Written by: David Wisniewski

     I had a problem.  I love Mass Effect, and I hate Razr.  If you're wondering how those are related, don't worry; the fact that I started my review there means I'm going to explain.  All officially licensed N7 logo geek gear was made by Razr.  See?  So, while I wanted to show my Massively Effective pride, I wasn't going to shell out twice as much money for a product I was going to hate.What was I to do?  Well, there are a few N7 stickers for sale out in the world, but none of them were quite right.  I was sadly resigned to an N7-less existence, schlepping through my gaming without proclaiming my fanniness.  Unless you saw what I was playing.  Or asked.
     And then I found Gelaskins.  You upload any image you want, and they make it into a vinyl decal, pre-cut to fit your gadget of choice (controllers, game consoles, specific phones, etc) or even just a plain old rectangle if you want!  They can even make a custom hard-case for certain phones!  Wanna guess which ones?
Their website software allows you to preview how it will look when it's done, making it all a very easy process.  Don't have a particular picture in mind, but you still want to dress up your stuff?  No problem.  They've got a bunch of stock images ready to go, in case you're a terrible person with no creativity to your name.
     I got mine in a couple of weeks (mailed from Canada), and got down to making my gear geekier.  Let's be clear.  It doesn't matter what they say about their product, how many fancy names they give it, or what kind of space age materials they use; these are stickers.  They look great, and they are very easy to apply due to the slight honeycomb patterned ridges on the sticky side (making it easier to push the air bubbles out), but in the end, they are stickers.  Expensive ones.  A set of two for my Xbox controllers cost me $15, and one 10x12" rectangle for the back of my laptop cost $30, all before shipping.  But they look good, they haven't peeled, and they leave absolutely no tacky goo on your gadget if you pull them off to re-position.
     The second thing you need to know is that while you can use heat to make one of the rectangular stickers conform to a curve, you really shouldn't.  It will distort the image that you spent painstaking (I'm gonna say) minutes picking out, and it doesn't even distort with any regularity.  It's distorted distortion.  As such, if your laptop lid is not perfectly flat all the way up to the edges, you should really get one slightly too small instead of slightly too large to avoid unsightly wrinkles, a bad bond, literally cutting corners, or stretched images.
     All in all, I'm fairly happy with my stickers and plan on getting more!  Learn from my mistakes, and you will love yours!
For more information, or to order yourself a skin, go to www.gelaskins.com