Technically you did use Win98, because all WinME ever was was Win98 with a new dress. Win98SE was heaps better than 95 on almost every front; usability, stability, networking, hardware(particularly USB) support and appearance, but that’s exactly what should be expected anyway.
For the last three years or so, I’ve actually run a mail and web(intranet only) server on Win98 (don’t mock me - I’m actually migrating to Linux right this very moment) - it has not caused me any problems at all really; I reboot it once every couple of months as a precaution, but it just works. I wouldn’t dare expose any listening ports to the outside world though.
On the contrary. Netscape 4 was great when it was released. The problem was that it hung on so long after web technology had surpassed it. CSS was new and no browser had good support for it when NS4 came out. The problem was that Netscape began its long, slow death spiral after that and it was years before their last gasp, NS6 (which was a truly awful piece of software.)
On the other hand, if not for Netscape’s long, painful death, I wouldn’t have Firefox to compose this post on.
Before I read the spoiler box, after consdering that “tech services” were included in the list, I was absolutely sure that “cable TV monopolies” would be number one. Failed? Nope, they’re hanging on. Nonfunctioning? Not really – you can get TV. Worst? Absolutely, in terms of bad stories, the worst cases of stupid customer service, arrogance, abuse, and mismanagement come out when you ask peple about cable tv monopolies – and there’s a greater volume of these stories than other tech complaints; they suck in terms of quality AND quantity. It’s like dealing with the Mafia, but without any putative code of honor. In fact, I probably owe the Mafia an apology for that.
My grandfather, absolutely the smartest man I ever met - I mean, a technical genius - and a computer wizard of the first order, was stymied in trying to install it on one of his machines. After much swearing and failed attempts we finally discovered that the reason it would not work is that the two memory units in the computer were of different brands.
They weren’t different sizes or anything mind you. A matched pair. Same RAM, same speed. Just different brands.
He tried OS/2, I tried it, my buddy tried it. We networked with people who tried it. It simply wouldn’t work; if by some miracle you actually got it installed and running it was a fragile as crystal. I can believe it COULD be properly installed with some luck and exactly the right equipment, but I’ve got a crazy theory:
If an operating system for a home computer is hard to install, it sucks.
The amazing thing is I’d never even heard of a lot of that stuff- and the dates on some of it are quite surprising.
I’d never even heard of DVDs until mid-2000, Zip drives were known to be useless by the time they got to NZ, the idea of an Internet company that didn’t let you on the Internet itself was laughable, and no-one in the country had the money for expensive white elephant portable computers that needed Sherpas to carry around.
I was surprised the MiniDisc wasn’t there- but as has been mentioned, they’re very good within a certain niche, notably with TV, Radio, and Print/Online Journalists.
All in all, it just shows how far behind the tech curve Australia and NZ really are. I only saw someone with one of those Blackberry thingy for the first time a month or so ago, we don’t have Tivo (yet, but it’s almost here beyond a trial stage), and there’s no Australian version of Netflix, AFAIK.
I’m told we can look forward to electricity sometime next year, too…
It’s certainly true that Australia tends to lag behind in technology-related consumer goods, although once they have access to new stuff, Australians tend to have a very high take-up rate. For example, Australia has one of the highest instances of cell-phone ownership in the world. But it seems to me that the gap is narrowing, and that new products now arrive in Australia with less of a lag than used to be the case. Hell, Australia didn’t get TV until 1956, and that was really only because of the Melbourne Olympics.
Also, there are some tech-related things—services in particular—that arrive later (or not at all) in Australia because of basic structural issues like distance and population. One was cable TV, and cable penetration in Australia still doesn’t really extend much outside of state capitals; in fact, there are still city areas that don’t have access. And for anyone outside the cities, satellite is about the only option for pay TV. The cost of laying cable to places like Dubbo or Mt Isa, with their relatively small populations, would far outweight any revenue.
I think that another product that might suffer from such issues is a Netflix-type service. The fact is, that as a very large country with a small and widely-dispersed population, Australia is not a great candidate for Netflix. Economies of scale will work against the service in multiple ways.
