The Worst 25 Tech Products

You left out Quicktime. "No, I DON'T want to install three extra services I'll never use. No, I don't want to subscribe to itunes. Why won't you uninstall?"

Great article, maybe Philips CD-i of the early 90's could make the worst 50 list...

what about KaZaa, which spied on you?

You obviously missed out on the Nichion bad caps disaster of 2005 that caused businesses all across america to call their PC supplier and ask "Is there going to be a recall?". Dell, Gateway, IBM, Apple, and even HP were all hit by this bad batch of Nichion capacitors that were placed into millions of motherboards across the U.S. The best part about it though was the fact that the problem did not show its self until roughly 300 days of use when you would either get random power failures or the wonderful smell of something burning and the great sight of a bursted capacitor.

Link's Interactive Network? The whole notion of interacting with TV when all that meant was voting on trivial things that were often inconsequential ad hoc components to often really bad programming.

Sadly, "interactive" add ons were gimmicks that assumed bad ideas poorly implemented with bad technology could jazz up interest for bad television programming.

Ironically, the better the narrative, the LESS likely a viewer wants to interact with it. The WORSE the narrative, the more producers MUST get the audience engaged by means OUTSIDE the actual creative material.

"Interactive" and "Television" are oxymorons suited perfectly for morons.

I'm really surprised there wasn't any more Compaq products mentioned! :-) Oh... and how about IBMs OS from the early 90's... now what was that OS? Remember the one that was going to replace Microsoft and Apple's OS's? Oh well... some old timers will remember!

One thing I was surprised at was the bash on the original Mac Portable... or Mac Lugable! I actually had one for work! I took it home once and on the airplane once. Back then I was like the "look at me" sort of guy on the plane! Everyone wanted to look at my laptop! Now a days, everyone has one on the plane. Anyway... even though it was too big, and lasted about 45 mins on a full charge, and could barely sit on your lap... all while sporting a Mortarola 6800 processor with a blinding 12mhz processor speed and 256kb of RAM (ah, newbies... noticed I said 256 KB - not MB!). Yeah... that was hot stuff back then! What other choices did you have? 6-8lb DOS laptops with no hard drives. Or a suitcase like thing from Compaq or IBM that had to be plugged in. Yeah... big and bulky... but the Mac Lugable paved the way for the Powerbook... some the best laptops ever made!

Oh... one last comment about the other poster who mentions that QuickTime should be on the list! You should turn in your PC now and step away from the keyboard. You might have a virus that is making you dilusional!

Well... that's my 2 cents! Enjoy!

Darn It! you forgot KaZaa free music download, which clearly states in the form that it WILL put spyware on your computer if you say Yes, even though the website says NOW WITH NO SPYWARE!

I was a victim to 7 of these disasters...
not to mention many other "cool" items not mentioned that I deeply regretted buying/downloading.
Some call me "cutting edge," but some simply call me "fool." LOL

PCjr was a flop? What about the IBM Convertable? We're talkin' about the worlds heaviest, biggest and useless laptop. They made 500 of these beauties and quit!!

I can't believe Avaratec's whole line of would be computers did not make the list. Their computers are so bad theye remind me of the self destructing tape on Mission Impossible. I have had two of their units for thirteen months and have spent six of those months trading broken computers with their tech support. That is when they answer the phone.

TRS 80: No further explenation required

As a programmer my favorite hunk-a-junk was Win32S which was meant to introduce you to the wonderful world of 32 bit windows applications while sitting atop a 16 bit oriented Windows 3.1

The crash and burn cycle was quite awesome.

I can't believe Avaratec's whole line of would be computers did not make the list. Their computers are so bad theye remind me of the self destructing tape on Mission Impossible. I have had two of their units for thirteen months and have spent six of those months trading broken computers with their tech support. That is when they answer the phone.

You forgot the tape drives.

Slow back up, slow restore, expensive tapes and the most incompatibility ever

I was surprised to find the Packard Bell line of PC's missing. I was an engineering student during their heyday, and me and my fellow students studied their machines as examples of how not to design a circuit board...

WinTV Pro. any Haupauge software. PeoplePC uses all your system grab the phone numbers and connect with the connection wizard. PPC uses 100% of the processor and no less than 200meg of Ram. This stops it, and also helps with disconnects from the internet.

The ZIP drive was great. I used and supported them for years without a single click of death.

What's missing?
Norton antivirus
Netscape4
Lotus 123v3
Microsoft Passport
Wordperfect 6 for DOS

What bout Bonzi buddy, anyone remeber him 'nuff said

You forgot: Any software from 180 Solutions, Hotbar, Hotmail (which Microsoft now owns, and in which they ignore spam filters if it involves mail from them or a paid affiliate), Google Desktop (Anyone who complains about the NSA wiretaps and then uses Google Desktop needs clubbed to death like a baby sea - why is it that it is horrible if the government does it, but when Google does it we hardly hear a peep?), AOL's Goodmail, The DMCA, MySpace.com, Bonzi Buddy, etc., any computer made by Tandy, Norton/Symantec Firewall and Antivirus (versions past 2002 are atrocious and do worse things to your computer than most viruses), Everquest and WoW - for creating a legion of addicts who should be doing something other than sitting at a computer all day and night, and last but not least: Microsft Windows -for without you we might never had known what a Trojan Horse, a BSOD or a Keylogger was.

Kodak photo CD. You pay extra when you get your photos developed and Kodak sent you a CD with all your family photos burned on it. Did I mention you needed to buy an expensive player and you could only view them on your TV.

Hard to argue with AOL at #1, but Windows ME has got be #2, maybe 1A...

It's depressing how many of these companies/products I've had the misfortune to deal with. I could not agree with this list more. AOL definitely deserves the top slot. Congratulations to them. Now I just wish they'd go out of business.

Yeah. Bonzi Buddy! He was so fun to play around with until he started crashing Explorer. Everything was fine after I uninstalled him.

