Dwight’s Fragrant Crap

The old Linksys WRT54GL—part of Rambo's arsenal

After an overload of Dota for years, our old router, a Linksys WRT54GL finally conked out for good. Of course, it was time to explore and shop for a new one; and after looking through the typical boring lines of broadband routers (TP-Link and D-Link have horrendously uninteresting products) I was quite surprised to see a new redesign for the mainstream home router of Linksys. I present to you the WRT54G2, the successor to the GL.

The new Linksys WRT54G2—sexy like Nomad's nanosuit

This sleek, black, alien warship-like design sans the antennae was completely unexpected for an extremely boring product like a router. The industrial designers who created this new model made the word, “SpeedBooster” a hell lot more believable with a design like this. The old clunky, chunky and bulky design was hardly anywhere near giving an impression of motion, efficiency and speed.

In an instant, excellent design can actually influence the way consumers buy. Especially for people like me who are not in the geek level of understanding technical specifications in products like these, the quickest and most immediate way to touch the customer is when they first lay their eyes on what’s being sold. Through design, the function of the router was actually enhanced in the perception of the consumer even if they didn’t actually tinker with anything inside.

In addition to function, the way we feel about products are also affected heavily. Well-designed products are taken care of like babies, while badly designed ones are left to gather dust in the attic. I’m pretty sure you have a friend with the new Apple Iphone who’d go berserk if the LCD gets smudged. We feel a myriad of emotions when we hold brands that we want to associate ourselves with—status, confidence, intellect and even love.

In fact, I’m actually feeling an increase in my connection’s speed after the installation. I’m not kidding. Or maybe my judgment has been clouded by the product’s design. Well, if it did, then congratulations again to the router designers.