Western Digital pitches pink product... for charity
Are pocket hard drives, WD's forté?
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Western Digital is the latest drive maker to offer pocket-friendly storage that triggers a charity donation every time one's purchased. Like Sony, Belkin, Seagate and other before it, WD's targeting Breast Cancer, but it's not going to stop giving after a month.
WD's pink Passport: bad colour, good cause
Register Hardware readers know I'm no fan of pink products, but I'll make an exception for WD's metallic pink Passport pocket drive because it's for such a good cause. The handheld hard drive comes with a 250GB capacity, WD said, but it was tight-lipped about how much it'll give to the US National Breast Cancer Foundation every time somebody buys one.
However, it did say it will keep on making donations through to the end of February 2008, not just for a month like some of those rose-tinted products released for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Pocket friendly
So I'd encourage all of you to splash out on one for the woman in your life, perhaps as a Christmas pressie - we know how hard it is to think of something original that she might like.
Lovely, dear - chocolates/perfume/unflatteringly skimpy undies* again. Thank you so much...
*Delete as applicable
Knowing techie males, it'll be accompanied on The Big Day by a lecture on the importance of regular back-ups. I know, now we'll have no excuse, and those 250 gigabytes should be plenty for all of us laptop-toting ladies. There are 120GB and 160GB versions too, but only the 250GB model is available now, from WD's US website.
Next month, all the three versions will go on sale in Best Buy stores.
The Hardware Widow is hitched to a young, hardware geek - the
Tech Obsessed Youth - who thinks he knows more about technology than she does...
COMMENTS
I don't like it.
Taking advantage of people's good-intentions and kindheartedness as a marketing scheme is going too far. If Western Digital really cared, they would just donate the money themselves or give a portion of EVERY purchase to a breast cancer charity.
If consumers care, as indeed they should, they ought to donate money themselves. I didn't feel so strongly about this until I met a group of breast-cancer survivors (just a couple of weeks ago) who are outraged and disgusted by this sort of practice- enough to organize against it. They feel as though these corporations are capitalizing on their suffering simply as a way to advertise and sell more products.
They aren't opposed to it in theory, because any donation helps, but the way in which it is presented. It more or less comes down to a "buy this car or we'll club a baby seal" mentality. If it were simply a normal part of their advertising campaign stating a portion of every sale goes to a charity, that would be okay. However, having a separate, temporary 'pink' line of products is insulting. It implies consumers ought to buy EXTRA stuff they might not otherwise to support breast cancer charities.
Rather than buying your girlfriend a pink hard-drive, why don't you donate $100 in her name to a breast cancer charity and buy her a normal hard-drive. Or, better yet, something she actually wants.
right-ponded people
Any ideas as to whether we'll see this gizmo on sale over in Euroland or is this strictly a US release due to the US-centric nature of the charity deal?
Oi! WD! We have Breast Cancer charities over here, you know and it is coming up to Christmas. Just a thought.
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