I never had any problems with AOL. The only thing that was odd was they sent a letter to me saying they were no longer offering Broadband/DSL when we had it, so we switched over to SBC DSL, but I still here AOL offering Broadband/DSL to this day. What the heck? Oh well. I'm glad we switched.

I purchased a Phillips CD-i in the early 90's to help with college. All it ended up doing was eating up over half of my student loan and not giving me enough resources for any essay I had to write. Hocked it fo $40 2 years later.

Under dishonorable mentions, you mention the Timex Data Link watch. This was one of the greatest advancements in high school and college cheating ever created. Teachers will always check to see if you have crib notes, if you hid formulas on the back of the label of your water bottle, and even force you to clear your calculator's memory, but unless the teacher is truly savvy, they're not going to make anyone take off their watch -- or think twice if they look at it multiple times during a test.

How could you leave out Word Perfect for Windows? Starting in about 1983, WP built up a large base of WP-DOS users. Free telephone help was available to everyone. By the early 90's, millions of people knew the meaning of Shift-F7 and a whole bunch more keyboard commands. Then Windows came out. First, WP did nothing. When WP finally came out with a Windows-compatible product, they inexplicably left out any option to use the familiar, fast, keyboard commands! People who knew the commands, and who could keyboard, were cruelly abandoned -- forced to move a hand off the keyboard, to a mouse, to connect to a software that was unpredictable, unintuitive, and difficult to control. Lets see, how do I number a paragraph the way I want it to and not the way the software thinks my document should look? Not with WP Windows, and sadly not with Microsoft Word either, which is also hell-bent on making your documents look just like MS thinks you want it to look. Oh well, there is a solution. My Windows 98 machine still runs WP 5.1 for DOS, which lets me turn out documents the way I want them, fast.

Yeah, got the Timex watch (I liked it until I got an LCD), got the CueCat (it NEVER picked up the UPC's correctly), and avoided ME.

What you're missing: the iCube, IE5.2/Mac, and Memory Stick.

Don't forget Netscape 6 .. the product that pushed IE into the monopoly position it holds today

Another classic is the 1995 Intel Pentium floating point unit flaw that they were in denial. That is until the lawyers showed up.

How about the cold heat soldering iron.

i never had a problem with Windows ME. I still use it on one computer at home. the thing with some of these problems had a good resolution - a check from the company and the end of suit. I'm sure some of these "mistakes" made some people a lot of money. I got in on the softram settlement. Epson is coming through with some cash soon. sony sent money some years back on a cd settlement.

Awesome! Anyone who razzes AOL is cool by me. How the HECK do they stay in buisness?!!!!!

Great list. Cool cat, bonzi buddy, etc... But I still have real player on my system and there are still websites that amazingly only stream clips in .ram or .rm. And real player still pops up with some problem. Can't connect to the network... It always sounded terrible anyway. How do they stay in business? Good choice for no.1. "For people who don't know any better". Good line.
JT

I would have added Netscape browser version 6.0 to the list. That browser had problems all around, after it, Netscape really cleaned up their act and made some better versions, version 7.1 was the last I tried. I was a Netscape browser fan, now I'm using Mozilla Firefox. Anyhow, just thought I'd mention Netscape 6.0.

Sega CD add on
Sega 32x
Atari Lynx and Jaguar
Virtual Gameboy

Others have mentioned Netscape 4 and 6, but what about Netscape 2 ? If uae, gpf and bsod were file extensions, this thing would have registered them. I could actually make it crash on demand by carrying out a particular sequence of actions. (Unfortunately (?) I can't remember now what that sequence was.)

Mind you, it caused me to buy RamDoubler for Windows, which unlike the similarly named scam products actually worked. (No, in spite of the name it didn't even claim to double the RAM, but its management of system resource heaps meant you could open about twice the programs. I compared with and without.)

How about a special sub-list for installers? Adobe for no.1, Chilli iBurst (an Australian wireless ISP) for no.2.

You guys are just too young! Lookup the eight-track player.

I might have placed IE or Windows ME as #1 but I guess AOL earned top (dis)honors. Very funny article given enough time has passed since my "click of death" experiences and IOMEGA's "What, Me Worry"? attitude.

Upon reflection, they would have been smarter to show a little more concern.

has anyone noticed aol is like bizarro spyware?

acrobat needs to be there

The Sparq drive! Right around the time of the zip drive's popularity comes the Sparq- featuring removeable hard drive cartridges that were way cheaper per gigabyte than anything on the market...except that the cartridges had about a 1 month life. I bought this thing, the disks started breaking, the company went bankrupt asap. Went online to investigate how to maybe fix it...there were thousands of complaints. I think this thing was a pc-world "best product" too!

DaiKatana *snigger*

What about the first version of Roxio easy CD and DVD creator. Their CD creating software was always pretty good, but when I got my first DVD burner Roxio came bundled. It would not even write data to DVD. Many coasters. Now I usse Deep Burner(free) for data and Sly Soft for movies. Both are great

Im not sure if this applies to this list but a good one would be all software made by dell, dell bios, dell media players, cant raze the lcd monitors though.
Did any one but me buy a ps2 hdd, $130 one game.

Apple's PowerCD.
This was out in the early 1990s for approximately the blink of an eye. It was the worst Apple product ever: a supposedly "portable" CD player that was unable to play anything when removed from its chunky grey base station, because the base station was its only power source. Oops!

This list covers a very short section of all time. My nominee in the all-time category would be the Heathkit Parasol -- the very first Heathkit. Not a computer, not a radio, not a parasol -- an airplane!

I believe it was Panasonic that made a personal check printer that was about $!50.00 that was a real stinko.

About AOL. You guys forgot to mention the ability for AOL to "fix" you computer. This "fixing" has caused many problems and I have had to personally deal with many blue screens of death because of AOL's pc "fixing" ability.

