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Comment by meerita | Hacker News Reader

Call me weirdo but I never jumped on the sticker wagon. I don't see the point of advertising companies for free. My support would be more in terms of using their services (paying, yes) than paying and also putting stickers on my laptop. Is just because fanatism or feeling proud of using something? I'm not trying to be jerk, but I never understood that movement.

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Most of my stickers aren’t really related to IT or a business or anything, save for some nonprofits. It helps me differentiate my work laptop from personal (similar looking thinkpads) and to enliven an otherwise dull but functional design in a way that is pleasing to me by virtue of it reflecting my interests and tastes, if these are ones that I feel comfortable sharing. What would be a good reason, in your opinion?

>Most of my stickers aren’t really related to IT or a business or anything

This I think people have less of a problem with, as your stickers add a bit of personality.

The guys with GitHub, redis and a chrome logo however...

I just want everything colored as to hide the maximum amount of crud that tends to build up. Usually black.

Stickers are purely a way to identify your laptop in a sea of otherwise identical MacBook pros.

Stickers are purely an extension of one's ego.

A few years ago I even saw an Ad[1] from Apple itself showing a lot of Macbooks with different stickers their owners have pasted on it, depicting something on the line of : " the Macbooks are so much loved that people just can't resist to personalize them."

And I still miss the previous work Macbook that I put Portal video game sticker on. :)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT4ZbwgIK3w

No, they are our industry's equivalent for prison tattoos.

> prison tattoos

Pretty much. They reveal what tribes you’re a part of and your history, allowing others to identify and categorize you. And they’re inappropriate in a traditional professional setting, requiring sleeves to cover them up.

True that. I usually put stickers on just to identify my laptop if everyone is using the same model. A small one in particular corner isnenough. Once I used a large corporate logo sticker diagobally across one corner and cut everything too large. Looked quite nice. My boss wasn't so happy as it turned the sticker I used should have been used for one of the meeting rooms. Not my fault if people are leaving it lying aroung for at least two months, is it?

Tattoos are in most West Coast tech companies, so don't worry.

Nope, they are a way to show that your are indeed different and special.

(since everyone in SF have the exact same laptop)

And usually the exact same unrelated tech company stickers...

Ah, the "I grabbed a handful of stickers from a conference / meetup" look.

No, this is what an naive outsider might think looking from the outside, thinking the “hipster” Mac users are just feeding ego, missing completely that they are only doing it so they don’t pick up someone else’s computer at work.

I didn't interpret the GP post to mean ego in a toxic way. I certainly put stickers on my laptop to express myself by sharing a bit of my interests and identity.

I never hand picked any computer in a job. I carry mine everywhere. I never leave my computer alone out of my section and, more over, if i leave it in my desk I don't need to identify it differently.

I can say by looking at my keyboard I can detect if it is mine by looking the most used keys, :)

I put stickers on my Dell, too.

Or a need for identity? Expression of your interests to an otherwise largely not-caring audience? I imagine having the best conversation at some point when some likes my openbsd sticker...

If you have a tux on your laptop I feel inclined to talk to you. If you hate my stickers (because you hate stickers), you feel less inclined to talk to me. Win-win.

What about funny stickers then, not branded ones? No fun allowed?

Isn't fun or humor projected outward - via a sticker in this case - an extension and illumination of one's ego?

Nothing inherently wrong with having an ego. It’s the inability to detach from/silence/deprioritize it that tends to cause issues.

I use a sticker to cover the manufacturer’s logo for various reasons. My choice of sticker was only an extension of ego insofar as it happened to come with a product I purchased around the time I got the laptop.

Razer? On some models their logo was backlit by the screen backlight- people using their laptops in a business setting seem to love to cover it up.

I always wondered how uptight people would have to be in a meeting to even give the slightest damn about a glowing green snake logo.

So like anything else they own?

lol, or a way to express themselves

Or....

A way to piss of IT departments

I put gaffing tape on mine for grip since we have to key card in and out of doors on the floors of our non-shared office. I kept dropping a new-ish 15” they gave me as I often had to juggle things while getting in and out of heavily sprung doors. IT hates it but they hate dented aluminum cases more.

>I kept dropping a new-ish 15” they gave me as I often had to juggle things while getting in and out of heavily sprung doors.

Why do you walk around with your laptop in your hands? For meetings?

>IT hates it but they hate dented aluminum cases more.

Even if it's a company issued laptop, what it's to IT whether you have stickers/tape or not?

Makes it harder to re-issue it out once you have left.

Aha. For shorter term employment makes sense. Usually in these hear parts the laptop will be deprecated/replaced before the employee (e.g. after 4-5 or so years).

> Why do you walk around with your laptop in your hands? For meetings?

Yup. Lots and lots of meetings.

