Funny -- I just thought about this last weekend. My boyfriend was out buying a new hi-fi amplifier and completely surprised me by calling from the store to ask me if I cared whether he bought it in black or silver (we plan to move in together this year sometime, so he figured I'd like a say in it -- stay tuned for a "omg how to merge two households" post in this forum sometime soon, tee hee). I actually cared a lot less than I would have thought, although non-coordinating colors can annoy me a lot and I do put a lot of thought into design and furniture placement and stuff like that.
I think for me, I'd always pick pretty tech equipment over an ugly one, but if the ugly one had more features I liked, or a more convenient design or if it was more user-friendly, I'd go for the ugly one. After all, I don't care what color my... um... for example... car is, as long as its engine is working and it gets me from A to B (because that's what I look for in cars). But I would probably rather own a pretty red one than an ugly grey one. But I wonder if -- or how much more -- I would actually pay for the red one if they were the exact same except for the color.
On the all white bright designy minimalist look -- I have seen lots of white combined with wood and black on design blogs lately and I love it. (TVs are black when they're switched off, too -- my boyfriend got the black amplifier in the end because of that reason, btw.)
