Stylish updates to your portable hardware

What is the price of looking good? Is it spending an extra $200 on a special brand laptop or finding the best looking car? From our experience, throwing money at this problem makes one look pretentious at best, but there is obviously a monetary value that must be spent to make your everyday items presentable. And the last thing any of us want is to look ordinary.

For things that many of us may carry around daily, such as iPods, laptops, PSP’s and DS’s, there aren’t many variations worth showing off. So many people have exactly the same thing, and that’s boring. That’s where Gelaskins jumps into the picture, to save us from our self inflicted predictabilities.

Gelaskins is a company that specifically makes, as you may have guessed, skins to place on top of your standardized portable consoles, laptops and iPods. They recently sent me 3 different skins, for my PSP, DS and Laptop. What they do is make low profile sticker-like skins that cover the entire DS and PSP to give them an artistic expression, or cover the top of your laptop.

These are unique because they aren’t simply skins, but the artistry on them comes from professional artists. Some look excellent, and others don’t…but that depends on your tastes. So far, I’ve found that people all like different skins, and I picked three very different skins to take out in public to see the reactions, as well as give my own impressions.

The PSP, one of the less visible designs because when the PSP is in use most of the design is covered, had the least results over time. Only a few people noticed it, and even less commented. Obviously, the PSP is not the most popular portable console, and indeed through about three weeks of checking out different public areas and using it only one other person was spotted using a PSP. Also, the design wasn’t exactly abstract, so it wasn’t exactly expected.

However, the PSP’s came with the added bonus that the skin was easier to grip for longer periods of time than the standard PSP’s (PSP 1000), as well as the PSP slim (PSP 2000). For anyone who finds the newer PSP’s uncomfortable to hold for long periods as I have, using a Gelaskin is an excellent solution.