# The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time: opinions wanted **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 31, 2006, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903 "2006-05-31T17:17:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2006, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/101 "2006-06-02T19:53:55Z")
> [@Auntbeast](#): > > Acrobat Reader isn’t on this list? Yeah, yeah, I know it has its place. However, a thousand different updates needed (or not), everything installs it, it is resource heavy, it crashes often. The most annoying feature? People insist on putting files in .pdf format that really have no reason to be in .pdf format. The reader is free, but the writer is expensive, so if you have something you want to keep, but modify, you are almost forced to print it out, write on it and file it away somewhere. Acrobat Professional is, but pdf writers in general aren’t. Open Office comes with one, and you can get GhostView for free also, which I used to use. PDF’s unchangability (or difficult changeablilty) is a feature often - many people like to put presentations out in pdf so that no one can steal their diagrams (or worse, take the presentation and change it slightly.) ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/102 "2006-06-03T18:39:19Z")
Add my name to the list of people who used OS/2 with few problems. I set up a multi-boot system with partitions for Windows 3.1, OS/2 Warp, and some \*nix variant or another (I don’t remember–it was ten years ago). I used the system regularly for about a year, and when I got the replacement machine I never got around to loading OS/2 on it. It didn’t strike me as particularly wonderful (not much software for it that I needed), but it worked okay. I ran several Windows apps in it with no trouble. I wouldn’t put it on any “best of” lists, but it doesn’t belong on a “worst of” either. > [@chappachula](#): > > without hijacking the thread too much, can anybody tell me in one or two sentences why AOL is so terrible? There’s a lot of history behind this. In its early days, AOL was an überBBS–no connection to the Internet or anything else. Unlike most other BBSs, it required custom software (not just a terminal emulator), and it was buggy and unreliable (of course, so were its primary competitors, Prodigy and CompuServe). AOL was designed for idiots, and followed no UI rules whatsoever. When they finally connected to the Internet and became an ISP, they maintained their private area, and attempted to foist their own UI on the entire Web. They have never played well with others (see their current attempt to charge non-customers for sending email to AOL users), and their service still has [reliability problems](http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060602/BUSINESS/606020397/1003/rss08). Mailing list owners express constant frustration with AOL, and AOL developed a very bad rep with the tech crowd by bringing millions of people with no computer knowledge or netiquette online and dumping them into UseNet and Web forums. I guess that was more than one or two sentences, but you get the idea. > [@Larry Mudd](#): > > > [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > > > 1. Iomega Zip Drive (1998) > > > > I have to disagree with this one. I used the 100Mb Zip drives for years and never had a problem > > You’ve got to be kidding. You realize you sound exactly like a guy who “smoked for years” and is fit as a fiddle, right? It wasn’t just that they failed – it’s that they failed regularly, catastrophically and were completely unrecoverable. I had a half dozen of the drives and dozens of 100Mb disks spread out over my home and office, and used them for about four years. I never lost a byte of data, and never found a computer I couldn’t make them work with–both Mac and Windows. Zip drives worked much better than the 44Mb SyQuest or those 10Mb Fuji (?) cartridge drives I used before that. I guess you just got a bad batch. > [@Auntbeast](#): > > Acrobat Reader isn’t on this list? (snip) The reader is free, but the writer is expensive Depends on the system you’re using. Pretty much every Mac OS/X application has PDF writing built-in. Adobe CS2 includes it on all platforms. Much open source code includes PDF output. That said, the Acrobat reader is one of the slowest-loading, flakiest pieces of junk out there–and it seems to need updates every other day. > [@Auntbeast](#): > > Why isn’t Outlook on the list? Because anyone who writes malware or sends phishing emails thinks it’s the greatest thing ever? 😉 The original Outlook provided some of the worst security the computer industry has ever seen! ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/103 "2006-06-03T18:58:37Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > I had a half dozen of the drives and dozens of 100Mb disks spread out over my home and office, and used them for about four years. I never lost a byte of data, and never found a computer I couldn’t make them work with–both Mac and Windows. Zip drives worked much better than the 44Mb SyQuest or those 10Mb Fuji (?) cartridge drives I used before that. I guess you just got a bad batch. [Zip drive failure was a well known phenomenon.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death) You were lucky, is all. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/104 "2006-06-03T19:35:58Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > My friend who ran the IT department (and hates Microsoft) still runs OS/2 on his home computer. Wasn’t OS/2 a joint development between Microsoft and IBM? > [@](#): > > …but it really is so terribly useful; what other common format is there that gives equivalent control of the appearance of a document at the receiving end? - everything else I can think of will fall down on font embedding, reflowing text or generally preserving layout. What about PostScript? ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/105 "2006-06-03T19:52:56Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > **Netscape 4** : Bane of web developers, it will misrender a page into complete unreadability if you use CSS it doesn’t quite understand. Even worse, its Mail client is capable of spontaneously zapping hundreds of messages into oblivion without you doing a blessed thing. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/106 "2006-06-03T21:04:08Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > As **RickJay** pointed out neither I nor anyone I knew ever got [OS/2] to install and run properly and we were using good gear (for the time). Are you referring to OS/2 2.0? I recall I couldn’t get that installed either. But I believe I got version 2.11 installed without any problems. I used it throughout most of my college years. I don’t remember any problems with 3.0 (Warp) either. At least not until Windows-95 became more popular and hardware vendors started selling Windows-only hardware (i.e. devices with propriatory protocol, with only Windows drivers provided). I still think OS/2 was a better product than Windows 95, let alone Windows 3.1. I switched to Windows around '97 only because of the poor selection and quality of commercial software available for OS/2. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/107 "2006-06-03T22:38:22Z")
I’m not sure if this qualifies as “bad”, since technically it does everything it claims to do and was quite revolutionary at the time, but I absolutely LOATHED the [Vivo video player](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivo_Software). It was one of the first formats that could be used for bearable streaming video for porn. The picture quality was awful and so was the sound, the player sucked, the format itself was designed to **not have the ability to move between frames at will, as it lacked keyframes** making fast forwarding and such impossible; you can watch the damn movie from the beginning at regular speed and that was it. Trying to masturbate to .viv hentai was almost not worth the effort, since you could never be sure if the tentacle monster was pleasuring the girl or vice versa and you have to sit through all the tedious plot development at 150x150 resolution. All this was the cost of having a file that was maybe 15% smaller than equivilant RM or Divx. I was convinced that internet porn would never take off. ---
**Author:** ![Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8c91f0/32.png) [@Throatwarbler\_Mangrove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Throatwarbler_Mangrove)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/108 "2006-06-03T22:41:18Z")
FWIW Rambus RAM is used in the Playstation 2, and as I understand its unique characteristics was one of the key things that made the PS2 ahead of its time. I don’t think it was every seriously marketed for personal computers. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/109 "2006-06-04T01:37:56Z")
Wordstar 5.0? I used it in college and tried to merge earlier versions from my project partners and it literally merged on the screen. The corrupted file looked like 2 overhead views laid on top of each other. Much gnashing of teeth and I think something got smashed. ---
**Author:** ![mrrealtime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@mrrealtime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrrealtime)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/110 "2006-06-04T01:56:46Z")
My vote is for 1. that 40% increase in volume of advertisements on television (and whatever the partial mute technology that prompted that move) 2. Pop up windows. 3. The iPod shuffle. No display, terrible battery, very fragile… 4. PDF files. Adobe Acrobat. PostScript. Terrible crap. 5. Any phone or communications device that allows you to talk on the phone while you drive. 6. The pocket PC. A device that doesnt serve any purpose well. Its either too small or too big…proving you just cant cram every possible electronic device into one form factor and expect it to be good as any of them. 7. DHTML-a terrible UI language trying to “enhance” the already terrible HTML language. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/111 "2006-06-04T06:08:02Z")
> [@mrrealtime](#): > > 1. DHTML-a terrible UI language trying to “enhance” the already terrible HTML language. Tell me you don’t use anything made by Google. Just try. ---
**Author:** ![TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/112 "2006-06-04T06:45:43Z")
> [@kawaiitentaclebeast](#): > > FWIW Rambus RAM is used in the Playstation 2, and as I understand its unique characteristics was one of the key things that made the PS2 ahead of its time. I don’t think it was every seriously marketed for personal computers. Oh, man, in 2000 or so you couldn’t avoid RAMbus in the personal computer world! Everyone was convinced that it was going to be the next big thing, and even companies like Dell and Gateway used RDRam in their basic systems. It was a good idea on paper, but it was so incredibly expensive and the company was so crazy about their weird licensing fees that it never caught on. It’s still ridiculously expensive - when we looked into getting a stick to upgrade my wife’s 2001-era Dell Desktop (which exclusively uses RDRam) last year, it was still around $200 for a 256mb stick. Insane! Also; the company stays in business by [suing the living shit out of anyone and anything](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060215/170256.shtml) . ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/113 "2006-06-04T06:51:34Z")
