Well that's the thing, unless your audience already knows what the thing you are selling looks like and what it does and what your build quality is typically like, then you won't be able to sell any without establishing that first. If Dell or Asus or whatever company released a new model and said it was wildly different from their other laptops, but never posted anything except one 100x100 grayscale picture, yeah nobody would fucking buy it. Also 4 bits is one pixel with the ability to be black, white, or one of 13 shades of gray. Nobody is buying some shit they have no idea what it looks like just based on a description. People dont like using websites like eBay, wish, Alibaba, woot, etc, cause even though you get a huge wall of text about how amazing the item is, you have no idea what you will actually get cause you get one or two stock photos that may or may not even be the same as the thing you are bidding on or buying and unless you know exactly what the product number is and what it looks like or does, then it is a total crap shoot.

I don't even understand your Newegg idea. Are you saying Newegg could just put a 100x100 pixel grayscale pic of one generic laptop and slap it on all of their listings and be as successful? I don't think so. Not every buyer knows exactly what each model of laptop even looks like and they literally look at the side and back photos to figure out what the ports are rather than reading the full product specifications. You also kinda want to know sometimes WHERE are the ports on the physical thing, which is pretty much NEVER written in the specifications. Or where the fans are or if the arrow keys are the smaller skinny versions or if the numpad is jammed next to the rest of the keyboard, and so so much more that is much better found out by a picture. I don't want to read paragraphs explaining where the ports are or how the keyboard layout is or how they did the function keys or numpad integration or location of any volume sliders or special keys. That would suck. Again, that's fine for a fucking nail or screw. There is only like 5ish parameters to worry about with a nail. Material, thickness, width, length, tensile strength, made for indoor or outdoor, rust proof or not, etc. I don't really need a picture for a nail or screw other than a generic one. For screws you just need all that plus thread count, thread spacing, head type, etc. a generic picture is fine.