over the Galant’s. But the tabletops are thinner and cheaper, the fasteners can’t survive disassembly, and modularity is nowhere to be found.
Without the Galant, there’s no obvious choice for an inexpensive modular desk. Office furniture companies—the kind that sell cubicles—make modular furniture, but the general public isn’t their clientele and they charge accordingly. I scoured the depths of Amazon, Staples, and Wayfair but I couldn’t find a desk that met my requirements. I wanted an L-shaped desk that was at least six feet wide, with equal depth on both the main desktop and the return. I wanted a clear area underneath the desktop so I could move from one side to the other without the desk’s legs getting in the way. Some cabinets or drawers for storage would be great. The ability to easily disassemble the desk when I eventually move would be lovely, too.
Those all sound like reasonable requirements, but the devil is in the details. One of my monitors is a Wacom Cintiq tablet display for creating digital artwork. Thanks to an Ergotron monitor arm, I can pull the Cintiq into my lap for a more comfortable drawing position. But the downside is that the arm clamps to the desktop, which requires an overhanging lip. This eliminated a bunch of contenders which had flush-mounted frames or backing panels that would obstruct the clamps.
A photo from when I acquired this Cintiq in 2014. Note the Ergotron arm hold ing it up.
After I spent days rejecting countless prefabricated desks, I discovered the current trend in homebrew computer desks: the battlestation. I don’t particularly like this name—it sounds like something coined by people who use the term “PC Gaming Master Race” unironically and without realizing the implications. But I’ll grant them the benefit of the doubt and think of it more in the Star Trek sense. These so-called battlestations are usually made by setting a countertop or solid-core door on top of two filing cabinets, adjustable trestles, or steel tube legs. This isn’t a new concept, because tables and workbenches made from simple materials have been around for centuries. Office desks in cubicles around the globe have tabletops set upon filling and storage cabinets. So what’s different?
The most common example of a battlestation-type desk is an Ikea Gerton or Karlby countertop perched on two Alex drawer cabinets. For around $300 out the door, you could have a sturdy desk with ample workspace, weight capacity, and storage to rival $600 options at an office supply store. Of course, that means dealing with Ikea, purveyor of meatballs and stoic Scandinavian design. One catch is that you’re still bound to the whims of Ikea product planners. Ikea’s a global company whose pursuit of margins is legendary. They’re not afraid to rethink existing products to wring out more profit, and even simple countertops can’t escape the Swedish eye. Gerton countertops—made of actual solid wood—were replaced by the Karlby, which is wood veneer laminated to medium density fiberboard. Granted, the veneer is actual wood, and it’s fairly thick too. But laminated MDF can suffer from bowing without support underneath the entire surface. A Karlby is still better than flimsy honeycomb-shaped cardboard sandwiched between particleboard like the Linmon or Lagkapten.
To be kinder to “engineered wood,” solid wood options also have their caveats. Karlby countertops come pre-finished, which can be a real time saver. You can sand and refinish them if you choose, but it’s completely optional. Gertons, like most butcher blocks, are unfinished and require some kind of treatment. Be it stain, oil, or polyurethane, you’ll need something to protect the wood from yourself and the environment, and the finishing process takes time, space, and effort.
Another downside to Ikea is they might not be available to you. Many parts of America and the world don’t have access to an Ikea store. You might also have opinions about Ikea’s less-than-stellar corporate citizenship. Luckily, you can duplicate the battlestation look without going to Ikea. Any home improvement, hardware, or lumber store carries butcher block countertops in a variety of woods, sizes, and thicknesses. While you’re there, you can pick up legs and finishing materials. After that, you can stop at the office supply store to pick up filing cabinets. Even a solid-core door can serve as a nice tabletop if you can’t source a butcher block. Building one of these desks is a great first-time DIY project for a newbie, especially if you only need one of them. Even if you suffer from a mild case of carpenteria like The Lobe in Freakazoid, you can still put one of these together.
I ultimately settled for a hybrid approach for my desk: Ikea’s Alex drawers with butcher block countertops from Home Depot. Since I was building an L-shaped desk, my minimum equipment list looked something like this:
Two 6 foot long by 25 inch wide by 1.5 inch deep birch butcher blocks.
Three Alex drawers in gray-turquoise.
Two adjustable Olov table legs, saved from a previous table.
Two wire cable management trays.
Finishing materials.
The simplicity of this list undersells the amount of time it took to compile it. My goal here is to present all the information and research I collected during the month-long process of constructing these desks back in summer 2021. The end result is a sturdy, attractive desk that can take a lot of punishment and not fall apart.
First, I must state up front that I am not a professional woodworker. All this information is compiled from my best research and advice from people I know who are better at this stuff than I am. I grew up watching The New Yankee Workshop, and Norm Abram’s advice is still the best: Before you use any tools, be sure to read, understand, and follow all the safety rules that come with your tools. Knowing how to use your tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury. And remember this: there’s no more important safety rule than to wear your safety glasses. You’ll also want to wear nitrile gloves and a respirator when sanding and finishing wood.
Before barreling into the build process, there’s some decisions you need to make. I had a lot of questions while doing my research, and depending on who I asked, I got a variety of answers. Before you spend a single dollar, you need to know exactly what you want to build. Here’s a list of frequently asked questions from myself and others about materials, finishes, and other decision points you’ll encounter when DIY-ing a desk.
Laminate or Hardwood? Most people assume that hardwood is always superior to engineered wood, but there’s advantages and disadvantages to both. The big advantage of laminated surfaces is that they don’t require any finishing. They’re ready to go out of the box, and they’re usually lighter and less expensive. While MDF-type engineered woods can be more susceptible to moisture damage or sagging, they can still withstand a lot of traditional abuse. An extra leg in the center of the back edge can prevent any sagging. While hardwood is more solid and less prone to warping, you’ll need to finish it, and that requires time and space. Speaking of that…
Finished or unfinished? When you go to Lowe’s or Home Depot to check out their stocks of butcher block countertops, you’ll notice that they’re all unfinished wood. That means you’ll need to sand, clean, and finish the entire surface of the block before putting it into service. Finishing is not particularly difficult—if you can build a PC, you can sand wood and apply polyurethane. But this process takes time, and you’ll need to spend a few days finishing the block. If you leave the block unfinished, it’ll be exposed to all the dangers of your environment. Spilled liquids, skin oils, and damp glasses all threaten to damage the wood. Plus, unfinished blocks are at risk for warping in humid environments. Don’t discount the risk of microbial contamination, either. You don’t want a moldy desk, right? Based on all of these factors, I always recommend finishing the wood.
Polyurethane, Oil, or Stain? There’s more than one way to finish wood, and the right one depends on the wood in question and where it’ll be used. Since we’re building a computer desk, we’re more concerned with aesthetics and maintenance. The easiest finish to apply is polyurethane, available in wipe- or brush-on formulas. Oils are next, with tung oil as the most common choice. Lastly, stains have the most color options, but they’re the most difficult to apply and you still need to seal it with polyurethane afterwards. All of these finishes are valid, but you should consider carefully the level of maintenance and curing time required for each of them.
Polyurethane: The easiest and fastest method to seal the wood and get it in service is a polyurethane finish. If you have a steady hand, you can use brush-on polyurethane to minimize the number of coats required to seal the block. An even easier method is wipe-on polyurethane, which can be applied with rags, applicator pads, or sponge brushes. Since wipe-on poly is thinner, it’s easier to apply a smooth, even coat of finish to the wood. That ease comes at a cost of money and time. Wipe-on poly is more expensive per quart and it usually takes three coats of wipe-on to get the same thickness as one coat of brush-on. You need a minimum of one coat of brush-on or three coats of wipe-on for the display side of the desk. Two or three coats of brush-on or six coats of wipe-on would be even better.
