Excessive Tech Packaging?

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?"

Recycling paper packaging

[Riding Spinners]

Paper is a friggin' waste to recycle. It's biodegradable for one. The tree's used to make it in the U.S. all come from tree farms. These trees are grown specifically for this purpose, so no one is running into virgin forests cutting down all the trees for paper. There does exist opposing research for both sides on the topic of set asides and the increased cost to consumers for packaging. I think the cost difference is negligible and definitely worth the process of forest conservation. On the topic of pollution, no one really talks about it. It's kinda like a dirty secret. To recycle paper you need to put it through basically the same process as making it - which is horrible for the environment. So, instead of making an inferior product that causes the same amount of environmental damage to produce and doesn't save the forests - I'd have to say no. Tree farms save the U.S. forests in conjunction with set asides.

Net order hardware resellers are the worst

[MadLep]

Bought a tiny home firewall online. About 15cm x 10cm x 3cm (6in x 4in x 1in for the metrically impaired).

First the firewall was bubble wrapped. OK. Then the bubble wrap had a cardboard support. Fine. Then the OEM box box - this is where it starts to get crazy. That was easily 40cm x 20cm x 10cm. It was shrink wrapped, and then wrapped in another layour of bubble wrap by the reseller, and packed with scrunched up newspaper. It was then put in another box which must have been about 60cm x 40cm x 20cm. All of which was taped up and put inside a courier bag.

Now I'm not keen on damaged mail order goods, but that is just getting silly.

Does overkill on media count?

[smbarbour]

If overkill on media counts, I once bought a copy of the original EGA version of Lemmings. It came on a 5 1/4" CD. The data itself was a total of 512K. The game would have fit on a double -density 5 1/4" floppy.

Now if we are talking about shipping packages, I receive 1 or 2 floppy disks per month via overnight FedEx from one of our data vendors. It comes in a padded FedEx envelope stuffed in a small FedEx shipping box. The real kicker: The files on the disk are e-mailed to us as well. We have never used the content from the actual disks. I just peel off the labels and add them to a stack at my desk.

Re:Recycling paper packaging

[ganjadude]

Being that I am currently writing a book on the topic, I feel qualified to say this 1 acre of hemp will produce up to 3 times as much paper pulp as 1 acre of timber On top of that you get up to 4 yields a year when it is 7 years for 1 yield of timber..So lets do the math Lets say 1 acre produces 100 sheets of paper for timber, over 7 years that is 14.2 sheets of paper per acre per year on timber 1 acre of hemp will produce 300 sheets of paper, 4 times a year which is 1200 sheets of peper per acre per year timber=14.2 hemp=1200 which one would you decide to grow?

Re:TI Chip Samples

[Total_Wimp]

HP and Insight paired up to give us a good one. We ordered from Insight the "Advanced Pack" for HPs integrated Lights Out (iLO) feature on a Proliant server. This was several years ago when they had just started including the "basic" iLO for free on all their servers.

We recieved from Insight a box about 3/4 the size of a standard tower computer box. We opened it up to find a box the size you'd expect to find a full-sized array controller card in, plus a few large shipping air-bladders.

We opened up the array-controller sized box to find foam egg crate packaging securing what looked like a cd sleeve.

We opened up the CD sleeve to find inside the front cover, a number. We then used that number to "unlock" the "advanced features" that had really been there all the time.

The thing that I think makes this packaging especially over the top is that the number could have just as easily been put in a plain text email. "Shipping" and "packaging" were not even necessary to get this into our hands. We would have gotten it faster, cheaper and it would have cost them less to do it.

After all that, I'm afraid to say it actually got a little worse. The truth is, we didn't really order just one of them; we ordered three. All came packaged exactly the same way. Insight didn't make any effort to consolidate the smaller boxes into just one of the larger ones.

TW

Re:Sun StoreEdge Power Cables

[buysse]

Sun is horrible about power cables. The worst part is that there's basically no way to say "Don't bloody send them," and we can't use the ones they provide. They send a wall plug cable, we need C13 cables for the rack power management we use. Each power cable, no matter what you buy, is shipped in an oversized box, from a different warehouse (usually). Frackin' ridiculous.

Multiply packaged pieces of paper separately sent.

[DaphneDiane]

I'd ordered several software licensees for a Unix C++ compiler. Eventually a large box showed up at my cube. It was a full size computer/monitor box. Probably about 3 foot by 3 foot by 4 foot. Inside that box was another slightly smaller box that had a shipping label that showed that it had been shipped to from another facility to the facility that had shipped the larger box. Inside this box was yet another shipping box also with a label, inside that was a large legal size manila envelope with a mailing label. Inside of that was a white envelope (no mailing label this time). And finally inside of that was a single 4" by 5" sheet of paper containing one of the software license. I found it amazing that that sheet of paper made traveled through so many shipping facilities, each time getting another layer of boxes before finally arriving.

The next license arrived similarly packed (only the large computer size box wasn't used for it.) My only guesses are either they wanted to impress upon us how valuable/expensive the license was, or that they had some sort of standardized shipping process that assumed everything was workstations.

Dell

[skinfitz]

Received a box about the size of three stacked PC case PSUs. On opening it we initially though it was empty, but when we read the manifest, sure enough there was a two inch sticker in there which according to the instructions (!) was to be stuck onto a Dell cabinet that had been delivered the week before.

A laptop with MS-Windows on iy

[leonbrooks]

Mandriva CD into DVD drive, Linux on hard disk, never used MS-Windows or its CD since.

Waste of time OEM installing Win or packaging up the CD for it.

Re:Does overkill on media count?

[Silver Sloth]

To back up the other reply:-

My father, a medical statistician, was one of the authors of a book on skeletal maturity http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0702025119/ref=sr _11_1/002-0416510-2702407?ie=UTF8 [amazon.com]. I was asked to provide a program to accompany the book so that paedeatricians wouldn't need to do the complex maths that goes from measuring x-rays to assessing growth. This was a simple VC++ routine which came to less than 200Kb. The publishers insisted that it should be on a CD, not a floppy, because

• They were geared up to use CDs
• The end users couldn't be guaranteed to have a floppy drive available

So, in packaging terms the space wastage was enormous, but in marketing terms it was the sensible decision.