OK, as always, I hate to break most of you out of your "silent reverie", and confront you with a reality check, but I feel I must.
The much vaunted, "styling", of most Lian Li cases, shouldn't be considered, "styling", at all. It's rather more of an industrial chic, based on form dictated by function. So, it's hard to justify calling it, "styling". Don't get me wrong, I appreciate quality of workmanship as a primary feature to be sought out. But in truth, they haven't done much with the "styling" of mayonnaise jars over the years either.
The ribbed extruded aluminum door motif, is far from innovative, and it's been around for decades in other arenas. I's just an engineer's trick, used to stiffen panels, and thus create stiffness, while saving weight. ("Saving weight", is also a euphemism for, "allowing the use of thinner, and thereby less expensive, material).
(If this "offending" door is in fact done by the milling process, I apologize. It's still ugly, I just apologize for the "extrusion" comment).
As to the "silver" finish of the test case, home entertainment electronics migrated to silver a few years back, but has returned to black. The silver is really too distracting in the context of today's home theater. You know, silver speaker grilles blasting you in the face while you're trying to watch your thousand dollar TV.
As to having doors on cases in general, you have to set any program capable of ejecting the tray of your optical drives to not do so, or you run the risk of ruining the tray door drives, every few times you forget and close the door while you're burning a disc.
Oh well, you can take the door of this case, and live with the resultant loss of the very little style it has in the first place.
Now, the wires not reaching controller issue. I say we've really become complacent in the tech field to manufacturer's complacency, if not outright hubris, in supplying "luxury" products as this, that aren't really functional as shipped.
And while I do appreciate the willingness and resourcefulness shown by supplying the initiative to go out and buy extenders for the cables, in any other type of consumer product, this nonsense would be recalled. Since this isn't a "safety" issue, Lian Li can mostly ignore it.
With all of that said, the manufacture of computer cases is probably the venue where there is the lowest start up cost of any field related to electronics. Just subtract what you think you'd pay to build a case factory, to what Intel pays to build a CPU factory, and you'll see exactly what I mean. Look at the laundry list of case suppliers at Newegg, versus the list of CPU suppliers, you'll get my point.
In conclusion, "wow it has wheels on it", but, "I'll take the Antec, and the 300+ dollars change.
EPILOG: Computer case "styling" is a field where it's all too easy to step over the line from elegance to pretense. A prime example of this is the Antec 900. The original release has a wonderful "machiney", intimidating look about it. It is, (was), also a triumph of target marketing, while being very innovative. Then, pressures forced on Antec by a plethora of copies, and competing niche models took its toll. Subsequent models of the 900, such as the 900 II, with it's coarser front grille material, starts to look like the grille of a tow truck, or a 50's room divider screen, and as to the 900 "SE", ( Silver Edition), I would seek a restraining order to prevent it from being within 500 feet of my property.
