Do you remember in 1990`s when computers and game systems were mostly white in color? Why now days are game systems and computers usually colored black now? ive wondered this for a long time.

It's pretty much as simple as people's tastes change, same as why people don't dress as they did in the 90s anymore. Things go in and out of fashion - the beige tech of the 90's is out, black is in.

Because beige is ugly (and was even back then, we just didn't know any better) and black is less distracting, letting people focus on work instead of on the device doing the work.

Black plastics cannot fade as noticeably as a grey, beige, or white plastic can. compare a Sega Genesis\Master System to a Super Nintendo\Famicom. There's noticeable fading on the Nintendo systems, but the Sega ones look fine.
And yet for some odd reason they made the Dreamcast white. Don't ask me why.

I will admit that some machines do look good not as black. The PSOne looks good white. a PSTwo looks great in Silver. the Macbook line looks better in Black than white, but Silver looks just about as good as the black ones did. Silver plastics look tacky, but silver metals look appealing (metal backs for phones\PMP's)

I think silver metals are appealing because their shine is natural, rather than the artificial sparkles in silver plastics. It feels "right", and that makes it more pleasing.

White makes things look big, back then everyone accepted the computers being huge, but now people expect their product to be small and slim-thus they use black to make it appear more attractive. Thats probably not the reason, just my thoughts.

I actually like the ceramic white color of the Playstation DVR. i want a ps3 in that color.

It looked great on PS, but I don't think it'd be as good with PS3, maybe it would?

You can get a PS3 in that colour.

Ceramic White 40GB: http://www.ebay.co.uk/ctg/Sony-PlayStat ... meConsoles

Satin Silver 320GB Slim (This looks white-ish): http://www.ebay.co.uk/ctg/Sony-PlayStat ... meConsoles

White 320GB Slim: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-PS3-320G ... 20c824d258

I agree with this.
But if it's piano black, it's fingerprint heaven. My PS3 from around 2007 (yes, the original fat one that can play PS1/PS2 games from the disc!) has a lot of fingerprints
I like how Nintendo used the matte in the DSi (I have the Dark Blue one). I've only had few problems with the matte casing.

ashens

100% agreed, even if you don't touch piano black, they still manage to get millions of fingerprints on them

I had a playstation 3 with that finish. Made me mad. My Xbox 360 slim is finger print prone lol. Stupid hardware developers with there dumb ideas.

"An Excellent Quote"

White was used for reflection of sunlight to decrease heating of sunlight, for that case when the device is located near window or any accessible to sunlight place. The refregerators are commonly colored in white, I think white is better for computers too, but in nowadays it is not so sexy as black.

Also often military components such as capacitors, resistors etc are colored in green, cuz green is less attractive to insects.

^Very interesting topic. I thought it was mainly because black plastics dont show up dirt and stains as much as whites do. Similarly to the fingerprints that were bought up earlier, black only shows fingerprints but the fingerprints tend to leave behind a dark stain on white plastics. (thats my experience back in the day when things were white anyway)

One thing about colors, not everything was beige or black, there have been some others like the Macs which were "Platinum" which was more of a off grey than beige. Some old Compaq's were Purple, Toshiba laptops were REALLY grey.

One reason I think Beige was so common is that:
1.) It was cheap and
2.) IBM Used it, and everyone wanted to be like IBM.

Yeah, there was also this "trend" in early 2000s on transculent electronics with blur. Like iMac G3.

I don't have a problem with beige or white devices, and I think on certain hardware, white looks better. The desktop that I built in 2006 has an off-white/beige case, and I think it looks a lot better than the black version that was made. There are silver accents which I think set it off. And speaking of silver, silver plastic was a big trend in the early-to-mid 2000s. Most TVs, DVD players, and other consumer electronics from around there were mostly silver. And then towards the end of the 2000s, things want to glossy black plastic. I can't stand all the glossy plastic devices from around that time. They're absolute fingerprint and dust magnets. You have to keep them looking pristine to look good.

So its not for camouflage, but to keep bugs away

I thought insects loved green, since its a natural colour found in leaves etc. But you might be right. Wouldn't capacitors etc. usually be in the dark anyway?