What if Ikea Designed Computers?

Ikea offers a full range of computer-friendly desks and workstations–but what if the Swedish furniture giant designed desktop hardware as well? That’s the question being asked by Niero Gonzalez on the WePC.com discussion boards, and he’s compiled a handful of amusing examples of the imaginary results. He’s joking, of course–or is he? Gonzalez writes that the idea is actually “quite practical” and that it would be relatively easy for a company to make “cheap, standardized housings for computer parts and let people click them together.” Maybe so–and certainly most computer hardware could use a dose of clean, simple design (Apple’s Braun fetish being the one obvious exception). But as someone who once spent an entire Saturday in “indescribable purgatory” assembling an Ikea bed frame, I ardently hope this day never comes.