In the early days of the internet, a photo of a man washing a red station wagon in the rain made its round to everyone who had access to the World Wide Web. For the longest time, I sat there, along with millions of teenagers with a PC, laughing at the sheer stupidity of the idea of a man washing their car in the rain. On one fateful night in June, I did the unthinkable. As the sky began to darken and drizzle, I pulled out my garden hose from my garage, connected it to the water outlet on the side of my house, and began to... wash my car. Why did I join the ranks of such stupidity, being well aware of the photo in question? The answer is simple. Just few hours before, I parked under a tree, where a bunch of birds decided to unload a few on my perfectly maintained Modern Steel Metallic Honda Accord Touring sedan. The poop had to be cleaned off as soon as possible, and the only way to do it was to scrub and hose it off immediately after I got home. It was an unfortunate coincidence it began to rain at the same time, but what needs to be done has to be done. As I was washing my car in the rain, all the while imagining my neighbors pointing and laughing from their living room (Or worse yet, take a similar photo and unleash it on the internet), I finally understood the fact there are times when washing your car in the rain actually makes sense. There are times when doing something ostensibly counter-intuitive serves a practical purpose. With the Fractal Design Define S, we can draw some parallels. Recently, the company announced a new product by removing the front 5.25" drive bays, deleting the entire internal 3.5" drive rack, eliminating the front door, and taking out some features found on the Define R5, and calling it the Define S. Why would anyone do such a thing? Apparently, this was all done in the name of cooling. For about $20 less than the Define R5 at press time, will the Define S' modifications tap into a new market of consumers? We took one in to find out.