> [@mrrealtime](#): > > 1. PDF files. Adobe Acrobat. PostScript. Terrible crap. Uh, do you remember what printing was like _pre_-PostScript? PostScript was a spectacular innovation and continues to be one of the best “products” ever. Likewise .pdfs – they may be somewhat irritating if you are only familiar with them being used as “web content,” but as far as they are _meant_ to be used, they’re the cat’s ass. You know, that whole “portable document” idea. It works brilliantly, just like it’s supposed to. ---
**Author:** ![Hodge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Hodge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hodge)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/114 "2006-06-04T11:41:15Z")
Yep, PDF is an absolute godsend in my own industry (structural & architectural drafting). It’s completely removed the headaches we used to have with sharing drawings that had been created in different CAD software packages. It’s also greatly simplified filling out and submitting official forms and other documents to various municipal and regional departments. Acrobat is expensive bloatware, but there are plenty of free PDF creation tools out there. We use [PDF Creator](http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm), which is free and open-source. For those of you complaining about the bloated nagware, Adobe Reader, I highly recommend using [Adobe Reader Speed-up](http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/PDF/Adobe-Reader-SpeedUp.shtml). It greatly reduces load times by allowing you to disable dozens of unnecessary plugins as well as eliminate those seemingly endless update nag screens. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/115 "2006-06-04T14:23:33Z")
I was _given_ a ZIP drive, but I never really had any desire to use it and never hooked it up. 100MB wasn’t enough capacity when 650MB CDs were already around. ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/116 "2006-06-04T14:36:29Z")
It’s been mentioned by comparison in this thread, but I’d like to nominate the 8-track tape cartridge and its players/recorders. It didn’t take long for the moving parts to wear out, then the reel would start to squeal, or click, or both. Often, the reel would stop moving, but the capstan would still be drawing tape out of the cartridge, and fill up the slot inside with tape until the whole thng came to a halt, and you had yards and yards of tape inside the player. Bye bye album. The tape was crap, and the oxide would flake off. There was no way to make the tape heads stay aligned on the pair of tracks you wanted to hear. Most often, you could hear the adjacent tracks playing at low level during your music. This varied from tape to tape, of course. To add insult to injury, the record companies would rearrange the order of songs on an album to accomodate the length of the loop, and often they’d fade down a song before the sensor strip came up to change tracks, then it’d fade up again. Nowadays, if you still have any 8-track tapes left, and a machine to play them on, a large number of them are unusable. The rubber in the idler wheel inside the front of the cartridge has been decomposing for a couple of decades, and is now a gooey mess. ---
**Author:** ![tmcinroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/51bf81/32.png) [@tmcinroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tmcinroy)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/117 "2006-06-04T20:05:35Z")
I’ve never had any trouble with Real Player On my Mac, maybe you have the wrong computer. Newtons don’t make the list becouse hardly anyone bought one. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/118 "2006-06-04T23:26:53Z")
> [@asterion](#): > > Can’t we just agree that both Windows Media Player and Quicktime suck ass, no matter what the OS? No; I think Windows Media is decent on Windows, and Quicktime is fine on MacOS. It’s when they migrate from their home companies that suckitude occurs. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/119 "2006-06-04T23:55:55Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > **Rambus** The whole thing was a debacle from the beginning, greedy bastards trying to lock us all in to one propriety technology which was expensive, power hungry, complex and even though the clock speed was higher than SDRAM, the latency more than made up the performance gap. > > Add to that RAMBUS tried to claim it owned patents on technology it certainly did not, it was just a bunch of greedy bastards who came up with a crap idea, and tried to hijack everone elses memory technology patents. > > Their practice of shredding crucial documents prior to court hearings so as to prevent discovery is another plank in the gallows that should hang these greedy bastards. Another vote for these assholes. I have been seeing some of this ram going bad now that its got a few years under its belt and @ $90 per 256mb I have been accused of massive price gouging by several customers. Of course there are a bunch of high end Dells out there using it for RAM. Thats pretty much the going rate on the net. Need the same size SDRAM $35 if that. My vote for another PITA item, the all in one motherboard. Video, sound, modem, network, raid controller, liquid cooled sock sorter, northbridge bottle opener, home pregnancy tester, now with SLI support, blah, blah. One thing goes, the whole computer goes. Of course it dosen’t really do anything well just to add insult to injury. ---
**Author:** ![Jet\_Jaguar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jet_jaguar/32/3562_2.png) [@Jet\_Jaguar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jet_Jaguar)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903/120 "2006-06-04T23:58:53Z")
Don’t know why iSmell made the list, I don’t think unreleased vaporware should count. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-25-worst-tech-products-of-all-time-opinions-wanted/358903.md?page=7)