Coding with Fountain Pens

I’ve long had a poor opinion of the plastic clamshell packaging encasing many products, especially electronic gizmos.  Considerable technique is required with the scissors to avoid major injury, and indeed the packaging has been blamed for 6400 emergency room visits in 2004.

Seth Godin approaches the packaging from a slightly different angle, highlighting how ridiculous it is that the packaging is designed to prevent thieving in retail stores, and yet is still used by sites like Amazon and New Egg where that threat doesn’t exist, due to the desire of manufacturers to eliminate multiple modes of packaging.

Let’s hope at least a few companies will redress this issue, I can tell you I’d be more likely to order a USB hub from whichever company didn’t use the clamshells, rather than from technical specs.