Advertisementīut it's also just a hint of nostalgia for the PC market of 25 years ago when processor speeds were changing and improving more rapidly. They serve the same function on the PCs of friends and family for whom I still provide unpaid-but-usually-appreciated IT services. I worked in IT for several years, when I would be called on to troubleshoot multiple generations of similar-looking business PCs in a single day, and the CPU stickers could be an early, at-a-glance representation of how old the system was and what it was capable of. (These subsidies were the subject of more than one legal fight for Intel over the years.) Why do I like these little labels when most people either ignore them or peel them off? They were initially conceived as a mutually beneficial advertisement for Intel and the PC makers, boosting Intel's brand recognition and partially subsidizing marketing costs for companies that opted in. Some people, it turns out, like being able to see what's inside a computer from the outside. Ragunathan has sold hundreds of these Apple Silicon stickers-over 450 for the M1 Pro version alone-and there's a thriving aftermarket on eBay for case stickers for new and old CPUs from Intel and AMD, versions of Windows, GeForce and Radeon GPUs, and lots of other components besides. It might horrify those of you who peel these little advertisements off of your PCs as soon as you get them, but we sticker lovers aren't alone. Available for $7 a pop (or $16 for three), the stickers for each processor come with a different holographic color palette. If you share my affliction, I recently discovered designs by Vinoth Ragunathan that recreate those holographic stickers for the M1 and M2-series processors in Apple Silicon Macs. But I like the little sometimes-holographic ones about the CPU (and sometimes the GPU) inside your PC. Not the huge billboard-y ones that yell about a few laptop features and invariably leave a huge, sticky-residue rectangle on the palm rest when you try to peel them off. A confession: I like the little processor stickers that come on computers.
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