More boring stuff from the Net :|

• Build the Perfect PC! Step-by-Step Illustrated How-To Guide – Page 10 | Maximum PC
  Ready, Set, Build: Once you’ve collected all your parts, you’re just 13 steps away from a hand-built PC you can be proud of
  (tags: pc)
• Sayonara, Prada – The Atlantic (March 2009)
  Sakurai and other observers believe Japanese people have changed their attitude toward luxury consumption. In the bubble years of the 1980s and early 1990s, many Japanese aspired to own the same Western brands—not to stand out, but rather to fit in. Some 40 percent of Japanese consumers reportedly own a product from Louis Vuitton, whose parent company derives almost 10 percent of its revenue from Japan.

  The collapse of the bubble economy in Japan and the “lost decade” of decline that followed left everyone a little wiser. “Japanese consumers were like a sponge,” Chanel’s Sakurai told me. “We absorbed everything, and then we got wrung out. We’re not going to absorb the same things as we used to.” What sells today is value. When the Swedish discount fashion retailer H&M opened its first Japanese outlet in September, more than 5,000 people waited on line.

  Today, “it’s not about how much money you have,” Sakurai said. “It’s about expressing your own personal style.”

  (tags: fashion)