Oils: Most butcher blocks are installed in kitchens, therefore finishing discussions usually revolve around withstanding the abuse of knives and food safety. Oils are most frequently used in those environments since they’re easy to apply and food-safe. However, I recommend against oil finishes for desks. One reason is that most drying oils take a long time to properly cure, and most people aren’t willing to wait a month for a full cure. Another reason is that they require maintenance. Some oils require wipe down refreshes every few months, while others are once a year. Lastly, some oils like mineral oil are not “drying” finishes and can transfer to items set on the finish for a very long time. Mineral oil finishes are great for an actual countertop or cutting surface, but not so much for a computer desk. Oil finishes look beautiful—just be aware of the time and maintenance involved.
Stains: A stain can bring out the best in a wood’s natural character, but there’s many to choose from and applying consistent coats is difficult. Some types of woods are more receptive to staining than others. Stains can be tricky to apply for newbie finishers. If you want to take the time to stain, then go ahead, but be mindful of the block manufacturer’s recommendations. Also, all stained surfaces should be protected by a clear topcoat, so don’t forget to include that in your time and effort budget. Three coats of wipe-on polyurethane should be sufficient for a sealant.
How shiny should the finish be? I prefer a satin or matte finish. This is entirely a personal choice, but I think a glossy desk would be distracting.
What about pre-finished butcher blocks? You can definitely buy a pre-finished butcher block. Local woodworking businesses often sell pre-finished countertops or worktops, and home improvement warehouses offer pre-finished blocks shipped to your door. I recommend dealing locally if you’re going this route, as shipping with a carrier like UPS can end in tragedy. I ordered a pre-finished block from Home Depot and it arrived chipped and cracked due to shipping damage. You’ll pay a hefty premium for a professionally finished block, but that premium saves you time. An unfinished six foot birch block from Home Depot cost me $180. A stained and sealed six foot maple block from a local hardwood dealer in the greater Boston area would have cost $460. If you don’t have the time or space to finish things yourself, that might be a price you’ll have to pay—only you can decide.
Drawers or Legs? Just because the average Reddit battlestation uses filing cabinets doesn’t mean you’re forced to use them. If you’re on a tight budget and are willing to sacrifice some storage space, you can save considerable cash by getting table legs from hardware or home improvement stores.
Consider that Alex drawers are $80 $90 to $110 per set, and you’ll need two to hold up a desktop. The various Alex knockoffs aren’t much cheaper, and quality metal file cabinets can be pricey. A set of four adjustable metal legs is only $40 from the home improvement store. Even if you need a fifth leg for extra stability, that’s still a considerable cost savings. The downside of using legs instead of drawers is that you sacrifice a lot of storage space, which you might find useful for a computer desk. Mixing and matching is always a possibility, so see what you can build within your budget.
After acquiring all of the necessary ingredients, I was ready to start building. Assembling the Alex drawers was easy enough—if you’ve built one Ikea product, you’ve built them all. The real test was finishing the desk tops. If you’re like me and don’t have a workshop, this can be a little tricky, but I still made it work, and you can too! I’m an amateur woodworker at best—I learned the basics from Sunday mornings with my grandfather in his basement workshop. It just takes time, patience, and a willingness to learn. Remember those warnings I gave you about tools and safety, and remember that this is just one nerd’s DIY advice.
Step one: Prepare your work area. I constructed a makeshift workbench out of a folding table, PVC pipe fittings, and no-slip rubber mats. The fittings kept the counter off of the folding table, and the no-slip rubber mats kept them from marring the block’s surface. Big box fans placed in the windows worked as my exhaust ventilation. Use some newspaper or drop cloths to save your floors from any spilled or dropped finish. Don’t forget to wear clothes that you won’t mind getting dirty and don your safety gear. A respirator mask, eye protection, and nitrile gloves are highly recommended.
My makeshift work area.
Step two: Prepare your countertops. Check the spec sheet that came with your block to see what level of sanding needs to be done. In my case, I used 220 grit sandpaper to sand along the grain of the wood. The block should feel nice and smooth when you’re done. Disposable sanding blocks or sponges make sanding easy, so don’t skip it. When you’re finished sanding, you’ll need to clean up all the dust you created. Use a vacuum cleaner with a soft bristle attachment to suck up any wood dust, and then wipe down the block with a damp tack cloth. You can use mineral spirits, but a dry lint-free cloth worked well enough for me.
After sanding, make note of which side of the block has the least amount of knots, dings, and flaws in the wood. The cleanest side should be the actual desk top, and you’ll want apply more coats of finish to that side.
Step three: Applying the finish. This is for sure the longest and most difficult step, depending on what you’ve selected for a finish. I chose satin wipe-on polyurethane for my blocks because I wanted an easy to apply finish with a smooth, muted character. Remember: three coats of wipe-on poly equals one coat of brush-on. Wipe-on poly is easy to apply, but the extra coats and drying time adds up. Since I wasn’t in a rush, wipe-on was fine with me.
You want the polyurethane container stirred, not shaken—sorry, Mister Bond. Don’t pour the finish straight from the container onto the block—that’s a rookie mistake. Do pour the polyurethane into something sacrificial, like a plastic bowl. Next, rip up some clean white cotton t-shirts to make some applicator rags. Fold one up into a square, gently dip it into the bowl, and apply the finish along the grain. You want to channel Mister Miyagi here—wipe it on, then wipe off the excess in broad, overlapping strokes. Double check for any missed spots by using an overhead lamp, and don’t forget to finish the side of the block along with the top. Pretty soon you’ll have your first coat finished, and it’ll take about one to two hours for that coat to dry. Before applying the next coat, lightly sand the surface with a fine grit sandpaper block and wipe down with a dry lint-free cloth to remove any dust. This light sanding is optional, but it helps the finish stick and avoids high spots.
If you’ve never worked with wipe-on polyurethane before, make sure your environment is well-ventilated and that you use a fresh applicator or rag for each coat. When you’re done with the coat, take the rag and lay it flat outdoors so it can dry and cure. We’ll talk about rag disposal later, but remember: never ball up wet rags, don’t store wet rags in an enclosed space, and don’t layer wet rags on top of each other.
A fully finished, cured block ready to go into service.
One day and six coats later, the top and sides were finished. I debated on whether or not to finish the bottom side. It is technically optional, but in the end I spent the extra time to do it. I only applied three coats to the bottom, but hey, it’s still finished. After I finished finishing the finish, I put the first block aside in another room for twenty for hours to allow the finish to completely cure. That freed up my workspace so I could start finishing the second block.
Once the finish was cured, it was time for Step Four: the final touches. Before setting the block on to the cabinets, I rubbed down all the surfaces with a folded paper grocery bag. This was an old trick I learned from my grandfather. Paper bags have a texture similar to ultra-fine grit sandpaper, and they’re great for polishing off any remaining high spots or dust bits. With both blocks finished, it was time to actually put the desk together. Joy!
