Excessive Tech Packaging? 206
fraew wonders: "I just received a Microsoft Partner Program package in the usual MSDN sized box (34cm x 25cm x 11cm) that contained a single A5 piece of paper. Nothing more. Previously I've had RAM DIMMs and PCI cards double-boxed in boxes that approached the size of a computer case, so what is the worst example of excessive tech packaging you've received?"
Shipping package (Score:3, Informative)
Talk about driving up the shipping price...
We got that one too... (Score:3, Informative)
The other one I always wonder about is why Dell feels the need to seal every single component inside the box of a new PC in plastic, even if it's just a single sheet of paper...
Sun StoreEdge Power Cables (Score:3, Informative)
Totally fucking absurd. Why the hell do four powercables need to be shipped in four separate boxes? Why do CDs already in sleeves, need to be boxed twice before being put into yet another box?
Sorry for the rant. That experience really brought out the violently fanatic "environmentalist" in me. It reminded me of an endless matrioshka sans the artistic angle.
Re:Some is better than one (Score:1, Informative)
The really dumbass part is that FedEx has nifty specialized laptop shipping boxes that they will give you for free.
Shipping Weight (Score:4, Informative)
What probably happens is:
Retail
the manufacturer finds the optimum box size to relay the information they want on the box, then adjust that for the box that some number of them fit into, finally making adjustments for pallet packing. This final packaged box weight may or may not fall under the physical weight of the item. The reseller then has to add to the packaging when they send it to the consumer.
OEM
The reseller gets a bunch of parts together in some sort of skid container which needs packaging to be put into a box. These resellers get discounts when they order larger quantities of the boxes, and they know that customers hate paying a ton for shipping a trivial sizes, so they get boxes that they know the volumetric weight of. 13x9x7 inches is the rough 'universal' size in the industry I'm in that you can ship UPS and it will be 1lb by volume. 13x13x9 is the 1 lb by volume for air shipments.
Re:Recycling paper packaging (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We got that one too... (Score:4, Informative)
Water?
Hemp != Marijuana (Score:4, Informative)
Sad to break this to you, but most species of hemp contain at most traces of THC. And after the early 1900's strains of hemp have been selected which score even lower.
To give you some numbers, the legal upper limit for THC content industrial hemp in Europe is 0.3% and most strains contain actually safely less than that. By comparison, the drug varieties contain 20% to 30% THC. So think literally having to smoke 100 times (or more) as much to get the same high. You'd have to literally smoke several pounds of industrial hemp to get the same high as from a join of the drug varieties. At which point, you'd either asphixiate from the smoke, or (more likely) it would take so long as to not get a high at all. The organism would get rid of it faster than you can get it into your system.
It's a plant that's been cultivated since the stone age for its fibres. (Which contain even less THC, btw.) It's been one of humanity's main sources of material for clothes, ropes, sacks, etc, for literally tens of thousands of years. Even paper. The USA Declaration Of Independence was drafted on hemp paper, btw. Even nowadays it's cultivated in the whole world except the USA... even though it's legal to _import_ industrial hemp in the USA. How's that for a stupid hypocrisy?
At any rate, there are plenty of plantations all around the world. Not only in Europe and Asia, but even right next to you in Canada. We already know how much it yields per acre, and how much is stolen by stoners. Hint: none at all is stolen by stoners, because it's freaking useless to them.
In the USA the ban has more to do with (A) the cotton lobby, and (B) with a good dose of government hypocrisy and putting up a jolly good "war on drugs" show. You _can_ make sure which varieties people grow, and every country except the USA does that. You just require a license for growing it, and then you go and check what those people grow. It's that simple.
Re:Recycling paper packaging (Score:2, Informative)
Standardized overpackaging (Score:3, Informative)
The ones that bug the hell out of me are the big companies that ship stuff completely overpackaged *routinely* for completely standard items.
Example 1: Dell Latitude notebooks. They come in a 2'x2'x2' box. Inside this are a few smaller boxes, suspended in the middle with some foam standoffs. Open those up, and there's more foam surrounding the notebook. Open another one, bigger than the entire notebook, with cardboard standoffs holding the battery. Open another one that has documentation and CDs, each wrapped in plastic. I'd estimate that 80% of the packaging is air space. Of the 20% non-air, 50% is foam. By comparison, Macbooks come very nicely packed. We can fit 10 macbooks in their packaging inside one Dell notebook box, with plenty of rattling around room to spare. This is particularly annoying, because it takes up HUGE amounts of storage space for us. We have to at least shed the outer box to compress things down before they go in the store room.
