Mitch Ratcliffe at ZDnet is con­duct­ing a longer term com­par­ison between a new Mac­Book Pro and a Len­ovo X60 as part of a series of art­icles look­ing at broader user exper­i­ence with two OS plat­forms. I nor­mally would not cite an art­icle from the more main­stream eNews media as they often strike me as being removed from the aver­age users exper­i­ence and entirely sub­merged in the manufacturer’s mar­ket­ing mes­sages. In fact, Ratcliffe notes up front that he may take Len­ovo on a as a cli­ent dur­ing the span of his series of art­icles. Well, at least he’s hon­est. So why am I cit­ing this article?

Ratcliffe has presen­ted a bet­ter eNews art­icle. He has star­ted from scratch in look­ing at the way in which manufacturer’s address the total user exper­i­ence. Today’s art­icle focuses on unpack­ing the two machines and appre­ci­at­ing the exper­i­ence that this cre­ates. He notes imme­di­ately that the Apple pack­aging itself rep­lic­ates the exper­i­ence of car­ry­ing the laptop away from the store, with a slim box and a car­ry­ing handle. This com­pares with Len­ovo which packs a smal­ler, lighter machine in a lar­ger, non-descript box that “makes the Think­Pad appear clunkier when it’s not.” Moreover the Mac­Book is ‘framed’ and the pack­aging itself focuses on the product itself, present­ing it as an object of a cer­tain desire. The Think­Pad unfor­tu­nately, with loose fit­ting wrap­pers that fit all Think­Pad shapes and sizes presents the com­puter in a gen­eric way…packed in a pile of unin­spir­ing pack­ing mater­ial to be thrown away. In con­trast, the Apple box is one that begs to be kept (even dis­played). I won­der if the folks at Len­ovo are listen­ing? I won­der if they do care about these things? I cer­tainly can’t tell from my past exper­i­ence with my Think­Pads, but will admit that I am typ­ing this on my X32 which is my weapon of choice, des­pite not hav­ing estab­lished a per­sonal or spir­itual rela­tion­ship with the machine’s manufacturer.

Although its clear that not every­one notes these sali­ent little details, I appre­ci­ate that some are struck less con­sciously by this atten­tion to detail and this is where Ratcliffe is going with this artile. It is meant to look at the all import­ant first impres­sion. Ratcliffe’s choice of words are well chosen and I look for­ward to read­ing his sub­sequent art­icles which will hope­fully con­tinue to explore som of the less dis­cussed aspects of the user exper­i­ence bey­ond simply usability.