But before I do that, I needed to clean up my work space. Make sure you follow the instructions provided by your finish’s manufacturer and dispose of all of your materials properly. If you’ve never done finishing work before, remember this: never ball or pile up oily rags, and don’t store them near flammable material! Always take your rags outdoors, unfold them, and either hang them up or lay them out on the ground to dry. Polyurethane rags are usually cured stiff and safe to dispose after twenty four hours or so, but other finishes might take longer. Why is this important? Most oil-based finishes like stains, penetrating oils, and polyurethanes cure via an exothermic reaction—meaning the oxidization that hardens the finish generates heat. If those rags are piled on top of each other or balled up in a container, the heat generated by the oxidization has nowhere to go. A few hours later, this heat can reach the flashpoint of the oily material—like cotton rags—and cause spontaneous combustion. The last thing you want is a fire, so be careful! Consult with your local fire or hazardous waste department for the best way to dispose of used finishing rags. I also suggest following the Dry, Dunk, Dispose method preached by UL if you can. Also, for the love of God, don’t pour polyurethane, mineral spirits, stains, and so on down your household drain.
Most battlestation builders are done when their countertops are fully cured. Lay the block on top of two filling cabinets, and ta-da, your desk is ready for action. But one of the advantages of DIY is that you can modify and customize things to your liking, and my L-shaped setup needed a few fixtures before entering service. First up was a pair of legs to support the inside corner of the L. Some pilot holes and a few screws later and they were securely fixed to the block. Next was a cable management guide, again easily attached to both blocks with a few screws. Finally, I cut some no-slip shelf mats—the kind you use in cupboards—to put between the blocks and the drawers. These mats keep the countertops from moving or shifting on top of the drawers, though nothing is stopping you from screwing the blocks into the drawers for an even firmer connection. I chose not to connect the two halves of the L together with brackets, but you can if you like.
After a week’s worth of shopping, assembly, preparation, and more, the desks were finally complete. I understand why people who put these together swear by them—they look and feel great. The clear satin finish brings out the woodgrain’s understated character—a perfect match for my New England sensibilities. Combine that with the dark turquoise drawers and the whole package has an eye-popping contrast that looks stylish and professional.
Now that’s what I call a desk.
No desk would be complete without the items it was built to hold. An L-shaped desk is easy to divide into two workspaces: one side for my work computer, the other side for my personal one. I could have just tossed my monitors and computers on the desks and called it a day, but I wanted to make things look and work even better than before. If I was going to spend the time and effort to do this, I should do it right.
One element that elevates the style of any computer desk is monitor arms. I was already a fan of VESA-mount arms thanks to the Ergotron arm I use with my Wacom Cintiq, and I wanted to bring that level of flexibility to the rest of my displays. Most monitor arms clamp to the edge of the desk, and this frees up valuable desk space occupied by traditional stands. They also tend to have more freedom of movement in all three axes. Built-in cable management disguises unsightly wires and keeps your desk clutter-free. Plus, they just look cooler than the cheap, plasticky stands most monitors come with these days. Even a Monoprice monitor arm looks better than the sorry excuse of a stand LG ships with their very expensive monitors. That’s what I wound up buying, by the way—the Monoprice arms are doing a great job for just fifty bucks a piece. They even support my 34 inch 5K ultrawide with no complaints. Of course, clamps aren’t just for monitors, either. iPad holders, ring light poles, and webcam scissor arms all easily attach to the edge of the desk. Don’t underestimate this ability, because it helps keep your working surface clear for the stuff you actually need to work on.
Maintaining a polyurethane finish is super easy—just wipe it down with a damp cloth. Got a scratch or a nick? Some clear acrylic nail polish can fill in flaws, and once it’s dried just polish up the fixed area using those brown bags or ultra-fine grit sandpaper. A great way to keep your desk free of marks and dings is to use a desk mat. Just like blotters or those big desk calendars back in the day, desk mats keep your keyboards, mice, and pens from mucking up your finish. Plus, they act as giant coasters, so they’re perfect for the requisite cups of coffee or other beverages that you’ll have by your side.
So how much damage did this do to my wallet? Here’s the cost of the materials for the desks:
2x Hardwood Reflections Butcher Blocks: $180 each ($229 as of this post)
3x Ikea Alex Drawers: $80 each ($90 for white or $110 for turquoise in 2022)
2x Ikea Olov legs: $15 each (I already had them, but I’m listing the price anyway)
2x Ikea Signum cable management guides: $15 each ($20 in 2022)
Finishing materials (wipe-on poly, rags, mineral spirits, disposable drop cloths, spacers, anti-slip mats, sandpaper): $50
That puts the total around $710 before tax for an L-shaped setup. That was back in 2021, and I’m betting prices have only gone up. If I built a single desk, it would have been more around $400. How does that compare to a prefab option from Amazon, Wayfair, or an office supply store? Amazon and Wayfair carry everything from Ikea knockoff garbage up to real wood office furniture, but anything within the $3-400 price range is going to be laminated MDF, sometimes of dubious origin. Office supply stores have more recognizable brand names, like Sauder and Bush, but you might not like their staid, boring style. It’s hard to argue with the value here If your time and budget allows for it. Another popular alternative is Husky workbenches, usually sold at home supply stores. You can buy a pre-finished top and use your own legs or frames, saving you time as long as you like a natural finish. Husky is even making kits targeted towards desk use—and they’re very affordable.
Overall, I’m very satisfied with the setup. I’ve never had something that felt so solid—I’m used to particleboard or MDF desks with flimsy frames. The amount of workspace is similar to what I had at my office job for a long time. But I don’t think I would have been as satisfied if I didn’t attach all my monitors to VESA arms. The amount of desk space that monitor arms free up can’t be underestimated. If you’re going to commit to this style of desk, you should plan on using VESA arms as well. You don’t need the most expensive Ergotron arms unless you are constantly moving your displays around. Monoprice is good enough for the price.
One last point that got me to open up my wallet and put in my time to do this was the knowledge that I could hold on to these for the long haul. These desks are super simple to take apart—just pick up and move the components. I don’t have to worry about losing screws or brackets or bits. When I eventually move, these desks aren’t getting torn apart or sent to the thrift store—they’re keepers. Overall, this setup is an easy way to get a great desk for your dollar. It works well in a modern workspace or a retro environment. You don’t even have to buy new to do this—you can pick up used cabinets and old tabletops to build these on the cheap if you want to match your vintage computer equipment. The only limit is your imagination.
Reading podcast reviews in Apple’s Podcast apps isn’t a good experience. I’m not even referring to the content of the reviews, which like most internet comment sections ranges from insightful to execrable. No, I’m talking about the process of navigating and reading those reviews. It’s been bad ever since iOS 9’s big refactoring of Podcasts.app and it hasn’t gotten any better since.
Why do podcast reviews matter? Apple’s operated one of the largest podcast catalogs on the planet since 2005. Millions of people used iTunes and owned devices that connected to it, like iPhones and iPods, and they were ready to tell you if a podcast was lousy or great. Apple also uses ratings and reviews to populate shows in its ranking and recommendation lists, which is why podcasters are often begging kindly requesting that you give them a five star rating and review in their show’s credits. Even if a friend referred you to a show, it might be nice to see what other people thought about it.
So why am I grumpy about the state of reviews? It’s all about user experience. Apple likes to crow about how Podcasts.app is a unified experience across all its devices, but that’s not always a good thing. It’s sometimes the worst of both worlds—each platform shares annoying limitations while having their own gotchas. On the iPhone, reviews are presented in an infinitely scrolling list, with no way to sort or filter them. The iPad presents reviews in a square grid, again with no sorting or filtering options. If you have a longer review, tapping “more” on the iPhone expands the block to show the complete text, while the iPad shows a maddeningly large modal pop-up that blurs out the rest of the screen.