Example 2: Ordering keyboards from HP. Just a keyboard. Basic model. They take the keyboard and put it in plastic. Then they put that into a box (#1).
If you order a keyboard a la carte, they have another box, #2, custom made just the right size to fit Box #1, so they can ship it to you. This seems to be done for the purpose of having a different ordering number for the unit. IE, the part code for a PC means you get a box with a PC, a manual, and a Box #1. The part code for a keyboard means a box with a Box #1.
If you order 10 keyboards, they put 10 Box #2s into an aggregator box, Box #3.
Then they put Box #3 into a shipping box, Box #4, which gets the shipping label.
Thus, boxes:
#1: Protect the keyboard
#2: Add a part code
#3: Bundle 10 keyboards together
#4: Place to put the shipping label
It's almost like the joke recursive gift box I saw a friend get for their birthday one year.
Re:SD cards? (Score:1, Informative)
Unfortunately thats an anti-theft measure, born from the early days when those chicklet sized cards typically cost $100+, they were a high profile theft item. Huge, impossible to open packaging sharply decreases inventory shrinkage.
Packaging: Who does it RIGHT? (Score:3, Informative)
As an example, I recently ordered some laptop RAM from OemPCWorld.com. I didn't have good specs on what modules would work, so I ordered 3, planning to return 2. According to their return policy [oempcworld.com], this is cool.
What arrived in the mail was a letter-size FedEx cardboard envelope. Inside that was my receipt and a half-size USPS cardboard return envelope, post-paid, which I'd added to my order to facilitate the return. Inside that were three tiny antistatic mylar bags, each with an SODIMM in it.
Absolutely perfect. I couldn't have packed it better if I'd tried; there was no wasted space, the 2 layers of cardboard provided more than enough protection against flex, and the whole thing weighed just a few ounces.
Another company that does things right: BG Micro [bgmicro.com]. Recently ordered about $30 worth of stuff from them, some small tools, a few components, nothing huge. They wedged it all into the standard textbook-sized USPS box. The fragile bits were protected in individual boxes within, but most of the durable stuff just got a turn of bubble wrap, if that. It was sensible, and everything was in perfect shape when it arrived.
Another: Minimus [minimus.biz]. Does it bother you that the average first-aid kit contains about a 3:1 ratio of bandages to antiseptic wipes? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I wanted to properly equip my kit, but Ididn't want to buy a box of 1,000 alcohol or iodine wipes. Thanks to Minimus, I didn't have to. They carry everything from ketchup and mustard packets, to single-use bug repellent towelettes, all sorts of medical supplies, laundry soap, hand sanitizer, even coffee and tea. I can't say enough good things about this company. I stocked up the entire family's first-aid kits, equipped my travel bag with some laptop screen wipes, and tried a new brand of toothpaste. The whole mess came in a 5x5x4-inch box, and that still left about half the box as air space. Single-use products are the epitome of excessive packaging, but I ordered for convenience. Besides, Burn-Jel isn't something I need a gallon of.
I'm not affiliated in any way with any of the above companies, just a satisfied customer. How about your experiences?
Excuse me..... (Score:3, Informative)
Packaging Engineering 101 (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the key - take the box drop height and divide it by the distance from the nearest point of your item to the nearest point on the outer box. That is the minimum G force your item will receive if you have the perfect packaging material for that exact drop. You can only do worse, and the real figure is often 2-5 times that number. Soft foams, eggcrate, cutouts, and collapsable cardboard are all ways to try an linearize that shock response to minimize damage.
Given that a box in shipping can easily be dropped 4-5 feet from a truck tot he ground, or off a loading dock, and add a couple of feet for the masculine "throw" by the operator, and you can easily get 6 feet. In a 2' square box, with a 12" wide laptop, there's only 6" of space from edge to outside if it's perfectly centered. 72/6=12Gs. Now, that's for the perfect system; theirs is probably at 25-33% efficiency, which is pretty good, so now we're in the 36-48G range. And for a piece of electronic equipment costing $1000-3000, that's probably about right.
Oh, and just to let you know, a box full of packing peanuts probably has a 10% efficiency, with light resilient foam coming in around 15%. It's really _really_ hard to get above 50%.
(Yes, I've actually done a bit of packaging engineering to make sure some sensitive gear could withstant MIL-810 shipping requirements)