Fujitsu's Floral Kiss laptops for ladies fail to woo
If you like your technology to sound like a feminine hygiene product (anyone?), Fujitsu has cooked up a real treat for you.
Laydeeez, if you like your technology to sound like a feminine hygiene product, Fujitsu has cooked up a real treat for you. The Floral Kiss laptop range was announced in Japan last week and is described in a press release as a personal computer for women, designed only by female engineers -- meaning it must, of course, be exactly what women want.
If I wasn't so sure that computers weren't around before women successfully campaigned for universal suffrage, I'd have been convinced I was reading an historical artefact, a press release from times gone by.
The first twinge of dismay kicked in as I clapped eyes on the product name. Much like with last year's HTC Rhyme (phone for women, purple, accessories etc), the cutesy branding is bound to induce a wrinkly, bad-taste-in-the-mouth gurning face in anyone with an aversion to the vapid.
I'm not sure why marketing bods believe women can't deal with the letters and numbers naming convention (S3, D3200, AT300 etc) used for most tech products. Obviously all our lives (and some of our jobs) would be a little more exciting if more phones were named after Norse gods. As it is, I don't clutch at little lady ears and shake my head in bemusement if I have to pick out a product that doesn't sound like some cheap, rancid perfume.
The Floral Kiss comes in three colours: 'elegant white', 'luxurious brown' and 'feminine pink'. Now, while I'm not a fan of the 'pink it and shrink it' technology for women thing, it's important to remember that pink is just another colour -- in the same way that hell is just another sauna. (I jest, I would be a hypocrite if I were to criticise anyone for liking pink.)
The 'feminine' is irksome though. It's not descriptive -- it's marketing prattle, attempting to reaffirm in our lady brains a dubious connection between a colour and a set of attributes that society has long taught us to be gospel.
It gets worse though. The press release goes on to say, "The top casing has been 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."
Finally! If only we could get the makers of all the things that might potentially damage our nails (kitchenware, gardening tools, musical instruments, door handles, gloves, buckles, buttons) to get on board with this idea.
The list of things that are supposed to make the Floral Kiss appeal to me, a woman in need of a computer, does not stop at nail preservation though. The Floral Kiss is sophisticated -- it must be because it's decorated with 'diamond-cut stone', 'exquisite gold rings', 'floral motif designs' and 'pearl-like accents'.
And then the words I dread -- 'zirconia endorsements'. I grew out of cubic zirconia around the same time I grew out of my Forever Friends wallpaper. Overnight it became the epitome of naff and I threw away a whole drawer of broken Claire's Accessories trinkets, nail jewels and stick-on crystal 'tattoos'. I cannot state strongly enough how much I don't want this stuff stuck all over my technology.
Specs-wise, few details are given, but we are told the Floral Kiss runs Windows 8 and packs an Intel Core i5 processor and 500GB of hard disk space. That should provide you with a fairly decent performance when you're making the most of the tweepulsive pre-installed applications: a scrapbook, a diary and a horoscopes app.
One final point, perhaps the most important of them all, is that women aren't hankering after technology designed especially for their feminine needs and tastes. Tech is far from being one-size-fits-all, but gender isn't a dividing line here -- we don't need our own sub-category on the PC World website. Times have changed and not only do women buy just as much tech as men, we're also now the primary adopters of new technology.
If you want to know more about the Floral Kiss, do head over to the dedicated Facebook page, where you can get advice from Fujitsu's female employees about how to make the most of your laptop in your daily life.
If you feel you've been patronised enough for one day though, spangle your way down to the comments section to tell me what you think of the Floral Kiss or head over to our elegant, luxurious but curiously zirconia-free Facebook page.