Fade to Black: When IBM introduced its PC in 1981, beige became a visual standard without a lot of deep thought. It was functional, neutral, almost non-design, yet bland and proliferated for two decades, long after "it was obvious they were beyond boring". Dell has moved from beige to black for all of its desktop machines. Hewlett-Packard had shifted to shades of gray by 1997 and has since settled on silver and dark gray. IBM introduced its first black desktop PC in 1996 and completed its move to black in 2000. Last month Compaq announced that it was converting its consumer desktop PC's from beige, with some color panels, to black-and-silver designs. Next week, Gateway plans to introduce a series of desktop models with a non-beige color scheme. A safe bet: it will be dark gray or black. ...{NYTimes article} (free subscription required)