The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

[Heretic_Cata]

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,2,00.asp
They all have preety funny descriptions.

I never knew AOL sucked that much ...
Unfortunatley IE made it to 8th place. It would have deserved 2nd at least.


So what do you think:

Do you know of any product that should have been in that top ?
Do you disagree with the negative reaction toward some of the products in this top ?

 

[Tycoon101]

I read it, and I agreed that AOL was the worst product ever. It should be exiled from Earth because it is so wretched.

 

[Zwelgje]

Heh, nice article. I don't agree with including Iomega Zip drives though. I used it a lot during my university years. CD writers were really expensive and not very reliable, the zip discs were huge when compared to the 1,44MB floppies and performed pretty well overall. I still have like 10 zip discs here and although I don't use them anymore I still can't come to throwing the drive and the discs away.

 

[puglover]

Windows ME should be #1. That demon-possessed system nearly ate my 170 page novel!

EDIT: Oh yeah, and it doesn't have enough memory to run Media Player and the volume control at the same time.

 

[Maniacal]

I'd have to say e-machines are missing from the (dis)honourably mentions.

AOL deserves to die a horribly brutal stabbity death. It's creators and company heads should be put to work for the rest of their (shortened) lives in Chinese coal mines.

 

[Comraddict]

I don't think AOL is that bad. It helped millions get to the internet.

On the other hand, I've been trying for years to make my parents move away from AOL. They finally got broadband last year, but sill pay $15 for AOL email and content. Yeah, I've installed Firefox and such, but mom still prefers brownsing using AOL.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Hehe, i remember how a friends brother kept screwing with AOL. he kept signing them up for their own service. They eventually called him and told him to cease and decist

 

[Turner]

I had no problem with AOL until Version 9 came out. It digs itself so deep into your system...installing services and background processes that if you disable them it just doesn't work. (I don't really see a problem with that, tho.)

So I've got a couple of AOL discs I keep in good condition so I can install 8. I can live with 8. But 9...shudder.

I've got a zip disk & drive, and it works just fine. If I could only find the disks tho.

 

[Zwelgje]

I've got a zip disk & drive, and it works just fine. If I could only find the disks tho.

Driver disks or zip disks themselves?
I could hook you up with the drivers I think...

 

[Maniacal]

I had no problem with AOL until Version 9 came out. It digs itself so deep into your system...installing services and background processes that if you disable them it just doesn't work. (I don't really see a problem with that, tho.)

So I've got a couple of AOL discs I keep in good condition so I can install 8. I can live with 8. But 9...shudder.

Heretic!



I jest

 

[Turner]

Driver disks or zip disks themselves?
I could hook you up with the drivers I think...

No, the zip disks themselves.

Bummer, too, because I've got a laptop on it with Civ, and no way to port it over. Very frustrating, actually. No burner on the laptop, and the floppy failed. It won't take my nic card, and my JumpDrive won't install.

Oh well. I'm sure I'll find them eventually.

 

[Zwelgje]

It's probably on the bottom of a pile of junk in the basement.

 

[Turner]

Probably!

 

[Grisu]

Heh, nice article. I don't agree with including Iomega Zip drives though. I used it a lot during my university years. CD writers were really expensive and not very reliable, the zip discs were huge when compared to the 1,44MB floppies and performed pretty well overall. I still have like 10 zip discs here and although I don't use them anymore I still can't come to throwing the drive and the discs away.

agreed. the zip doesn't deserve to be on this list. it was a good tool for its time. it was way more reliable than floppies (not to speak of the additional capacity), and CDs were slow and either write-once (CD-R) or unrelieable/not standardized (CD-RW)

 

[Solver]

I was so excited about zip disks back in the day! The 100 MB capacity seemed huge, and I had hoped that they would become commonplace and generally replace floppies. Instead, they turned out to be so unreliable, and got replaced by USB sticks/CDs. Heh, you can never predict tech stuff right.

 

[Turner]

Yeah, I thought magneto-optical was the way of the future!

Ah, the good old days.

 

[The Great Apple]

Hmmm - 1994 Lion King.

I'm sure I've got that game somewhere at home on floppies. I could never get past the level where you had to jump over all the animals' heads...

Maybe it was a different game.

 

[Syntherio]

I don´t have any problems with AOL and never had, but maybe they do a better job in Germany then elsewhere. In the list I would replace it with "t-online", which is called "t-offline" in my region.
The Real Player really deserves being on the list.

 

[Chris85]

Great list, I have 3 things that are on it.

1. AOL (Only cuz my parents use it and they don't know a whole lot computers and such. It's ok)
8. IE 6
20. CueCat (This actually came with my computer and it took me a few years to figure what the hell it was. It's safe to say I've never used it.)

 

[Maniacal]

Whoah, I have IE 6.???.

Actualy, so does pretty much everyone.