I used to do support for one of the big isp's.
Bonzi buddy was one to remember. I used a computer once with it on there. It kept popping up and obscuring things you needed to see. I had to uninstall it from many, many peoples systems. That was one of the first big spywares

This story should be added to the list.
Or better yet, added to the list of 25 ALL TIME POINTLESS PIECES OF JOURNALISM.

How many people did AOL introduce the world of the internet? Much more then PCworld.com, the software has its issues but I guarentee millions of people would not be online now if it wasnt for AOL.

HP print manager software.

It adds hundreds of registry items, adds half a dozen programs to the startup, tries to supervise just about every activity on your computer, and slows printing by orders of magnitude?

Rip it all out and just keep the driver.

The Audrey supports broadband. Most of them came with a USB ethernet adapter.

Excelllent article, I have to admit I chunkled through your entire "walk down memory lane." Thanks for bringing back the memories.

My list would definitly include Adobe Acrobat. Each version becomes more and more bloated- with no major advance in a decade. Far from being a universal format, not even different versions of acrobat pdf's are compatible. And how come I still have acrobat 5 and 6 on my computer, i thought I upgraded to 7- try removing an old version after upgrading. you would think the upgrade would be cleaner after all these years.

I would put Creative Lab's Soundblaster drivers up there too. Their old hardware for DOS was great. The Pro, the 16, and the AWE32. Setting jumpers was a pain, but it was better than their windows drivers. They're another company that decided to transform your PC into a Creative Labs media PC when all you wanted was the damn driver.

And up until recently, you needed the original CD to install fresh drivers without using some hack. Pitch the CD that came with the card thinking you'll just download them when when you need them, rebuild your box a year later, and sorry - no downloadable drivers for you unless you have the CD for proof. Proof of what? It's hardware. WTF were they thinking?

Love the fact that A O H-E-Double Hockey Sticks was Numero Uno on the list! Between the constant hangups at peak hours, the countless bugs, the "fixes" as one other person mentioned. My distain for that company and there "service" still lives with me today! I now have At&t Yahoo, which I've had for a good half year. FREE AT LAST!!!!

Say what you will about Priceline. Once I set it up to buy groceries I could go to the supermarket, load up on fillet mignon and pay ridiculous prices for it. I miss it very very much

Two things: First the Pippin never made it to market as an Apple product. By the time it was sold to anyone it was branded as a Bandai product.

Second, the 20th Anniversary Mac came out in 1996, not 1997, and had nothing to do with Steve Jobs.

Lovely. How cathartic.

Two additions:

[1] Personics Headmouse -- fine for disabled folks, but head/neck-injury-inductive for the rest of us. I remember when they were running ads every month in Byte, blowing thru investor cash

[2] FEAD Optimizer -- the brilliant Adobe Acrobat installation compression tool that serves absolutely no discernable purpose other than eating up time

-- stan

Seeing the Timex Datalink watch on the Dishonorable mention list just showed that none of the authors actually had one! What other watch could interface with Outlook to download your contact info? What other watch had so many easily programmable alarms? Ok, the screen-programming thing was weird, but there wasn't another way to do it back then :) Of course Windows XP killed it by denying direct access to the video hardware it needed.

The new version of the watch has USB. Cool.

How about the "Perfect" suite of software that came bundled with Kaypro computers in the early 1980s? That was really the worst pile of crap I've ever seen. I was in an office where regularly throughout the day I'd hear a cry of "Oh NO!!!" as Perfectthisorthat would destroy another piece of work.

HP tape drives -- everyone I've ever had has died an early and unnatural death.

How about that piece of crap TCP/IP package for Win 3.1... blessedly I can't recall the name of it. I think it had a gecko motif...

Bluetooth... a technology invented to link nearby devices in an office cube, a use that never really developed, and which has become popular for cell phones, but is not quite ready for prime time...

How about the way that printers still can't feed paper reliably? And handle envelopes like they were squirming cats?

Unlimited-use Internet accouts, one of the most massive frauds in technical history?

All of these things and no one mentioned WebSense?
Block the critics of their products and their competition? Blocks sites based on stupid creiterria?
C'Mon.....
~Crispy~

Almost forgot..... Earthlink, the company that single-handedly destroyed Mindspring....
Then made up for it by moving it's support staff to Bangalore....
Way to go guys......
~Crispy~

if this article would be written a few years lates i am sure 100$ Laptop would be listed too

The worse piece of software I ever worked with was Windows version 1. It had yellow screens and never allowed anything to run for more than 10 minutes, including itself! It came on 286 machines. It was removed from the machines with in a week.

pcworld magazine should be on the list too for its heavily biased reviews, 2 to 1 advertisement to content ratio and generally poor writing and editing.

I'm glad Internet Explorer is high up on the list, and it could stand being a bit higher. While it is the veritable definition of "security hole" perhaps of equal importance is the incredibly poorly designed user interface.

Why would anyone want to open a clone of the window they were already viewing (especially for those still using dial-up) when creating a new window? Why did it take Opera and Firefox, et al. to start eating their lunch before Microsoft took notice?

Methinks theres some brain-deadedness here ...

I'd also nominate Cheyenne Software's "Infinite Disk" archival software for, at the very least, an honorable mention.

The concept was (and still is) great - a file manager that archives infrequently used files to a variety of media for offline storage. In practice - not so great (at least, circa 1997) ... after having moved several megabytes of files to tape as a test I found it impossible to bring them back. Kind of a black mark for archival software!

Played with it for several days in several ways (to ZIP, to floppy - no go), and, after suffering through equally horrible tech support, gave up, and encased the install disks in amber lest future generations be denied a glimpse at atrocious software.

Gosh. Quite a few comments and not a single mention of the single most dangerous PC product ever: Outlook Express.

