HP Slate has a bad solution to "too many stickers" syndrome

Daring Fireball points to this little gem in the hands-on gallery our sister site Engadget had with forthcoming Windows would-be iPad competitor, the HP Slate. To explain what you're looking at, you'll need to look into this crystal ball showing an image of HP's product design offices six months ago...

"Hey boss, this HP Slate we're making. It'd be a shame to mess up our sculpted backplate with our usual eleventy billion barcodes and the Windows licence sticker and all that stuff. Maybe we should just slim all that info down somehow?"

The Boss sits back in his chair and sips his Tab. He thinks about how much work it would be to renegotiate the licence sticker requirement with Microsoft, or even to try and convince the support guys that they could make do with just one serial number per product. He sips his Tab again. Then inspiration strikes and he cries, "No, peon! I have a better idea! Tabs! Retractable tabs!"

Yes, dear reader, that's a little pull-out drawer who's only role in life is to hold and display a dizzying array of licencing and serial number data. There's even more of this stuff on the back too.

If an Apple designer pitched this craplution to Steve Jobs, he'd rip their still-beating heart clear out of their chest.