A dropdown. How’s about that?
Mac users who used iTunes to listen to podcasts would see a reviews page that looked a lot like an album or app review page. First, iTunes allowed you to sort reviews. The default is an algorithmic “most helpful” that pushes reviews that have been marked as “helpful” to the top, but otherwise prioritizes newer reviews. If that’s not actually helpful, you can sort by most favorable or most critical, which is really sort by star rating. Lastly, you can sort by most recent, which shows the newest reviews first. The total number of reviews along with the number of each rating were listed, and if a review was too long clicking “more” expanded it to show the entire one without clunky modals. Plus, reviews can be marked as helpful or not, and if a review has issues like bad language or was spammy, you can report it. That’s all basic stuff you expect on most comment sections on the internet. The iPhone and iPad apps used to have these features too, but they disappeared in one of Apple Podcasts’ many UI redesigns over the past five years.
How Podcast reviews looked in iTunes.
Apple brought the iOS Podcasts experience to the Mac in 2019 when Mac OS Catalina split iTunes apart into separate apps. Now Mac users are subjected to Podcasts.app on the Mac, and it hasn’t improved one bit since. In fact, it’s actively worse than iTunes in several ways. You can no longer choose how to sort reviews, with reviews forced into the “Most Helpful” sorting order. “Most Helpful” means old reviews that could be long out of date get shown at the top because a lot of people marked them as “helpful” at some point. The thing is, you can’t mark reviews as “helpful” anymore on any Apple platform—only users of iTunes for Windows can still mark reviews as helpful because they still have the legacy interface. This just raises further questions, like “are those reviews still helpful if they’re old?” Those upvoting features aren’t the only casualties—the ability to report a review is gone too! With these community moderation features missing in action, Apple Podcast reviews are now less functional than YouTube comments.
But the most infuriating thing is that reading reviews is straight-up broken since the introduction of Podcasts.app to the Mac. Let’s say you’ve written a long, detailed review about a podcast. The main reviews listing will truncate it with a More… link as it did in iTunes, except when you click the More link Podcasts opens up a modal dialog box that truncates the review at four lines of text! Regardless of how large or small you size the window, you’ll never see the missing text. Despite feedbacks being filed, this still hasn’t been fixed. Given the lack of, well, any care given to podcast reviews in Apple Podcasts, I doubt Apple values them very much. I can confirm that this is just a bug with Podcasts.app on the Mac, as iOS, iPad OS and Apple Podcasts on the Web all show the full text of a review when clicking the More… link. Given the other problems in Podcasts.app, like its syncing issues and its inability to show a proper list of “recent” episodes without forgetting some shows, reviews seem like small fry. Still, Apple software is supposed to be about the little things. The joints on the back of the cabinet are supposed to be finished the same as the ones on the front.
Reviews on the Mac look similar to the iPad, but…
…as you can see, this is just broken. I don’t mean to pick on MichiganJay in particular—their review was just the first one that broke.
What’s even more annoying about this situation is that Apple has already proven it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a lot wrong with App Store customer reviews from both a user and developer perspective, but at least an app’s review section has all the sorting and reporting features they had when they used to be in iTunes. App reviews can be sorted with the same four sorting options listed earlier. Bad or problematic reviews can be reported. Reviews can be marked as helpful or unhelpful. Developers can even respond to reviews, which is a feature that podcast hosts don’t get. And all of these features are available on the Mac OS, iOS, and iPad OS app stores. Marking a review as helpful or unhelpful in iOS wasn’t immediately obvious, but it pops up when long pressing the review. I tried the same thing in Podcasts.app and got nothing. Apple’s already proven it can be done, and as much as I dislike the UI of the App Store, the methods it used to implement them make sense in that context. Using the App Store as a model, all these features could be added back to Podcasts.app. Someone get that in the next sprint, please.
So if you’re on a Mac and you want to sort reviews or actually read their entire contents, are you screwed? No! Sure, you can see the whole review on Podcasts for the Web, but what if you want to sort or upvote a review? Believe it or not, there is a way! You may have noticed earlier that my screenshot of the “old” interface was actually in Music.app in Monterey. Despite the separation of iTunes into multiple apps, its all-in-one legacy lives on. You can open up podcast pages in Music.app just like iTunes. By crafting a music:// link to point to a podcast, Music will dutifully follow the link and open up the legacy podcast page.
Here’s an example: music://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/judge-john-hodgman/id337713843 Just click it and you’ll be asked to open it in Music.app. The reviews tab for the show is right there, and you can write reviews, mark them as helpful, report them, and sort by newest added. You can even browse the old iTunes podcast catalog by using the breadcrumbs and going up to the top level. So long as iTunes for Windows still exists, I bet this functionality won’t go away from Music.app.
You can even play and subscribe, though I don’t think subscribe would actually work.
Honestly, I just want to be able to read a complete review and sort them by date added. That shouldn’t be too hard, but Apple seems to care more about extracting a percentage of podcaster’s revenue than actually making a good user experience these days. If Apple wants more people to treat Apple Podcasts like a community, then it needs to start actually making it like one.
Here in Userlandia: Lian Li and the Case of the Aluminum Computer Case.
When you're hunting for old junk, it's best to keep your expectations low, so that you can be pleasantly surprised. As the Onion warned us way back in 1997, people love retro just a little too much, which can make it hard to find bargains. The truly rare and expensive stuff gets filtered out and shipped to warehouses for listing on online auction sites. The stuff that's good but not mind-blowing gets placed in glass cases at the front of the store, tagged with, let's say optimistic prices sourced from Buy It Now listings. I might be willing to pay $25 for that SCSI slide scanner… if it wasn’t missing its power supply. Nevertheless, you sometimes find gold among the dross. Gold… or other metals.
I visited the Goodwill in Hudson, New Hampshire one frigid February afternoon expecting to find nothing of importance. This store is a bust more often than not, but it’s on my drive from Salem to Nashua, so I might as well stop to investigate. To my amazement, there in the new arrivals section was a new-in-box Lian Li aluminum PC case. Lian Li made some of the highest rated cases of the early aughts, so this was a nice find indeed. The box top was already cut open for easy inspection, and the case looked brand new. All the accessories were included and it was still wrapped in a protective plastic bag. Even the original shipping label was intact. And it was tagged at thirty dollars? That felt awful low. If I’d bought this new in 2003, it would have set me back $180—that’d be $280 today, thanks to our friend inflation. Even now, it'd still cost $100 on a used gear site, and that's not counting $50 for shipping. I wasn’t expecting to spend $30 on a computer case that day, but a deal like that, for a quality PC component like this, doesn't show up very often.
Doesn’t look fancy on the outside…
Maybe they were fooled by the box. With its bold fonts, solid colors, and starburst badge shouting “Pentium 4 Compatible,” the packaging looked like something you'd make in your first-year graphic design class. “C+, solid effort.” Someone at Lian Li decided to cut costs that year, because although they shelled out for color printing… they only had one box design. And they used it for far more models than they should have.
But mint on the inside.
I'm not criticizing their translation—“details are various from different models” might not be perfect English, but it's perfectly clear. You and I both know exactly what they meant to say—which is the problem. Each box had an extra label on the side, with the model number and specs. My Goodwill find was a PC-6077—which you'd never know just from looking at the box, which showed a PC-60. While this strategy probably saved Lian Li some production costs, it probably also caused countless headaches in the stock room at Micro Center. Regardless, I can’t judge a box by its cover. Can this chassis hold up to twenty years of hindsight? Let’s start with its exterior design.