I really liked this article. I have to say i had so many problems with America Online. One of them which was mentioned here was their cancellation policy. they charged my card for almost a year. I usually dont check my credit card bills, because i trust everyone. I called them and complained after i found out and they werent any help. making the story short they said it is your fault to check for your billing materials and I didnt have any luck with them.
anyway i totally agree. they are the worth of all. dont sign up with them at all. I know i dont

And for an example of things that went "clunk": DOS 4.0 I know of grown men who would swear on a (large) stack of bibles that they never heard of such a thing. They all worked -- on some other project (sure, dude) -- in Redmond.

IBM's PC-1 should have been mentioned. It came with no serial port, a modem that could not be upgraded, a PC-Junior sound card that was compatible with nothing, no ISA slots, and non-replaceable hard drive and monitor. This piece of junk got most of its sales from IBM's own employees who wouldn't be tricked into buying their own company's computer again.

OMIGOD!!! You are to be commended for including my 2 favorite stinkers (Quicktime and any Real product) but, how could such an august collection be without the wonderful PS/2 architecture that required ancillary board manufacturers to pay a royalty to IBM for the privilege of using the bus architecture? Of course, they quickly recovered by obscuring our recollection of that stupendous flop by championing the heavily flawed OS/2 Warp (all versions)! But, those were kept company by other famous bombs like Novell's server crashing V 4.0, Intel's wonderfully crippled 386SX chips, IBM's JAD (Joint Application Development ) which produced great programs like... Uh well, give me a few decades to think of one... Then there was the mighty successful Microsoft Windows For Workgroups that absolutely nobody ever got working correctly! Ah, I could go on but, I need study the effects of manipulating data in expanded memory using the LIM boards I bought.

I've had my Timex DataLink for over ten years and it's still working great! I just had the battery replaced a couple of weeks ago that had lasted at least 5 years and used my CRT monitor to refresh all the data. It works fine with WinXP. I'm sure it will last another ten years. Best watch I've ever owned and will pass it on to my heirs!

The product that deserves number 1 is windows "xp".

Yes, your favorite apps run on it (because they have to). I'm not saying those suck. I'm saying "xp", as on operating system sucks.

As an OS (not a way to run your apps, your apps could run on these if their makers had the decency to make it happen), compared to other OSes I've tried and recommend to people, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, Mac OS X, Solaris . . windows is the worst, ever, period.

$ 200 or more a copy for "pro"? The free ones (which are actually free as in liberty but here I use "free" also meaning price-zero) are far better as operating systems.

People already reading this article don't need to be told why windows sucks. (If you think to yourself "but I can't run my favorite program on GNU+Linux you are too stupid to understand my comment, go f*** yourself.)

MICROSOFT WIRELESS OPTICAL MOUSE BLUE. Yet more evidence that MS is totally incompetent on any piece of hardware more complex than a mousepad, millions of folks bought this wonder and then wondered why they did it. For the more enterprising, a couple of Web pages appeared explaining how to open the mouse and adjust a trim cap on the circuit board to get the damned thing to work--apparently something that QC at the factory couldn't figure out. I got mine to work that way--until it gave up the ghost permanently after 9 months. The Wireless Optical Mouse Blue also ate batteries and couldn't use rechargeables, and had the thrillingly dangerous habit of dying without any warning whatsoever--a mouse for those who like to live on the ragged edge. I never checked to see if any class action lawsuits came about. I probably should have.

Totally agree with the Iomega Zip Drive.
I use it now as a paperweight.

What about the barbie pc and hotwheels pc,after they missed there christmas deadline, they were then fined by the goverment and shout down which left all of us owners with the pc with no more tech support or parts. and the goverment kept the money.

You left out the BIGGEST LOSER of all - Microsoft (anything they make). MS has the biggest group of Beta Testers in existence - their customer base. Buggy software with security holes big enough to drive an eighteen wheeler through.

Long Live TUX!

That was a great article! I'm glad i'm not the only one that had to suffer with AOL.
And i agree with your list they are the worst!
And i have about a million free hours worth of CD's think they would honor them "snicker"?

LOP and brain-dead zealots. Those are to be put in the list. Along with QuickTime crap.

1999 Compaq- I perfectly lost it all to a 2000 doallr so called gamer/net pc called the presario 5600i. Then they went bankrupt and dishonored the "extra" warranty I paid for. After 31 days (yes, 1 day over thier return policy) attempting a lemoned pc refund got refused as well.And of course it had the iomega zip drive, and the predecossor to the ibm deskstar (just as unreliable).Can't forget the the slew of "winmodems" either for that generation aiding the mystery spam phone calls....Regardless of recovery of some of these brands, I have labeled them forever.I know where you went Compaq. You can run, but can't hide...

I don't the the Mac Portable deserves to be on the list. The artilce is wrong in saying it couldn't run on AC power. It came with a power supply for such use (and charging the battery). Yes it was heavy, but they didn't call it a laptop. The large battery gave excellent runtime. It was thoughtful of Apple to allow placing the trackball on either side of the keyboard. The use of CMOS static memory allowed a sleep mode with essentially zero power consumption, and instant wake-up. While the machine was expensive and heavy, it was the first portable running Mac OS. It was reliable and worked very well. Considering that one knew the size and weight when buying it, I think it is unfair to derate a machine that delivered on what was advertised. The machine provided a welcome alternative to DOS/Windows. The machine is now very valuable to collectors, something that can't be said of any of the DOS/Windows machines of the era. Those all quickly became regarded as junk. Old machines from Packard Bell or some of Apple's Performas were far more deserving of criticism. The Macintosh Portable was a very exciting thing to own and use.

So many people posting, so many people forgetting to mention Gator.

Who chose these products? A group of recent college grads? Apparently, nothing bad in "hi-tech" was made prior to 1984, and most of it came out in the past 10 years, i.e. stuff that a 21 year old would be able to remember (in between bong hits perhaps).

I would expect a "hi-tech" list to include lots of gadgets. Half of these items are either software, services, or concepts, not "products" in the sense that the geniuses who came up with this list want to convey.

I hope in the future these kids will occupy themselves with the latest music download service and leave the analysis to actual experts with a concept of time that extends past 20 years.

