Laptops with Stickers

It's funny awkward when you get fired and your laptop is covered in stickers

I'll submit mine later today to this comment, I'm a poser lol eg. I don't daily drive Rust but I like the crab and the Gopher

Kinkpad lol that's good

That work-related aspect is what I was thinking about too. I’m not sure what it looks like in various workplaces, but I’m always a bit curious around the policies they might have around putting lots of them on employer-owned laptops. I think in tough times when maybe it’s not easy to replace hardware, it can be annoying for an IT person to receive some where they have to peel them off and use Goo Gone on them.

I think of it as optimism/a power move, I'm here for the long run.

You can heat most of them and take off easily. If the IT transfers laptops to other people, they surely have a system for cleaning already.

A system for cleaning!

"You might want to give that a wipe."

One time when I left a job and had some really rare stickers I bought an identical ThinkPad and swapped the entire upper half of the machines with each other.

Or a policy forbidding stickers.

This is why I've always wanted some sort of removable skin I can put my stickers on and be able to take them with me when I need to depart with my device

I regularly see pallets of laptops turned in (either due to refreshes or end-of-employment stuff) for a major manufacturing / engineering (car) company. They are just as stickered, but with automotive nerdery. It's pretty neat.

And seeing just /how/ many laptops are that way it made me feel a lot less weird about putting stickers on "my" work laptop.

how many people do you think have both a SAAB SCANIA and VIM logo on their laptop. odds are i am 1 of 1

That's why I always have a clear case on my Macbook I cover with stickers. That way, I can take them with me when I leave, or take them off if I have a big meeting/presentation!

I always put stickers on work laptops specifically, in order to make mine recognizable among other identically looking laptops in the office.

But my stickers were always small, and usually lonely. A purple Emacs logo, a red Debian twirl, an orange lambda, stuff like that. Still was often enough to strike a conversation.

I have this recollection of some framed / shadowboxed clear case covers that were covered in stickers. Either the laptop was replaced and the new model didn't fit... or the cover was filled up and a new one was used.

A way to keep the memories of that the stickers represent.

I too have wanted this. There are now laptop skin products that they claim are removable and re-attachable.

There are clear cases for that exact use.

Ever since Framework laptops arrived on the scene, I've been waiting for someone to create thicker bezels that piggyback onto the webcams' USB 2.0 interface via a USB 2.0 hub, to integrate a color eInk display facing outwards. Just for the infinite stickers.

Bonus points for integrating an outward-facing webcam dedicated to a continous background facial recognition daemon to change the stickers on the fly depending upon who is approaching while the laptop is running.

this one's mine https://i.imgur.com/22gSTuB.jpeg plenty of real estate left

I basically never applied a sticker to any laptop I owned until I got a Framework. Just hoarded them like a dragon sitting on his pile of sticker-gold.

Finally figured hey, I might have this laptop more than a single upgrade cycle... it's worth burning a weird sticker or two.

I still try and buck the trend a little--instead of advertising technologies or something, my general goal is that, at first glance, nobody would question anything or think it looks unlike any other developer laptop, but that anyone paying attention will instead be met with a fractal of confusion. E.g., one on there is a "STOP, DROP, AND ROLL" fire safety sticker. In Quebecois French. From a small town volunteer fire department.

I consider it sort of a personal art project and have fun trying to collect up the most "wait, what?" stickers I can.

Leave the backing on the sticker, put it on the laptop with rubber cement.

Would love to see them!

I have Alpina stickers on my monitor stand. I treat laptops like 1 an done for travel.

I haven't tried putting any on my Framework 12 yet, because the ABS has this sort of rough texture that's very soft and pleasant to touch but seems like it wouldn't hold stickers well long-term. I've been putting mine on retro machines instead, like on my 900MHz HITACHI (actually Acer OEM) PⅢ: https://stickertop.art/content/images/2025/11/GWgVHXHaoAIPiB...

These days I also flatbed-scan any rare stickers before using them, to slake that FOMO “what if something better comes along and I regret using it now?” feeling.

If they’re turning the laptop in due to end-of-employment, what’s IT gonna do?

You could also put a layer of vinyl on the laptop and then put the stickers on that. That way you can peel the whole thing off when you upgrade. I remembered reading about it on dev.to a few years back.

https://dev.to/graystevens/preserving-laptop-stickers-on-mac...

Framework is the only laptop regarding which I've had someone ask "what brand is this?".

There's genuine interest (well, at least until they hear about the price) and I guess people intuitively understand that laptops don't really have to be replaced every now and then, it's just that mainstream offerings are built this way.

The other day I wrote a lengthy essay about all the pros and cons of the device from my perspective for one 18yo son of a friend, who insisted this would be his college laptop, because he's seen some YouTuber present it. I think he's decided already, so I focused on managing expectations.

I really really like the feel of the textured ABS though :)

I think of stickers as partly a theft deterrence mechanism. I expect a thief is more likely to steal a laptop with no stickers, because naively I assume the resale value is higher (no idea if that's actually true).

Losing developer productivity for a few days because a new laptop has to be provisioned, shipped and set up is also not cheap, so I feel there is some value to your employer in you making it slightly less likely for your laptop to be stolen at a conference or coffee shop.

Dock some arbitrary cleaning fee from your final paycheque?

Wouldn't a piece of vinyl, of the type used for wrapping cars, or similar, work for this purpose?

I've typically put dbrand skins on my laptops just to protect them from scuffs, I hand my work ones back with the skin on and no one has ever cared, or perhaps even noticed; I choose subtle ones like the hex or Carbon patterns that look like they could just be the actual lid from the manufacturer.

I don't sticker up my laptops (as much as I've always wanted to), but if it was done on top of one of these vinyl skins, it should be relatively easy to remove (never tried).

On the topic of stickers--bought an iPad for an elderly relative and it came with some Apple logo stickers. I snagged them, figured it was a fair price to charge.

One currently sits on my Framework over the Framework logo. The edge of the Framework gear sticks out in the bite in the apple and the sticker is thin enough the black framework logo shows clearly through the white of the apple.

On first glance, it looks like "trying to make a cheap laptop look expensive". On second it's looks like doing a really bad job of it. Anyone who actually knows the brand at all or asked about it will know the truth... it's making an expensive laptop look like a different expensive laptop.

So I guess it's not just the absurdity of the sticker, but how you use 'em.

On a previous HN (I think) discussion about stickers, one person scanned the lid of their old laptop, printed the whole thing as a sticker, applied it to their new laptop and then continued to put more stickers on top of that.

The team who handles hardware generally loves seeing the stickers people put on them.