Gadgets You SO Wanted, That Later Disappointed

[xizor]

@Voyager

They are also good for grilled cheese. My daughter used hers all through college and loved it.

Mine submission is the recording pen. This is a pen that writes on special paper while recording what you are taking notes on. The idea is that when you want to review your notes you can put the pen on a line and it will play what it recorded while you were writing that line. It also had a USB port so you could download the voice file.
I thought I could use it in meetings, but the meetings I attend now are conference calls and it doesn’t work. You also need to get everyone’s permission to record, and fine the time and the inclination to listen to it again. So a big disappointment. Since I don’t see them advertised, probably for everyone.

If this is the same pen that showed if you wanted a calculator you could just draw a picture of one and it would be a functioning calculator then I remember those and was tempted but never pursued it.

My submission is the robot vacuum. How cool to just sit there and let the thing vacuum for you. A neat toy, but I never was able to throw away my traditional vacuum

[Voyager]

@typoink

Sounds like a Livescribe pen. Cool idea, but I think part of why they never caught on (aside from the hassle of needing special paper) was because they had some software issues. IIRC, they removed / changed a bunch of features in their software at some point and alienated a big chunk of their user base.

That’s it. Never used it enough to run into software problems. But I don’t doubt they were there.

[Voyager]

@xizor

If this is the same pen that showed if you wanted a calculator you could just draw a picture of one and it would be a functioning calculator then I remember those and was tempted but never pursued it.

My submission is the robot vacuum. How cool to just sit there and let the thing vacuum for you. A neat toy, but I never was able to throw away my traditional vacuum

I vaguely remember something about a calculator.
We didn’t throw away our traditional vacuum either, since our Roomba has a problem with ceilings. But what was your problem with it? Our only issue is that our Golden blew out the first one we got from excessive dog hair.

[El_Kabong]

@WolfpackJeep

Compaq iPaq? I loved mine; I still have it even though I haven’t touched it in years, and I have yet to find a better handwriting recognition system on a modern device. I don’t remember ever draining the battery completely, but I did have to open it up a few times for repairs…part of this involved flipping the battery disconnect switch, which had the side effect of wiping the system.

Handspring Visor, IIRC. I liked the thing, but the lack of non-volatile memory was too serious a handicap to overcome.

[erysichthon]

@El_Kabong

2. A PDA (remember those?) I spent several hours transferring all my contacts into it, used it happily for a few weeks, then discovered that if you happened to ever let the battery discharge, it wiped everything.

I bought a Sharp PDA that was advertised with the phrase “Surf the net from the palm of your hand.” What this really meant was “Check your POP3 email, provided there’s a landline jack handy.” I really wanted a way to check email while traveling, and this sounded pretty good. After spending several maddening hours trying to get it to work, I returned it.

A pen-collecting friend proudly showed me her Rotring Trio, an amazing pen that let you switch between blue ink, red ink, and a pencil! I really wanted one, but they were too expensive. A few years later, purely by coincidence, I got one as a gift. Well, those suckers are heavy; it was like writing with an iron bar. I never use it anymore, although I’ve held on to it because it’s no longer made and apparently valuable (they go for hundreds of dollars on eBay).

[jrsone]

@Lynn_Bodoni

My rule of thumb is that if is (or would have been) advertised on late night TV (Chia Pets, that pasta cooker), or on the back page of a comic book (Sea Monkeys or XRay Specs), then it’s likely to disappoint. SOME products that are advertised on TV are actually pretty good. If the ad is on at 3 AM, though, the product is generally pretty worthless. And this includes lawyers.

I agree.

One purchase I did make on a drowsy late night was a multi CD set called Time Life Legends. It was a Classic Rock compilation and it was an excellent purchase that definitely got it’s use.

[xizor]

@Voyager

I vaguely remember something about a calculator.
We didn’t throw away our traditional vacuum either, since our Roomba has a problem with ceilings. But what was your problem with it? Our only issue is that our Golden blew out the first one we got from excessive dog hair.

It doesn’t like to go under tables, especially the kitchen table, unless I move all the chairs or stack them. It frequently skipped one of the bedrooms, and it became full quickly requiring attention. To me that was a lot more work on my part than the “set it up and forget it” solution I had envisioned unpacking the box.

[WolfpackJeep]

@erysichthon

I bought a Sharp PDA that was advertised with the phrase “Surf the net from the palm of your hand.” What this really meant was “Check your POP3 email, provided there’s a landline jack handy.”

My iPaq had a 28.8k modem! In order to attach the modem – or any other accessory, like a 32MB flash card – you had to put a “sleeve” over the iPad that contained a flash card slot. The modem was actually fairly decent; I remember accessing various news sites, in addition to checking email. These were dial-up days, of course, and every time the iPaq’s screen shut off due to inactivity (often the result of waiting out a slow download), the modem would disconnect. Good times.