I am truly more stupid for having wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this sycophantic tripe.

CNet should clearly be at the top of the list for so blatently being Microsoft bought hacks.

What about Nintendo's Dial-Up and Broadband Adapters for the Nintendo GameCube? Membership was supposedly $9.99 a month and there were maybe two or three games that could go online. If you logged on, the chances of finding anyone else were probably very, very slim (unless you called your friend to come on). $9.99 a month for a small library of online games was a bad mistake for Nintendo.

Also, there's the WeatherBug. Had good weather forcasts, but come with a ton of ads and startup could be slow at times. It took some time to uninstall, but everything was normal after that.

Oh, remember WidTangent (now WildGames). My computer kept identifying it as spyware, and there were constant pop-ups, some were for thier games, others were not. Usually games cost $19.99 for an activation code that would unlock the full version on your computer. This would be good until 1-6 months later when the game would ask for the code again. Log in names, High Scores, and Unlockable content won in the game were deleted or reset numerous times. Thank God for Club Pogo and RealArcade.

The worst I ran into, which came with my computer, is WordPerfect 10. No matter what you do, first you have to save the document, then go to my documents to print it. It will not print from the program. And it doesn't matter what printer you have. It came with Windows XP. I bought my HP computer in 2004.

nVidia Dustbusters and Matrox Parhelias were pretty disappointing.

I'm still using my Timex datalink. When I found it was not "dead" but just could not communicate with the phospors used in newer monitors. I used an old one for programming. This made it somewhat less useful. To date no one seems to have the datalink's unique ability to access the phone list and find a phone number quickly by scanning. It's too bad microsoft and timex divorced as the product was and still is a great idea that needs some more updating for the new display devices. Those of you who still have one will be happy to find it still works fine- with an older monitor for data entry.

Real Networks. They really abandoned their users after sold themselves to AOL. What a surprise. RealNetworks was horrible to begin with and now AOL really did a wonderful job of that miserable software being the worst ever. Real One player completely changed the way it plays music from real8 that music sites that had real player formats(rm and ra ) had no choice but to offer older versions of Real player. RealOne now acts like a browser and would like to control everything you do on your computer.

AOL = Newbie...my friend works at AOL marketing and tries to convince me (an IT consultant) that AOL is the greatest. I feel so vindicated.

Great list and beautifully written. Of course, everyone will have their bunch of losers:

Top of my list was the kyocera palm-phone (bad palm, worse phone).

The Commodore 1541 disk drive.
Whack, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit. Whack, dit, dit, dit, dit, dit. That's old school bad technology.

US-CERT actually did NOT ever recommend people stop using Internet Explorer, as your article inaccurately suggests. They stated that not using IE was one possible workaround to avoid IE vulns. They never said that switching to another browser would make you more secure. US-CERT knows that the only way to entirely avoid IE vulns is to stop using Windows, not to stop using IE.

The IE vulnerability I believe you're talking about from 2004 was the download.ject "Iframe" vuln. This vuln was found by the mangleme HTML fuzzing tool. The author of that tool stated that IE was far far more secure from such attacks than any other browser, including the brand new Firefox, due to Microsoft's superior code testing back in 1999 to 2001 against fuzzing.

The problem with IE, besides that it is popular, is that it is old. It has about as many security problems in the default config as RedHat Linux 7.x from the same time period did.

Absolutely, IE 6 has security problems that are being addressed, albeit slowly. XP SP2 helped quite a bit there.

The Apple puck mouse - here's a hint for those of you with the non-indented mouse button who have a hard time finding the mouse button. Look for the mouse cord, click the button. MORONS! How do you tell the difference between the left and right buttons on a traditional mouse? And it's a good thing the scroll wheel is between the buttons, or you idiots might be looking for it at the ass end of the mouse! BEWARE OF STUPID PEOPLE IN LARGE GROUPS!

What about Creative's Digital VCR??? Never worked right from day one. Creative won't support it, even though its only a few years old.
You can't find any info about it on Creative's site. Its like it never existed. Shame on you Creative!

Also, I received a bill from AOL for services. I have NEVER used AOL. Shame on you too!

Early versions of CD Creator were horrible. You had a 50% chance of actually creating a CD that worked. The other 50% went straight into the trash.

What about Creative's Digital VCR??? Never worked right from day one. Creative won't support it, even though its only a few years old.
You can't find any info about it on Creative's site. Its like it never existed. Shame on you Creative!

Also, I received a bill from AOL for services. I have NEVER used AOL. Shame on you too!

Early versions of CD Creator were horrible. You had a 50% chance of actually creating a CD that worked. The other 50% went straight into the trash.

How did Circus City's divx scam not make the top 10?

The Big 3 at one time was AOL, Compuserve and Progigy for access to the Internet. I also remember my very first $$$ bill. For 4,822 minutes I got a bill for $270.00/mo.

As competition began to evolve today's rates (i.e. $19.95 & $9.95) for monthly service, I made a vow that AOL would NEVER gain me as a customer.

For as they too went to service plans for unlimited access for pennys a day, I said to myself "you jerks could have charged me that all along but chose to take advantage of the situation".

The "34 million customers" as you point out in "the 25 worst", is a simple case study on the vast numbers of the misinformed.

It is the "misinformed" that keep Exxon/Mobil in business and rolling Multi-Billion dollar profits into their pockets on a quarterly basis.

If someone or entity would use the "carpet-bombing technique" to inform Americans, maybe we could drive down the price of gasoline. We essentially move like feed animals while corporate america laughs all the way to the bank.

For all you fellow feed animals out there, that like to make us all feel helpless with your petty arguments, your natural indifference and typical negative comments - remember this........

In 2006, The Saudi Arabian population is paying $0.61 cents per gallon of gasoline.
So THANKS ! You just don't make the connect do you.

Exxon, AOL and ALLSTATE Insurance will never get a red cent from me. I enjoy being amused by the Millions they spend on advertizing.