The PC-6077 in all its brushed metal glory.
Lian Li’s trademark silver fuselage still looks great twenty years later. A brushed aluminum finish stands out amongst the ranks of mostly beige, white, and sometimes black painted boxes of the early 21st century. But as unique as it was in the computer market, this style isn’t exactly original. Plop a silver Lian Li case next to my grandpa’s Onkyo stereo system from the 1970s and the resemblance is uncanny. Brushed aluminum was being used in A/V equipment and appliances for years before PC case makers decided it was cool. If the retro hi-fi style wasn’t to your taste, Lian Li also offered their cases in a subtle anodized black finish. Still, if you want people to know you have a fancy aluminum case, that brushed metal look shouted it from the rooftops.
The aluminum case craze started in the year 2000 with the Cooler Master ATC-200 and Lian-Li’s series of cases. Cooler Master claims they made the “first aluminum PC case” with the ATC-200, but corroborating that claim is difficult. Lian Li had started their aluminum rack mount computer case business back in the eighties. But rack frames, rack mount server cases, and rolling server cabinets weren’t on the front page of the Tiger Direct catalog in the Web 1.0 days. The earliest documentation and references I could find for both manufacturers’ consumer aluminum cases are dated sometime in late 1999. My hunch is that Cooler Master’s case debuted in the USA first, while Lian Li was first shipping in Asian markets. In Ars Technica’s Case and Cooling forum, there are posts raving about the ATC-200 dated a few months before the first Lian Li thread. Without more definitive proof—and a manufacturer saying “we did it first” doesn’t count—I’ll give this one to Cooler Master.
Enough history—let’s get back to the case design. And there’s one word I’d use to describe that design: classy. There’s no colorful look-at-me LED or fluorescent lighting. There’s no overwrought curves and flourishes. Touching it feels classy, like the aluminum dashboard trim in a sports car. Even the front bezel is made out of aluminum. Most case bezels are plastic, and factories back then had trouble matching the color between painted metal and plastic. Brushed aluminum dodged that problem entirely. Still, Lian Li couldn’t avoid using some plastic, with satin black strips adorning the top and bottom of the bezel. Shame they weren’t carbon fiber like some other Lian Li models. Still, they complement the brushed metal finish and fit the classy aesthetic. I understand why these are plastic—they’re the part of the bezel that actually clips to the frame. It’s easier and more reliable to make these bits out of plastic, so it’s just the right material for the job.
Speaking of the front section, the most interesting design decision isn’t just for looks. An array of nine 5 1/4” drive bays sets this case apart from its competition. Yeah, that’s right—nine 5 1/4s. Most PC cases of the era had several different types of drive bays: external 5 1/4” for optical drives, external 3 1/2” for floppies or other removable media, and internal 3 1/2” for hard disks. Most mid-tower cases arranged these bays in a 4-3-3 setup. To get more than four 5 1/4s you usually had to step up to an enormous full-tower case, like Lian Li’s PC-70 or the Chieftec Dragon.
Using all 5 1/4s wasn’t exactly a new idea. Just like the brushed aluminum finish, this drive bay setup was a retro throwback. The original IBM PC only had 5 1/4” bays, as did many clones. Granted, they were arranged horizontally, but you get my drift. Over the years as hard drives and floppy disks got smaller, PC manufacturers traded some 5 1/4” bays for more 3 1/2” bay. But the all-5 1/4 setup didn’t vanish—it migrated to server builds, where hot-swap drive cages fit perfectly into 5 1/4” bays. Other manufacturers would also experiment with an all-bay setup—the Cooler Master Stacker, Antec Nine Hundred, and Thermaltake Tai Chi, to name just a few.
I actually dig the aesthetics of the uniform bay approach. There’s a nice symmetry to it—take out all the bezels and brackets and the front of the case has an opening perfect for any of the lovely items in Lian Li's catalog full of accessories—or, if you really insisted, something made by another company. Included with the case were aluminum trim covers for optical and floppy drives, which blend their usually beige bezels into the box. If you needed more, they were just an online order away. Fan controllers, hard drive cages, and fan mounts were also on tap, and given enough coin you could build a clean, all-aluminum computer.
You’re free to put anything anywhere, so long as you can mount it.
But as classy as my thrift store treasure is, I've discovered a few flaws in its design. First up is the front panel I/O door. USB, FireWire, and audio connectors are hidden behind one of the cheapest feeling mechanisms I’ve used in a long time. It works… technically. but it just flaps around with clanky metal sounds. Despite being made out of aluminum like the optical drive trim plate it doesn’t have the same smooth feel because there’s no levers or springs or anything to dampen the opening. I would have preferred exposed, flush mounted ports instead. At least put a little engineering effort into the door instead of this pitiful excuse for a hinge.
Next, the power and reset buttons are built into the stock 3-in-2 bay hard drive cage. This isn't all bad: you can move it from the standard location at the bottom of the case to anywhere, really. If you’re not happy with the default location at the bottom of the case, you can move it to the top or middle. But that’s the only positive thing I can say about it. Both the power and reset buttons are spongy and noisy. The spring's noise reverberates into the trim plate—and it's a high-pitched little thing, just enough to be annoying instead of a satisfying click. It’s what they’d call “bad switchgear” in the car business. It's amazing how cheap it feels, really—you turn a computer on and off all the time. If you bought this case back in the day, you spent a lot of money on it, and you wanted buttons that felt expensive—or at least normal. Lian Li did such a good job on everything else that this bit of chintziness stands out. There’s plenty to say about the wimpy 80mm fan, but that’s better saved for later when we talk about cooling. This case’s full-tower brother, the PC-7077, offered a 4-in-3 bay cage with a 120mm fan instead—it should have been in this case too. You could order one from Lian Li if you really wanted one, but that shouldn’t have been necessary. The buttons and LEDs should have been built into the top or side of the bezel.
Last is the unfortunate fact that actually utilizing those 5 1/4” bays gets ugly—literally. Add a single drive or accessory that doesn’t match and now your silvery ingot is blemished with a beige bruise. Opting for the black anodized finish minimized the problem because many aftermarket accessories came in black, but what if you wanted the all-shiny experience? The Lian Li accessories catalog was right there, full of drive kits, fan grilles, and trim covers, but your wallet wasn’t going to like the prices. So if you wanted the brushed metal case, and you cared about aesthetics, you had to go all-in.
Of course, aluminum cases aren’t just about aesthetics. Consider the era in which these Lian Li, Cooler Master, and other “premium” boxes debuted. It was the turn of the millennium, and the market for do-it-yourself PC building was growing rapidly. Online parts sellers made it easier than ever to buy the exact components you needed for your ultimate computing machine. LAN parties drove demand for better looking equipment to impress onlookers. Processors and graphics cards were breaking performance records, but they needed better cooling to do so. Enthusiasts who in the past might have upgraded one or two components from a prebuilt system were now building entire PCs from scratch. Consequently, these builders suffered from the numerous design flaws of contemporary case construction. Nerds everywhere cursed as they cut their fingers and scraped their knuckles working inside cases that hadn’t changed much since the eighties. After years of casual casualties, they called for an end to difficult and cramped PC cases.
