Fujitsu assigns team of women to design PC for women
'All-out-pursuit of elegance' produces jewelled power supplies and mice
Fujitsu Japan has announced a range of PCs “planned and developed primarily under the direction of female employees” and “aimed at female users”.
The 'Floral Kiss' range of computers is an extension of the LifeBook line and will go on sale in Japan next Friday.
Fujitsu says the Floral Kiss was created because women make nearly half of PC purchases, which meant the company felt it was a good idea to design them a product of their own, along the following lines:
“The Floral Kiss project was born from the desire of Fujitsu's female employees to create a PC that women would find appealing. The new series, developed under the concept of bringing elegance to all aspects of PC design—from hardware to applications—was created with this aim in mind.”
Fujitsu's statement about the machine does at least immediately mention some technical details, namely that the ultrabooks run Windows 8, various third generation Core™ i5 CPUs and 500GB of hard disk. But those details are dealt with quickly, with the bulk of information on offer covering features like a scrapbook app, diary program that aggregates posts from Facebook and Twitter and a horoscopes service.
Three colours – Elegant White, Feminine Pink and Luxury Brown – are offered, while the machine also features a “top casing … constructed with an elegant and refined gradation with gold trim, and it features a flip latch that can easily open the display—even by users with long fingernails.”
A “pearl-like accent” adorns the machines' power button, while “the power status LED and Caps Lock key are decorated with diamond-cut stone for a sophisticated look. “An exquisite gold ring frames each key on the transparent keyboard” and there's a flower on the air vents.
Small and shiny mice and power supplies are another feature Fujitsu expects will do the business with women, with the Floral Kiss product literature proclaiming they are “... compact and fit easily into the hands of all users. At the same time, zirconia adornments and other details that give them a stylish appeal.”
One of the venues the machines will go on sale is at high-end jeweller agete, which means a special model bearing that brand's logo and colour scheme, plus a matching handbag.
Fujitsu's purple Floral Kiss ultrabook for women sports the livery of jewellery brand agete
An Australian anti-sexism community on Facebook, Destroy the Joint, carries a vigorous debate about the Floral Kiss. The comment we like best says:
“As a female surgeon I'm wondering when someone is finally going to make me a pink scalpel with sparkling zirconias in the lady-sized handle. With a floral motif. Can we get the Lady Engineers working on that please?”
A woman very close to your correspondent declared, with more than a hint of sarcasm, the PC a fine idea as “I only use a computer for shopping, anyway.”
There is, of course, precedent for this kind of thing in the form of luxury-car-branded PCs that are almost certainly aimed primarily at men. ASUS has also offered leather-trimmed PCs aimed at those more concerned with looks than performance.
The Floral Kiss range sells for 103,320 yen, about US$1295.00, at Fujitsu's Webmart. We're yet to hear from Fujitsu on whether the Floral Kiss will make it out of Japan. ®
COMMENTS
This PC also uses less power than one designed by a male. The downside is that every month for 3 to 14 days it is very temperamental and you don't dare ask it to do anything.
Another massively misdirected effort
This. Will. Not. Do. It!
Many attempts, exactly like this. All dismal failures. Women want nearly the same things in their products men want. Colors and some ornamentation are attractive - to just a few female buyers. But what they want the most is ease of use, no nasty cords, no extra "features" for the sake of extra features. Just check the stats on Apple notebooks and see how the M-F buyer is split.
Just focus on how they USE their technology. What their concerns are day to day. Make 'em look attractive, too. But not to teen girls. Elegant, sophisticated, accomplished adults.
Re: CEO Computer
Many years ago, I worked for a subsidiary of a very large US bank. Late one Friday afternoon, I was sent to assist VP Finance: his favourite accountant had just departed for a jolly^H^H^H^H^H business trip to Hong Kong and Singapore, leaving that month's financial reports in a spreadsheet on a floppy disk. VP Finance could not open the file, despite having the most expensive and powerful PC in the company. The reason: no operating system had ever been installed on VP Finance's PC. In over a year, he had never switched his PC on - it was on his desk for purely decorative purposes. His secretaries normally handled all his email and provided printouts of anything he needed to read.
CEO Computer
A few years ago, some colleagues and I speculated on why nobody had designed computers for CEOs and the like. I was thinking of burr walnut cases and maybe brass keys (design has moved on a bit since then, but you can imagine the modern equivalent).
On seeing how our CEO actually used his computer, it became clear that the appropriate installation was actually one of the cardboard dummy computers that furniture shops use to make desks look more lifelike.
Floral Kiss
Obviously I'm not as sophisticated as the rest of El Reg's readership. The phrase "floral kiss" immediately had me sniggering up my sleeve, as it sounds like something taken from the Viz Profanisaurus, where it would doubtless be a euphemism for farting in someone's face.