Are You In Good Hands ? Ha !

Sorry, Ramon. You must be on a different McLeod from me. (Hyuk hyuk....)

But (and this is a big butt) I'll agree with you on this one....

#16 Comet Cursor. I'll agree with you on that one!! Shake!! In fact, I'll hold the guy who came up with this and you hit him with a frying pan!!

Now.....

I'm not a big fan of slamming people who have taken a chance and done something. What products have YOU brought to market?

Let's start with #1 - AOL. It was my first ISAP and I had no complaints from 1997 when I first signed. The interface was intuitive -- even now looking back, it was still easier than the latest verision of IE. Their problem is they priced themselved out of the market and when DSL came along at $15/mon, they were obsolete. I switched because I needed a POP3 account, and also because they started using tech support in India.

#2 - Real Player. This was the first audio program that I learned about which introduced webcasting to me. It was the standard then (1997) and, like AOL, it was easy to use and never failed. Again, today, it is still easier to use than Media Player.

#6 - The Lion King. I don't understand this one. It's a movie. In that case, you should add every other movie that is produced.

#15 - IOmega Zip Drive. Hello? You didn't like a 250MB floppy disk? When it came out the standard was a 1.44MB floppy disk. Now we had a floppy-style disk that would hold TONS of data! It's still much better than fragile CDs for repeated data tranfers. No, it won't hold 700MB like a CD, but for most office applications, that's what I used until the USB flash drives came out.

Now, this one I've got to see!!!!

#24 DigiScents iSmell. LOL!!!!

AOL #1? Your credibility is dropping fast, PC World. If it weren't for AOL, the interest in the internet would have been slowed significantly. Look at it's competition when it first hit...Prodigy and Compuserve...not exactly user friendly to new users.

Your reasonings behind putting it #1 are weak. A mass marketing campaign? If that's the reason, then you've got issues. Realplayer/spyer is the worst of the worst. AOL brought people to the internet....and was responsible for who knows how much worldwide economics.

My Timex Datalink still works fine.
I actually like the flashy bars. The new models use boring USB to connect.
What other watch allowed you to upload add on code?!

It is kind of a brick though and the microsoft logo is somewhat annoying.

Hidee to awl muh frens over at a.a!!

It'd be fitting to see Bob running on a PC Jr.

But you guys are WAY too young! Anyone want to buy a copy of JRT Pascal?

MS-DOS 4.0?

Top View?

...my list would run to many pages, but then it would span almost 30 years of personal computing...

Perhaps the worst tech product of all time and covering the span of many years is Microsoft's Windows operating system. It is amazing that a company can produce such an unreliable product and made billions. The product has cost businesses and individuals so much time and money that it would be hard to count. Your description of AOL, "AOL succeeded initially by targeting newbies, using brute-force marketing techniques" would fit this product. The current Apple advertising with the PC freezing up with Windows is right on target. There is definately a business opportunity here for a reliable operating system because Microsoft will never develop one.

Um WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 10 anyone????

AOL as #1 is highly appropriate. Back in the late 80's I used to tell my customers to stay away from Dbase IV. I told them I would never touch it. I got screamed at frequently. I feel better already.

Windows ME shouldn't be at this list!!
I've used it for a few years and it was the best OS after Windows XP... I've already used Windows 95, 98, 2000 too...

And the worst was Windows 2000! It was always crashing, bugged! Windows ME was the most stable version of Windows after Windows XP...

The Timex DataLink should definetly NOT be on the Dishonorable list! It's the best watch I ever had! It was fantastic!

I totaly agree with the other users/fans of this watch. It doesn't belong on the list.

What about sony's minidisk idea?
or ANY proprietary-means-totally-incompatible-with-everything hardware?

Did I mention Sun Microsystem's Solaris?

E-Machine themselves should have received at LEAST an (dis)honorable mention in the article. As their systems, while 'Reasonably' powerful and certainly innexpensive, ended as a total bust for most users. That low price was only RENTAL, not ownership. The user could not upgrade or even change many of the system settings. No adding larger or more drives, no improving the sound or video cards, NOTHING. Any attempt made would lock down the system with access denied. Even SELLING the system to someone else was technically not an option, as the user never actually owned it from the start.

I have to admit I was a big time dBASE user and dBASE IV (number 10) was the product that got me to switch to FoxPro. The same programs ran 6 times as fast in FoxPro.

AOL and their so-called help (after they "fix" whatever it was kicked you off the internet AGAIN, you have to put all the settings back to where they were.)
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Dell's customer service should make it in there, for refusing to tell the customer how a product will ship, refusing to sell ink cartridges etc in stores, & making things just plain difficult.

finally a minidisk mention how long did those last like 10 minutes.

and i dont think there is any mention of Speak and Spell... the most annoying toy ever!

COOL ARTICLE... Keep ROCKING.. PC WORLD rules !!

What about Sony's ATRAC Portable CD Player? Sure you can fit 200-350+ tracks on a normal CD-R, but try skipping them one by one for the song you wanted to hear. Also, the ATRAC CD you made can only be played by certain Sony Products.

And what about eMusic? Sure 40 downloads (transferable and burnable) for $9.99 seems like a good deal, but there are no big name artists, just independent lables. The Big main artists are Johnny Cash, Dane Cook (Comedian), and Ron White (Comedian). The rest are pretty much unknown or the known artists have very few songs available.

That was a hoot! Thanx for the memories, and the therapy.

I would like to add PC World to that list.
-Pages covered in ads
-Spyware cookies
-Dubious testing
-Old stories re-hashed

Come on now, let us not forget those cool metal cd cases AOL used to send us free in the mail. The CD's were sailed into the yard and I still have 5 of those cases for putting small computer parts in.

i saw the Apple Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (1997) in a seinfeld rerun it was on his desk.