An obscure Zen Buddhist scholar named Steve Jobs once said that design isn’t how something looks and feels, it’s how it works. So if you spent the extra money on one of the new wave of premium PC cases, did you actually get a product that worked, or did it just look nicer? Let's take a look inside and see if beauty is more than bezel deep. First thing to do is pull off that front bezel, which is easy thanks to a convenient cutout along the bottom edge. Many cases of the nineties required the removal of side panels and interior parts to detach their bezels, so this is already a good sign. More nice touches include large thumbscrews that secure the side panels, motherboard tray, and power supply bracket. There’s no trick latches or breakable clips on the side panels—they slide right out with no hitches or hiccups. Anyone who’s struggled with opening an intransigent side panel or shell will appreciate this smooth action.
You might be thinking “Don’t all PCs have removable side panels and bezels?” And that’s true, but you need to consider them in the context of the whole case. These boxes aren’t just supposed to look good—they’re supposed to feel good. You know what feels good after removing your side panels? Finding a slide-out motherboard tray and an external power supply bracket. Assuming you're the sort of person who removes the side panels from your computer cases, anyway. Lian Li didn’t invent any of these features, but they implemented them in a thoughtful way.
Let’s start with the power supply bracket. In most cases—pun intended—a power supply was fastened directly to the frame with some screws. Sometimes creative hand gymnastics were required—hold the supply with your right hand, turn the magnetic tipped screwdriver with your left, and hope you've screwed it in… and not screwed it up. There might be a little flange that helps hold the power supply in place, but that’s not guaranteed because I’ve repaired several machines that lacked PSU supports. I’m sure there’s lefty builders out there chuckling at this—they had an advantage for once! And that's just for installation. Removal could be even trickier, if you'd added in one of those giant Zalman flower heatsinks or some water cooling. An external bracket neatly solves these problems. After attaching the bracket to the PSU, simply slide it and the cables into the case. Removal is just as easy.
But that power supply bracket is just the opening act—the real star was the slide-out motherboard tray. Though most mid-tower cases had a sensible amount of space inside, you were still working inside a box. Sliding out a motherboard tray is like dropping the engine from a car to replace the cylinder heads—it’s easier to do complex mechanical work in an open space. Less risk of scraping your knuckles on the drive racks when installing a motherboard or CPU if you’re working outside the box. Power supplies and their wiring don’t get in the way of tightening heatsink screws. Did you drop a screw or jumper? No worries—just tilt the tray to one side and grab it. You could even open-air bench test a system if you were feeling frisky. For most users this is a one- or two-time convenience. But then, 'most users' weren't the target market here. The people who bought these cases were tinkerers, and tinkerers loved these trays. Case modders were always moving boards in and out of their project boxes. You don’t want delicate electronics inside your case when you're cutting holes in the side or constructing custom water cooling loops. True, you won't get a tsunami, but a few ounces of coolant in the wrong place can kill a machine—or a very unlucky tinkerer. You did remember to unplug everything first, right?
I can already see the tweets asking “if removable trays are so great, why have they vanished from most modern PC cases?” My gut says there’s two reasons for their disappearance. First, there’s good old fashioned bean counting. A removable tray is extra complexity of the mechanical and manufacturing varieties, and that’s not free. Like I said earlier: most users aren't tinkerers. If the tray is just a one- or two-time convenience, maybe it's more economical to spend those engineering resources elsewhere. Second, a fixed tray is better for a case’s structural integrity, especially when there’s a cutout for processor heatsink backplates. A few modern cases like the beQuiet Dark Base still have a removable tray, but instead of a slide-out design, it’s reversible. Only a few screws stand between mounting your motherboard on the left- or right-hand side of the case. You know, so you can put your PC on the left- or right-hand side of your desk and still ogle your RGB LED light show.
With the motherboard tray and power supply bracket removed, we’re left with the PC-6077’s frame, power supply shield, and the drive bay rack. These are all riveted together, since welding aluminum is more complicated than welding steel. A lack of sharp edges and some strategically placed plastic trim meant no more cut fingers and cursing fits. Hard drives and optical drives are secured by ordinary screws, not tool-less clips or rails. However, the hard drive cage does have rubber grommets to insulate the case from spinning disk vibrations. Aside from being made from aluminum, the construction is on par with other high-end cases of the time.
The PC-6077’s 3-in-2 hard drive cage.
That aluminum structure feels solid and sturdy, but also quite light—which, granted, is the whole point of aluminum. My postal scale weighs the PC-6077 at around thirteen pounds empty. Most steel mid-towers of the era weighed around twenty pounds or more, but that weight savings comes at a price. Aluminum objects have always been more costly to manufacture than steel ones—Wikipedia will tell you more than you want to know about the Hall-Héroult process. But if you’re lugging your liquid-cooled Pentium 4 to the LAN-o-rama every Saturday, you’d happily pay the difference to cut your computer’s tonnage. Lian Li could have made the PC-6077 even lighter if they used more plastic, but the few ounces saved wouldn’t be worth losing perceived quality. That strategy was reserved for their entry level products, like the PC-10 which used a plastic front bezel.
Cost wasn’t aluminum’s only downside. On the one hand, it's ductile, which encourages modifications! On the other hand, it's ductile, which makes it vulnerable to flexing. Anyone who used a PowerBook or MacBook Pro before the unibody era knows just how bendy aluminum computers can be. Just take off the side panels and you can feel them flexing with normal handling. There are plenty of sad posts on forums from people who dented their cases with an errant foot, or dropped them and actually bent the frames. If you want more structural rigidity, you need to add more weight - which defeats the purpose of buying an aluminum case to begin with.
Aluminum’s lower density had another unintended consequence: noise. I've got some experience in voiceover, and I can tell you, mass plays an essential role in soundproofing. A lighter aluminum case absorbs less sound than a heavier steel one. A few overlapping metal pieces inside the case like the power supply frame and drive bay frame aren’t riveted together. Two of the three included fans are mounted using plastic rivets, which are better than screws but worse than isolated rubber mounts. Those rubber grommets I mentioned earlier from the hard drive bays were thin, and easily compromised. All of this adds up to a case that is susceptible to vibrations, sympathetic or otherwise.
“But my case doesn’t rattle or vibrate,” you say. Well, that’s great, but there’s another factor that impacts the acoustic qualities of a case: cooling. Whether it's case fans, heatsink fans, or radiator fans, it’s always been a challenge to build the fastest computer that’s also the quietest. What would you say if I told you that Lian Li has your best interests in mind? Why, right on the side of the box it says in big, bold letters that “Lian Li aluminum cases release heat faster than other cases!” Hey, they used a bold font—it must be true! But even if it was set in a different font, it’s still a bold claim by Lian Li. It’s easy to prove that an aluminum case is lighter—just put it on a scale. But proving that an aluminum case cools better? That’s more complicated.
They wouldn’t lie, would they?
Aluminum is a common heatsink material because it’s a good conductor with decent thermal capacity at an affordable price. Car radiators and AC evaporators are made out of aluminum. PCs were already using aluminum heatsinks on various chips—so why not make the case out of aluminum too? Posters on usenet and web forums extolled the benefits of an aluminum case for improving cooling performance, because SpeedFan showed lower temperatures after transplanting their builds into a shiny aluminum tower. “That proves it,” they’d say, like Philip J. Fry watching blurry, grainy videos of Bigfoot.