An operation like Netflix requires a pretty big start-up investment. For example, if you want to ensure that people in Perth or Melbourne get their DVDs as quickly as people in Sydney, you probably need distribution centers in multiple locations across the country, like Netflix does here in the US. This is not only expensive in itself, but in turn it means that each distribution center needs to have access to almost your full catalog of movies, meaning multiple copies of each movie.
And then we get to the catalog itself. One of the reasons that people love a service like Netflix is not only because it is cheap and convenient, it is because the selection is better than most brick-and-mortar video stores—certainly better than the big chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood. In a country the size of the United States, with a potential audience of almost 300 million people, Netflix can afford to have a large selection, but the much smaller Australian market would make this difficult over there.
The American population is almost 15 times as large as Australia’s, and for a business like Netflix there is probably a multiplying factor even greater than that, in terms of the relative profitability in each country.
I’m not saying that a Netflix-style system can’t or won’t work in Australia, but economies of scale means that Australian users would probably pay considerably more for the service, and/or get considerably slower service, and/or have fewer movies to choose from.
I don’t know how many people will remember it, but I’d include the Olivetti DaVinci for inclusion somewhere in the top 25; it was a compatible PDA; marketed as being definitely not a PalmPilot, but able to run PalmOS applications. Turned out they had just reverse-engineered the hardware, ripped off the operating system in its entirety and pretended it was all their own work. Huge scandal, lawsuit, embarrassment.
The linked article has the DVD-player-in-glasses thing, but that’s the only nod toward wearable computers. I worked at a dot-com in 2000, and one of the hardcore geeks had this wearable setup he’d ordered from some outfit for eleventy-gazillion dollars. CPU was in a backpack, keyboard strapped to your forearm, monitor was in a one-eyed headset dealie. Whole package weighed a ton and as this was in 2000 before wireless was practical the machine was isolated from the corporate network and therefore couldn’t be used for anything. After a month or so of wandering around the office like a Borg, hoping he’d be asked about his “cool gear,” the guy finally packed it up and stuck it in storage.
People still keep making noises about wearable PCs but as far as I’m concerned it’s always been a dead end. The distributed model — tiny client, workhorse base, wireless connectivity — is far superior to any notions of lugging around the whole computer with you.
Ever try it on the othe side, and run Windows Media Player on a Mac? It’s so much worse that even Microsoft has given up on trying to make it stop sucking.
Oh, heck, our family was so computer-illiterate back then, we didn’t know anyone but a repairman could open up the case. No, we just picked the thing up off the desk and WHOMP. Worked like a charm.
microsoft windows (any and all versions), goes without saying
Nintendo Virtual Boy; cool for about 10 minutes, then a splitting headache…
Mac OS 7.5.x with the universal generic “Type 1” and “Type 2” errors
Mac OS 9.x.x
Apple Macintosh 6000 series (6300 and 6400 series)
iMac G3 series (tray and slot loaders) problematic Analog boards
eMac series “okay, lets make a 60 pound desktop computer, make the plastic case slippery, and put NO carrying handle on it”
I’m glad I’m not the only one who had to suffer life with a PCjr back in the 80s. An uncle of mine worked for IBM, so at the very least my parents didn’t pay list for it. We got it just before the product was shitcanned. Almost every game that I got for it went back to the store because of incompatibilities with the mainline PC. Perhaps because of that, I did become very adept at typing in BASIC programs from magazines, and perhaps a big reason why I code for a living today.
When I went to college in '92 I got an IBM PS/1 as a graduation gift (I was still using the jr all the way up to then, so mine at least was reliable). The PS/1 was a better attempt at a scaled down version of a better machine than the jr, but nothing to write home about either…
Excalibre: The Quirksmode page on Netscape 4. Netscape 6 might be worse, but Netscape 4 seems to be the canonical ‘Crappy Ancient Browser’.
Q.N. Jones: Did my joke sail right over your head, or do you know that the CPU is a chip that resides inside the case?
MacTech, wolf in second hand clothing: I should have mentioned the Headache Boy in my list. I tried it in an in-store demo once and played a tennis game, but the graphics were so bad I had no intention of ever buying one. I never played it long enough to get a headache.
I’m still optimistic, mainly because I think the proliferation of cheap Flash NVRAM has tipped the scales with regards to efficiency enough to make them practical even with our currently craptastic battery technology.