> Even if it's a company issued laptop, what it's to IT whether you have stickers/tape or not?

No idea.

What's to hate about gaffers tape? Doesn't even leave residue

At work, my laptop is the only one with a Ryzen sticker.

Does it have a Ryzen chip? Or just a big AMD fan? :)

I'm excited to see more Ryzen laptops on the market, especially since Zen 2 is looking pretty nice on performance per watt.

Both. I bought the laptop because it has a Ryzen chip.

Figured that would be it. How do you like it? Do you think performance is solid?

For light gaming, it is miles ahead of my old Intel one. The Radeon card is just much, much better than Intel integrated graphics.

For normal browser use, I think it hiccups a little bit more than the Intel. It has twice the cores, but each core is not as fast as the Intel cores.

Isn't that a bit like putting a BMW sticker on a Toyota Auris?

No, more like putting a Michael Bubble sticker on Frank Sinatra.

Dell put the stickers, not me.

I keep an EFF bumper sticker on my laptop for that very reason — advertising for non-profits or causes. I’ve had a surprising (or not?) number of people ask “what’s this EFF thing?”, and in turn had many good conversations with folks about privacy, encryption, Etc. I know of at least one person who dug deeper after our chat and ended up donating to the EFF.

All of my stickers are for companies I've been directly involved with (eg past employers), FOSS projects (Python/PyCon, PostgreSQL), charities I'm active with (EFF, FSF, etc.), or services that I personally use a lot (Mastodon, Twitter). They're kind of a way of saying "I like these things".

I have googly eyes on mine. Not only can I definitely find my computer in a sea of identical MacBooks, people across from me at meetings seem to enjoy them.

You don‘t seem to be the only one https://devlids.com/lids/stevenjudd

There are dozens of us!

My laptop googly eyes tend to get dented when things press against my laptop lid, and then sort of disintegrate. I need extra-thin googly eyes.

Damn this seems fun.

Yeah I know what I'm doing this weekend... I want eyes on everything

The only reason I put a sticker on my laptop is to identify it out of all the other identical laptops at work.

I generally don't get a tech related sticker either. Instead I buy a sticker of an animal or something. Of my current laptops, one has an owl, one has a cat, and one has a flying fish.

Many to most typical laptop stickers don't advertise companies. Also, if you stick one over the glowing apple, you disable some rather obnoxious advertising.

New MacBook Pros no longer glow!

To be entirely honest, I miss the glow. I thought it was a cool little feature, even if it didn't do anything much other than look pretty.

It had the downside that if some bright light was coming from the other direction, the Apple logo would shine through your display.

Example picture: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1ruc03/m...

Now consider someone who isn't a particular fan of Apple sitting opposite of you in a dark room. It is shouting "APPLE! APPLE! APPLE!"

I’m not a particular fan of Nike and I can’t avoid people with Nike t-shirts, so what?

The Nike logo is not shining into your eyeballs.

Except wasting electricity (probably not much, but a minute or so of battery life sounds more useful than a glowing apple)

Exactly.

I enjoyed finding a foil sticker at jwz's club that turned the glowing apple into a glowing double helix.

https: //www.dnalounge.com/store/stickers.html

Jwz redirects links from HN, so you may want to cut and paste that link to avoid a NSFW image.

I've also never put stickers on my macbook. And not to keep it pristine either; it's collected plenty of gunk, and I use my macbooks up completely (my 2011 MBP is currently on its deathbed), so resale value is no issue.

For some reason I just don't see the value in covering it with stickers.

Although I did put two stickers on the laptop I'm using at a client's office. Maybe they'll help draw some attention to our team and product, and inform people which department I'm working for.

I keep all my macs. I still have my 2003 iBook. But that one had 2 stickers I remember that it took me a good afternoon to remove completely the crap of it.

How else do you identify your mbp going through TSA. Call me laptop roulette paranoid.

Mine is the one with no stickers

What is the likelihood of seeing another macbook with no stickers compared to the one with the exact same stickers as yours arranged in the exact same way? I think that should address the issue with your argument.

Mine is the one with the gunk.

It's the one next to my shoes and my wallet.

I think that's how pretty much everybody does it

Though every MacBook has some small details that can be picked up even if "identical"

I usually put my carry on (a rolling bag) and personal item (backpack) on the bookends of other bins/belongings on the belt, s.t. all the bins are between two large, distinctly-mine items. It also makes pointing out the items which are mine to a TSA agent significantly easier.

I live in Europe, you need to put the laptop into a plastic box, with all the cables, etc. It's easy to identify it. I put also personal belongings

Precheck saves that hassle.

I'm working with >100 engineers in my team and >1000 engineers in my building, and nearly everyone has a mbp.

We usually just drop our macbooks somewhere if we attend an event, or a meeting, or go for lunch in our building.