But as smart as PC nerds like to think they are, sometimes they forget that correlation doesn’t equal causation. These claims are all marketing hype. Aluminum might be a good conductor, but you know what isn’t? Air. Heatsinks need to touch components to actually sink the heat, and there’s usually some kind of thermal compound binding them together. So if the case isn’t touching any hot components, it’s not actually cooling them. I can already hear the next counterpoint: “But wouldn’t the case material absorb heat from hot case air?” I suppose it could, but let’s think about that for a second.
Heatsinks and radiators use mass and exposed surface area to exchange heat with air, and they have a certain amount of thermal capacity before saturation. That capacity can be increased in three ways: more mass, more surface area, or more airflow. There are some cases designed to be passively cooled, like the Streamcom ST-DB4, but the case itself is a giant finned heatsink directly connected to hot components. The PC-6077 doesn’t do any of that, and like a normal steel case its thermal performance is at the mercy of airflow. I don’t know about yours, but my cases obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Cooling wasn’t exactly priority number one for most case makers. Most PC cases of the late nineties had one rear case fan working in tandem with the power supply fan. As these fans exhausted hot air from the interior, fresh air was pulled in from vents at the front of the case. When faced with serious warmth—say, from a Pentium 4 processor and a Nvidia GeForce FX graphics card—this cooling setup couldn’t beat the heat. Consumer PCs needed more fans that could move more cubic feet of air through the case to cool more effectively.
We could shove so many fans in there!
The truth is that Lian Li's claims about releasing heat had nothing to do with the case's aluminum construction. Their cases cooled better because they included more preinstalled fans. More fans means more airflow which means more cooler, in that Tim Allen sort of way. The PC-6077, like most cases of the early aughts, had mounts for multiple intake and exhaust fans. Three 80mm fans were included in the stock configuration: an intake fan up front, an exhaust on the motherboard tray, and an exhaust at the top of the case. The power supply’s fan made four in total. This created a negative pressure system, which was sensible for most builds of the time. But PC enthusiasts back then were just like the PC enthusiasts of today—they wouldn't settle for sensible! Fortunately—for a given value of “fortunately”—the PC-6077 was pretty flexible when it came to cooling. Those beautiful, wide open drive bays were perfect for adding extra fans, and Lian Li was more than happy to sell you drive cages with fan mounts. Oh, and look—there’s one more 80mm mounting spot on the motherboard tray, just perfect for adding another fan!
What about the competition? Cooler Master’s aluminum cases had similar fan mounting options. Chenming’s model 601—which you might know better as the Chieftec Dragon, the Antec SX1030, the Thermaltake Xaser, or the case used by Alienware—had multiple front and rear fan mounts along with side panel fan mounts. So that means they all have fantastic cooling right? Think again. Some cases with lots of fan mounts only had one, maybe two fans installed, and they might not have been installed in optimum positions. A critical examination of these enthusiast cases—including Lian Li’s—show that most manufacturers just shoved fans in their cases with no real consideration for fluid dynamics.
Talk about a choked-off intake.
Look at the intakes—they’re choked by layers of of metal gratings, foam filters, and narrow bezel vents. That’s not all—the intake fans are sandwiched on the other side by hard drive cages! Whatever air that’s lucky enough to make it past the drives has to contend with a jungle of ribbon cables and power wires. At least exhaust fans were positioned near the CPU, and some OEMs were smart enough to install dual 80mm or a single 120mm fan to really suck out the air. But let’s say for the sake of argument that there were no blockages or cables or restrictions. The exhaust fans aren’t in line with the intake fans, which means there isn’t a straight path for air to move through the case. The result is a case riddled with turbulence and dead zones, where fans have to work harder—and therefore louder—to cool your computer.
When it came to acoustics, fans back then were kinda… meh. Pulse-width modulated variable fan speed was still years away. Four 80mm fans spinning at a constant two to three thousand RPM meant these suckers were loud. Good thing there’s plenty of bays in the PC-6077, because you’ll need a fan controller to dial things back when you don’t need maximum power. But be careful, because even ball-bearing fans could make mechanical noise at certain speeds. Multiply the mechanical noises by reverberations in the case, and you’ve got a computer cacophony. Before you know it you’re reading SilentPCReview.com and testing all the various isolation mounts to see which combination worked best.
Thermals are even more important today than they were twenty years ago, and PC case makers have largely caught on to what works and what doesn’t. There’s still duds out there, but it’s pretty easy to filter them out thanks to the Youtube Tech Personality Industrial Complex. The same market pressure that forged the aluminum cases of the early aughts is still pushing manufacturers to make quieter, cooler chassis…es…es with better functionality today.
So what’s left to do with this like-new PC-6077? The obvious idea is to fill it with vintage parts and make it a Windows XP gaming beast. Yes, an Athlon 64 X2 with a GeForce 6800 Ultra would be right at home, serving up some Battlefield 2 with a side of SimCity 4. Install a Fanbus, a SoundBlaster Audigy control panel, dual CD/DVD burners, and a removable hard drive carrier and you’ve got the classiest gamer box on the block… assuming you still live in 2005.
But what if you wanted to stuff a modern computer inside? Some would cry sacrilege, but I know people who’ve used and re-used their Lian Li cases for over a decade. I don’t think it’s that crazy of an idea, especially for a platform like the PC-6077. Lian Li’s appeal to the 5 1/4 lovers makes it remarkably easy to convert this case into an airflow-focused silver sleeper. Yanking out all of the trim covers and blanking plates gives you plenty of room to do whatever you want. Fit some 120mm fan adapters and replace the stock 80mm fans with Noctuas and you have airflow competitive with most modern cases. If you feel up to the task, there’s enough room to 3D print or fabricate a dual 140mm fan bracket. Fit a mesh front covering into the bezel and you’d make something that could blend right in with modern airflow oriented cases.
You’ll run into other issues, of course. Closed-loop liquid coolers aren’t an option without fabricating a bracket to mount them into the drive bays. You could take a page from the LAN partiers of yore and build a custom open-loop liquid cooling system. Many medium to large sized air coolers will fit within the PC-6077’s confines, like Cooler Master Hypers, Noctua NH-U12s and beQuiet Black Rocks. But the truly massive air coolers, like the Noctua NH-D15, won’t stand a chance. Modular power supplies mitigate the cable management problems somewhat, since you can just omit the cables you don’t need. Still, cleanly routing the PCI Express power, 24 pin ATX, and the EPS 12 volt cables will take some—no, all of your cunning. Stick to NVME solid state drives and you won’t have to worry about any SATA power or data cables. If you plan your build carefully, you could conceal a killer modern system in this twenty year old shell and have a PC that looks like nobody else’s.
The G5’s thermal design was a benchmark for other systems.
Yet the only fully aluminum cases on Lian Li’s website these days are a few small form factor boxes—fully-aluminum tower cases are nowhere to be found. So why did Lian Li stop making cases like this? There’s two factors for the decline of the fully aluminum mid-tower case. First, other companies used steel to build better designs, with more features, for half as much. Meanwhile, Lian Li spent too much time imitating the Power Mac G5, and not enough time innovating. Yes, there was a demand from PC users for cases that looked like the G5 or Mac Pro, because nothing looked like G5 cases. Apple had learned their lesson about hot components and bad acoustics with the Mirrored Drive Doors Power Mac G4, and had gone back to the drawing board to solve their problems with a clean sheet design. Thus the Power Mac G5 got a brand new case design with straight-through airflow and dedicated thermal zones, which made for a quiet, high performance computer. Lian Li’s PC V-1000 might have looked like a G5, but just because something has a cheese grater front panel doesn't mean it works like a G5. The V-series sold well, but Lian Li mortgaged their future by copying Apple.