Thank you SO much for doing this article! Who cares whether you got the "RIGHT" 25? Point taken, and I LOVE it! Finally, a tech article that isn't a lame pseudo-advertisement for some new gadget or software package, but rather true journalism that is reflective, informative, interesting, fun and pretty much TRUE!

If you're going to put the Zip drive on the list, then you should at least give a nod to the Datasonix Pereos tape drive, a backup unit 1994 running on AA batteries and using tapes the size of a postage stamp.

I had an opportunity to evaluate a pre-release unit and could not believe the hype that followed in the press, various publications slavishly quoting hugely inflated claims without verifying them.

Everyone's whining about not listing "this product" or "that" in this particular Hall of Shame is even more shameful. That is SO not what to take away from the experience of reading articles like this. This type of behaviour cracks me up every time I read commentary on a "Top [n] List of [Something]"!

People's whining about not listing "this product" or "that" in this particular Hall of Shame is even more shameful. "I can't BELIEVE you didn't include such-and-such - you OBVIOUSLY missed the boat by not doing so!". That is so not what to take away from the experience of reading articles like this. This sort of silliness cracks me up every time I read commentary on a "Top [n] List of [Something]" type article! Of course, people who politely suggest additional selections based on their perspective are to be appreciated for adding a sort of "reader's epilogue".

The IBM "Deathstar" was on the list, but what about the Quantum Bigfoot drive? Compaq put it in their Presario and even many of their corporate desktops in the mid-late 90's. Huge (5 1/4" footprint), weighed a ton, and virtually sure to crash within a month or sooner. At one company I worked for we just automatically replaced them with 3 1/2" sized harddrives as soon as the PC's came in. I just found one in a dead PC buried in a closet the other day and use it as a paperweight!

I second the imperative to include Quicktime, within the Top 5 at least. Whenever I'm forced to use this shitty piece of software with its unbelievably ugly interface and its stupidly restricted functionality (no full screen mode in the free version?? Pulease!!!) I feel reassured about my decision not to enter the Apple universe. Coolness notwithstanding - whoever comes up with something like this must be mentally AS WELL AS ethically challenged.

AOL IS A WORST SCAM ARTIST. AOL TRICKED YOU INTO USING THEIR SERVICE AND REFUSED TO REFUND FOR NON USAGE.

JUSTICE DEPT. AND FCC SHOULD INVESTIGATE THEIR BUSINESS PRATICE AND PUNISH AOL FOR WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO CONSUMERS.

AOL JUNKS FILLING UP ALL NEW COMPUTERS AND HARD TO GET RID OF WITHOUT APPROVAL.

AOL INTERNET SERVICE IS NONE AND TOO SLOW. THEY BLAME ON SERVICE PROVIDER FOR PROBLEMS.

I WAS NEW TO COMPUTER AND WOULD NEVER TOUCH AOL AS LONG AS I LIVED.

AOL SIMPLY THE "WORST PRODUCT OF CENTURY"

AOL SIMPLY THE "WORST PRODUCT OF CENTURY". SONY AND AOL SHOULD MERGE TOGETHER. THEY ARE THE BEST PARTNERS OF ALL TIME.

I LOVE PCWORLD FOR THEIR UNBIASED REVIEWS AND COMMENTS.

WILL RENEW FOR ANOTHER 2 YEARS. KEEPING UP GOOD WORK. CONSUMERS COUNT ON YOU TO BUY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

DON'T LET THESE SCUMBAGS LIKE AOL & SONY DESTROY YOUR REPUTATIONS OR INFLUENT YOUR CANDID REVIEWS.

YOU ARE THE FIRST ONE WITH "THE WORST 25 PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR." GREAT IDEA..

Yes good Job AOL aka AOHell deserves the number one spot though they made a hell of a lot of money. My least favorite experience before I dropped them was dealing with their customer support yes I know that is a misnomer. One time I called them up and they had their flunkie go down his prepared troubleshooting list and came to the same conclusion as always the problem was my computer and not them. So I went to use a different computer, got the same problem called them and got the same flunkie lol Berated him severly and dropped their service.

Um hey by putting in my email address you are not going to bombard me with spam and or try to send some viruses my way, you know this is the net and I trust no one!!!!! lol

How could you forget the IBM's OS/2, which was supposed to take over the world, or IBM TopView which was IBM's first attempt at a window based operating system, which was dropped a few months later when MicroSoft released Windows 1.0?

AOL FILLED UP OUR LAND WITH THEIR USELESS CDs, OUR COMPUTERS WITH THEIR JUNKS, AND CREATED MORE PROBLEMS THAN FIXING A COMPUTERS.

NOW AOL INTRODUCES ANTI VIRUS & PARENTAL CONTROL WHILE AOL EMPLOYEES SOLD CUSTOMER RECORDS TO A HIGHEST BIDDERS.

AOL SELLING BROADBAND SERVICES WHICH THEY DON'T HAVE OR OWN. IT IS BETTER OFF CUSTOMERS TO BUY INTERNET SERVICES FROM LOCAL VENDOR WITH MUCH BETTER SUPPORTS.

AOL HAS NOTHING TO OFFER TO ITS CUSTOMERS. BE CAREFUL WITH AOL MARKETING HYPE, CHECK THEM OUT BEFORE YOU GIVE YOUR CREDIT CARD TO AOL. YOU HAVE NOTHING BUT PROBLEM & HASSLE.

DON'T LET AOL FOOLS YOU WITH FREE TRIAL. IT IS ANOTHER SCAM TO LURE YOU IN. CANCEL AOL SERIVICE WILL TAKE SEVERAL WAITING PHONE CALLS. WORST OF ALL, AOL DELAYS AS MUCH AS THEY CAN SO YOU CANNOT CANCEL SERVICE.

EVERYTHING AOL OFFERS IS WIDELY AVAILABLE AT GOOGLE, MSN, AND YAHOO FOR FREE.