Not having stickers (or any other unique feature) makes it very difficult to find your computer.

Stickers definitely make it easier to find one's computer.

Funny enough, for me, it depends on the "thing". Laptop or car? No dice; but water bottle and home PC, stickers on them. I don't go out of my way to sticker them up, its mostly a collection of stickers I think look "cool" or hold sentimental value. For example, I have the skydiving bumper sticker on my water bottle cause, while it is rather bland looking, marks the skydiving trip I took two years ago. The Hot Ones sticker on my tower is because I really like hot sauces.

Overall, I like to do it because I've done it since my high school folders. I used to tape magazine clippings all over it and even made a small amount of money doing it for others at my school.

On my old machine, I had three mission patches from space missions I was (a small) part of.

On my current machine I have a Rick, the Micropython logo and a sticker from my Moped gang.

Stickers of companies are not the only ones existing.

I use stick figures, shadow shapes, etc. This differentiates my laptop from all the others in a crowd of them, and does it with my taste.

I’m with you on advertising - not interested.

Usually when I see people put stickers on laptops it's just for stuff they like or things they think looks cool. Maybe sometimes that ends up being a company they like for whatever reason. It's the same reasoning someone would use picking out t-shirts. The goal is to not give corporations free advertising.

But there is so much more you can put there.. mine has:

Kids sticker my daughters put there, cartoon like power rangers(some new one but same concept) Trail running club that I ran some races with Some star wars sticker Friends startup company Postgress meetup(cool design) Few coworking spaces I been to Muai Thai stadium in Bangkok Couple conference stickers(swift and ml) Running sandals that I like Couple ski resort stickers that I bought for my kids and they put it on my laptop Climbing festival Canadian Alpine club

Only one that is company advertisement for free is Mammut outdoor brand. I really like their branding for whatever reason, so I have few of their things

> I don't see the point of advertising companies for free.

I feel the same way. I also stopped using T-shirts with stuff related to companies, technology and any kind of pop culture for the same reason.

And, aesthetically I find the clean laptop more elegant.

I just care about some visual distinctiveness - useful for both identification and aesthetics. Never put them on for a company I don't work for, though, just little bits of art from assorted Etsy shops.

This behavior isn’t isolated to stickers. It’s no different than wearing a Star Wars shirt. It does seem silly though when the sticker is for a company that like, sends emails for you or something

I've put stickers on laptops before but it's always been OpenSource projects which I use and only to cover scuff marks as the laptops age.

Commercial products to me seem similar to wearing brand names.

I had forgotten my laptop while going through security at the Detroit airport. So when loudspeaker announcements happened, I went back to collect the laptop. The security guy asked "Why type of laptop is it?" intending to check if it's really mine, I replied: "One with lots of stickers". "There you go" he said handing me my laptop that was inside a protective cover.

Have you considered putting art on your machine?

>I don't see the point of advertising companies for free. My support would be more in terms of using their services (paying, yes) than paying and also putting stickers on my laptop.

So you won't advertise for free, but you'll pay the company to advertise for them?

random stickers (that don't have to be corporate) make it easier to tell whose machine you're about to grab.

That could mean yours, or your rival's; I leave that part of the decision to you.

I have 3 on mine: our company sticker, and 2 satirical ones related to what we do (we audit Fedex and UPS accounts; I have a "FedUp" and an "Oops" stylized like those logos)

> I don't see the point of advertising companies for free

What if I'm covering up the free advertising built into the machine? I like how my triforce sticker looks a lot more than the dell logo it replaced.

> What if I'm covering up the free advertising built into the machine?

This is what I do. My current MacBook has a single unbranded sticker of a hop (from Double Mountain Brewery) to cover up the Apple Logo.

Bash nor Linux nor BSD nor "anti-NSA" are companies...

Putting anti-NSA stickers on your laptop is the same as tweeting Rape is bad, which I've seen quite a lot recently.

What's the point? Everyone already agrees with you. You're just patting yourself on the back for thinking correctly, like the 99% of others.

> Everyone already agrees with you.

That's really not my experience. A significant portion of people I meet, including technical people, articulate some form of "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care" when the topic comes up.

Well, the stickers are not for you then. But like saying: "Snowden is a hero", there is a certain feeling of bravery, in the face of the biggest bully the world ever knew, don't you think?

I don't use stickers either but with this technique, I could give it a try for a few months.

Totally unrelated: I feel the same about tattoos.

My two stickers cover a scratch and a tampered badge on a top-end, used ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Stylish and serves the purpose!

THANK YOU!

I saw the same thing. If I am going to be decorated like a NASCAR driver, I would much rather paid for that.

Except you won't. And the EFF, Linus Torvalds and OpenBSD will probably never. Yet, I feel like I could give them some free advertising.

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