The second factor that spelled doom—no pun intended—for aluminum cases was the decline of the LAN party. Home internet got fast enough that most people had a good enough time blasting their buddies without departing their desks. If you’re not moving your computer around all the time, you don’t care as much about saving weight. The extra money spent on an aluminum chassis could be spent elsewhere, like on more fans, liquid cooling, or RGB LED lights. After all, who cares about subtlety when you can put on a light show that rivals a Pink Floyd concert? The remaining buyers who valued weight savings could buy even smaller and lighter aluminum Mini-ITX small form factor cases. Mini-ITX has its own compromises, but the finished product saves a lot of space. If you have to move your computer around a lot, why not just make it as small as possible?
To its credit, Lian Li diversified long before the collapse of the market by creating the Lancool series of steel cases in 2009. Lancool catered to cost-conscious buyers while Lian Li continued to sell aluminum boxes to their traditional enthusiast clientele. Even as other manufacturers abandoned the aluminum case market, Lian Li doggedly stuck to it. Unfortunately, Lian Li abandoned their fully aluminum product line in the mid-2010s. Current Lian Li cases like the 011 Dynamic are steel frames with aluminum accents or panels. They still make a few aluminum small form factor cases—check out their collaboration with Dan Cases for some neat mini-ITX designs—but those are now rare exceptions. Most builders who valued the classy looks and functional design of Lian Li migrated to companies like Fractal Design, whose Define, Meshify, and Torrent series of cases are beloved for both gaming PCs and workstations.
Still, it’s remarkable that this old case can competitively cool a modern system with only a few minor upgrades. Someone could have bought a PC-6077 in 2003 and used it for their primary build for twenty years, which isn’t something you can say about most of its contemporaries. It seems like a happy accident that the all-bay design actually made it future-proof despite the obsolescence of 5 1/4” drives. During my research I found all sorts of forum and Reddit posts looking for cases just like this. Storage box builders are settling for used cases to fill with hot swap hard disk cages because the modern case market is leaving them high and dry. Server cases—then and now—are just too expensive and there’s no new mid-towers with lots of 5 1/4” drive bays. That’s why prices are still fairly high on eBay, and why I was shocked to find one at a thrift store. Sometimes fortune smiles upon thee, and this case will serve an honorable role as a vintage powerhouse. That is, once I decide what to put inside it.
If you work in or around software development, you might be familiar with Atlassian’s Jira. It’s one of the more popular project management applications out there, especially if you work in a Scrum or Kanban-style agile environment. It’s not just for software, of course—I know IT departments and salespeople that use Jira for tracking task progress. Nothing’s stopping you from using Jira for shepherding your comic book creation process, other than its incredible cost and administrative overhead. I’m a relatively new user to Jira, with a year’s worth of experience under my belt. Before that I used Redmine, Bugzilla, and proprietary bug tracking systems. It’s safe to say that I have some experience with issue tracking platforms.
When I started a new job one year ago, a friend of mine warned me about Jira. He’d gripe about how terrible Jira was and how he hated it. I sort of dismissed his complaints, as he hadn’t been suffering under the terrible weight of Redmine, let alone an inscrutable proprietary system. I thought anything had to be better than the terrible proprietary stuff I endured in the past. So I was willing to give Jira an honest shot. And you know what? I don’t hate it. But I don’t really like it, either, and it’s because it’s a bloated Javascript nightmare. There’s dozens of papercuts in its user experience that gradually scar you over time. And just like a papercut, these flaws aren’t going to kill you—but they’ll slow you down and make you so very angry.
One of the most irritating is some user interface designer’s obsession with dead space. Not white space, that stuff is useful, though sometimes abused. No, I’m talking dead space, which distracts the user and actively interferes with your usage of the product. Take something as simple as a text box. You’d think people would know how to make a text box work, but this one must have slipped by the folks at Atlassian. If you have an instance of Jira, go ahead and open up the new ticket window. You’re looking for a rich text text box in that window, like the one for a description. Here’s an image if you don’t have it in front of you.
So if you saw this text box, where do you think you would click on it to start typing? Would it be inside the outlined area of the text box? Maybe the white space below the toolbar. Both are sensible guesses, but before you give me your answer, step back and think about the question. Remember your past experience with text boxes. Your instinct is that you can click anywhere inside the boundaries and start typing. That’s a good example of Fitt’s Law: “The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.” Or in other terms, a bigger target is easier to hit. I’m already ignoring several problems in this box, like how there’s no clear separators between the toolbar and the editable text area, or the fact that the buttons aren’t even buttons. For the sake of this post we’ll grant these now common-day “cleanliness” design touches, even though I loathe them. But that’s a rant for another day, so back to the subject at hand. Let’s get back to the original question: where do you click to start typing?
If you answered “anywhere in the text box,” congratulations: you’re wrong. It’s not your fault; you’ve been conditioned to click on the box and start typing since you started using a computer. After all, text boxes have been around since the dawn of the GUI, and they’ve generally worked the same way for decades. It’s a fair and reasonable assumption to make. But that assumption is a trap when it comes to Jira, because you have to click in a very specific region of the text box to start typing. There’s no hint where that region is, other than when your cursor transforms into the I-bar. Take a look at this GIF.
Notice where the cursor transforms from the normal pointer to the I-bar. You can only enter text when the cursor enters this invisible zone that takes up a fraction of the text box! There’s no hint or clue for where this zone is—you have to carefully watch the cursor to know where to type. What looks like a big, appealing target is really just a tiny, hard to click strip.
Earlier I called that area outside the magic zone “dead space.” It’s dead because it does nothing inside the box. That doesn’t mean it lacks purpose—a little bit of white space to separate your text from the boundaries makes it easier to read. From a visual design standpoint, that’s a good thing. But most user experience designers would tell the programmers to make the white space a clickable area! Atlassian’s lack of care inadvertently tricked the user and made their life just a little harder.
Compare this to another product most of us have to endure: Slack. There’s a lot of criticisms I can lob at Slack, but at least they managed to make a functional message box. Compare Slack’s behavior when you click in the message box’s white space.
Clicking anywhere in the text box that isn’t a button makes it ready for text input. There’s a few things I could complain about here—namely, buttons should look like buttons, and I’m not really a fan of the toolbar sandwich. But what makes the toolbar sandwich tolerable is that clicking any place that isn’t a button puts the focus on text entry. The penalty for missing or being a little sloppy isn’t harsh. As soon as your cursor goes over the box, it changes to the I-bar, making it immediately obvious that you can type after clicking. It’s a nice, big target that’s hard to miss. It’s a good example of obeying Fitt’s Law. It’s rare that I tell some other app to be more like Slack, but in this case Jira could be a lot more like Slack.
Here’s the real kicker, though: Atlassian manages to do this correctly in other parts of Jira! For example, hot zones for comment text fields behave properly. If you create a ticket that has no text in its Description, then edit the ticket, you can click anywhere in the description text box to activate the cursor. There’s even a nice little horizontal line separating the toolbar area from the text box itself!
It’s these kinds of inconsistencies that really grind users’ gears. A user expects that their applications will work consistently no matter what mode they’re in. Larry Tesler had a NOMODES license plate for a reason. Our job as user experience designers is to eliminate friction and make our users’ lives easier. They shouldn’t have to think about where to click in a text box to start typing. Atlassian, fix your freakin’ text boxes.