SOON AOL WILL CLOSE ITS DOOR VERY SOON. YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE ACCOUNT WITH THEM. SIGN UP FREE SERVICES FROM RESPECTABLE AND HONEST COMPANIES.

AOL CLEARLY EARN THE "WORST PRODUCT" OF ALL AND PCWORLD HAS A GUTS TO SPEAK UP FOR ITS CUSTOMERS.

For what it's worth, one of the pictures of the "IBM GXP75" hard drive is actually a Maxtor drive. Actually, I think both pictures are wrong.

I think PC World should be top of that list - need I say more ?

One that should have made the top 2 is Panda Software Virus protection. Nothing like letting spyware and viruses take over your machine.

I guess PCWorld didn't want to go back to the early 80's, but the RCA video disc was a disaster in the middle of the video tape revolution.

Quict time ate my Firefox. AND IT WONT UNINSTALL!!!

You guys get a Goof Award yourselves. Your links listed for each 5 lousy items is in error.
The fifth one down should read "Numbers 21 to 20". Item #20 was already included in the previous link!

The Worst Five
Numbers 6 to 10
Numbers 11 to 15
Numbers 16 to 20
Numbers 20 to 25
(Dis)Honorable Mention
The Complete List of the Worst 25
Want to comment on this story? Post your thoughts here.

SONY STRONGLY BELIEVES THAT THEIR MISFORTUNES DUE TO PIRATES AND THIEVES FROM CUSTOMERS LIKE US.

SONY USES THEIR MUSCLES & STUDIOS TO DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PREVENT FURTHER DOWNFALL. SIGN OF DESPERATION.

IN REALITY, CUSTOMERS ARE MORE THAN HAPPY TO PAY FOR GOOD PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. MUSIC ON LINE SERVICES ARE DOING EXTREMELY WELL. CUSTOMERS ONLY PAY FOR THE SONG OR MOVIES THEY WANT TO LISTEN TO. THERE IS NO NEED FOR HUGE DISTRIBUTION. NO CD TO KEEP UP AND REPLACE WITH A SIMPLE MP3 PLAYERS.

NETFLIX AND THE REST OF MOVIES INDUSTRY ARE DOING WELL WITH THEIR EXCELLENT SERVICES: NO LATE FEE. SHIPPING TO YOUR DOOR...ETC.

SONY FAILS TO INNOVATE PRODUCTS & PROVIDE MORE SERVICES TO ITS WORLDWIDE CUSTOMERS.

SONY COULD NOT COMPETE WITH A NEWER AND BETTER PRODUCTS..SO DON'T BLAME ON YOUR CUSTOMERS FOR YOUR FAILURES.

LIKE PROSTITUTES INDUSTRY, WHETHER YOU LIKE OR NOT, IT SERVES ITS PURPOSE. SONY SHOULD NOT BLAME ON PIRATES FOR ITS FAILURES. IF SONY HAS A GUT, THEY SHOULD PICK ON CHINESE AND INDIANS.

BETTER YET, SONY SHOULD LEARN FROM PROSTITUTE INDUSTRY. PEOPLE ARE MORE THAN HAPPY TO PAY FOR SERVICES.

Laser discs? I don't think people will ever again have the opportunity to spend as much money on defunct technology as they did on these things.

I HAVE ACCUMULATED HUNDRED OF CDs & DVDs IN THE PAST 10 YEARS.

WITH A NEW DOWNLOAD SERVICES THERE IS NO NEED TO BUY SONGS YOU DON'T WANT TO LISTEN. SONY & ITS STUDIOS FORCE ME TO BUY THE ENTIRED CD WITH FEW SONGS TO LISTEN TO. MARKET HAS CHANGED AS BUYING HABITS.

WE CAN QUICKLY RENT MOVIES FROM NETFLIX AND AUTOMATICALLY DELIVER TO YOUR DOORS FOR FEW DOLLARS A MONTH. WHY WOULD I SPEND MONEY ON SONY AND COLLECT DUSTS.

SONY HAS BEEN FIGHTING OVER A NEW HI DEF DVD STANDARD AND FORMAT. SONY FORCES US TO USE THEIR STANDARD. WHILE SONY FIGHTING FOR YEARS, I AM NO LONGER BUYING ANY PRODUCTS FOR THE NEXT 2 YEARS, ESPECIALLY FROM SONY & ITS STUDIOS.

MICROSOF IS SHIPPING ITS GAMES PRODUCT WITH STANDARD. FUJITSU, SAMSUNG, DELL SHIPPING ITS NEW HI DEF TV AT A REASONABLE PRICES. THERE ARE MANY DVD PLAYERS OUT THERE WITH EQUALLY GOOD QUALITY. THE WORLD HAS CHANGED EXCEPT SONY.

NEW MP3 PLAYERS ARE MUCH BETTER & IT TAKES SONY VERY VERY LONG TO ACCEPT THE FACTS AND ADAPT TO A NEW MARKET.

SIMPLY BECAUSE MY COLLECTION WILL OBSOLETE VERY SOON WHEN INDUSTRY LAUNCHES A NEW HI DEF DVD.

SONY COMPUTERS & LAPTOPS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE WITH LITTLE TO OFFER. THERE ARE MANY STRONG COMPETITION IN THIS MARKET. IF SONY CANNOT HANDLE THE HEAT, THEY SHOULD GET OUT OF KITCHEN.

I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND CUSTOMERS TO BUY ANY PRODUCTS FROM SONY & ITS STUDIOS. THEY WANT TO DOMINATE AND CONTROL MARKET.

STOP BLAMING ON YOUR CUSTOMERS AS A PIRATE OR YOUR CAUSE OF FAILURES. SONY IS IN SELF DESTRUCTION.

The Infamous Cue Cat debacle.. I got sucked into that one. The one GOOD thing that came out of it though is that after the company tanked I made a very simple modification to the bar code scanner (just clipped one lead of a chip inside... google it ..) and now it is a fully functioning bar code scanner! Perfect for entering in movies to database programs and such!

right on