The Color of Money

War of the Worlds is crap! Why would aliens with no immune systems come to a planet ridden with bacteria and viruses??? If they are smart enough to traverse the galaxy, they would CLEARLY be smart enough to research our planet's micro-organisms! The whole thing's BOGUS! Now, Men in Black 2, there's a good movie.

As for me, I'm going to make sure all my dollar bills are the purple ones. I bet they are grape flavored!

I saw a couple comments made about how people did or did not like the pinky $20 bill. They didn't even question why the $20 was in five different colors.

I think that is demonstrates the blind faith that people have in the media. I mean they labeled that it was a non official artists concept and people took it as real. You know the reasons why Apple stopped coloring the iMac is that certain colors sold better than others and while the computers are exactly the same technically nobody in the US wanted a bright orange computer but they flew of the shelves in Japan.

I think the US should adopt something similar to Australia's plastic bills... the bills are slightly different sizes & apparently pretty hard to counterfeit.

The thing is that it would be dangerous to change the currancy too much because people who handle cash are used to it and they can't radically change things all at once. Also they don't want to change who is on the bills. That would be a huge politcal can of worms that is best left alone.

Actually Jake,

The people who handle cash would be the best served by changing the bill sizes/proportions. You'd very quickly learn how to each denomination "feels," much like you can do with the change in your pocket by just feeling the coins without pulling them out.It would also be of use to the blind as well.

It would also cut down on losses suffered by stores. You would no longer have mistakes like a clerk giving back to much change because somehow a $5 bill got in the $1 bill slot (since a $5 bill would no longer physically fit in the slot)

The problem with changing the sizes would be with vending machines (and ATMs, and your bank's money counters, and anything else that handles money), which are so pervasive that it would just be to bill an expenditure to change them.

Changing to color is a good step, it will solve a lot of the problems.

When the $100 bills were first changed, it was very easy to distinguish them because of the large off center portrait, that advantage was lost as they took that design and replicated it over the entire set of bills.

I hope these new bills will bring that advantage back.

And just a comment on the colored macs, it is a completely different situation than the currency: you don't have to worry about people buying currency, they are going to use it no matter what (they have no choice) but you need to make sure that is easy for them to use (such as making sure it works in all the existing vending machines). Where as Apple was trying to sell a product to consumers, and hadn't factored in that people would buy the color they liked (having colors could have continued if Apple had produced them in quantities that better matched consumer buying, I know certain companies were upset they couldn't order just specific colors and ended up with palettes full of orange) And I'm guessing having to support so many colors is why they eventually got dropped, they've now had 15 different color schemes (Bondi, Strawberry, Orange, Lime, Blueberry, Grape, Key Lime, Graphite, Snow, Sage, Indigo, Emerald, Flower Power, Blue Dalmatian, Quicksilver) each of which with special colored accessories.

Personally i am keen on the colored computer thing....i like the alienware area 51 laptop and am ordering one today.....actually in about 15 minutes from now. Here is a link.........
http://www.alienware.com/main/configurator_pages/area51-m.asp