The Top 25 Worst Tech Products of All-Time

[HarryKeogh]

article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/125772;_ylt=AgBaLpkLqy6JZ8IeykkbhBMjtBAF;_ylu=X3oD MTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--)

Pretty funny stuff. My vote goes for Windows ME.

America Online (1989-2006)
RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
Microsoft Bob (1995)
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
dBASE IV (1988)
Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000)
PointCast (1996)
IBM PCjr. (1984)
Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995)
Iomega Zip Drive (1998)
Comet Cursor (1997)
Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)
IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)
OQO Model 1 (2004)
CueCat (2000)
Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)
Apple Pippin @World (1996)
Free PCs (1999)
DigiScents iSmell (2001)
Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)

[kedo1981]

Funny thing is though many of these bombs were bad only because they were ahead of their time, I mean wouldn’t a company making a big to do about VoIP in 1990 be an abysmal failure.
I for one can think of a million things to do with a cue cat ( and none of them involve lubrication and insertion)

[Anti_Hypeman]

My favorite is the iSmell, it used to show up at CES every year. It turns out nobody wants to smell the internet, go figure. RealPlayer was cool in 1999 it didnt turn into slop until a few years later. They gave away the streaming video market.

[kevin]

My favorite is the iSmell, it used to show up at CES every year. It turns out nobody wants to smell the internet, go figure. RealPlayer was cool in 1999 it didnt turn into slop until a few years later. They gave away the streaming video market.

Yeah Real Player was actually really good for a year or two. I remember when PointCast was going to take over the world. Of course the idea has come around again and RSS/Atom have replaced the concept for free and podcasts may take over radio.

The problem with the cuecat was they actually tried to stop people from reverse engineering it.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Glad to see the Iomega Zip on that list.

~~ Paul

[treble_head]

I'm surprised to see the Nokia N-Gage or Nintendo Virtual Boy not on the list...

[kedo1981]

The problem with the cuecat was they actually tried to stop people from reverse engineering it.

Just what I mean, if they had let nerds run with it ----WELL?

[Dark Jaguar]

I notice that open source versions have actually come to dominate the land where closed source pay to do this stuff had failed. Who woulda thunk it?

Virtual Boy eh? Yeah that was an odd device.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_boy

[Rob Lister]

Not really in this league, but mini "business card" CD's.

A great concept but nobody (in their right mind) will actually stick them in their drives.

[Metullus]

Ibm Os 2.

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only person fed up with RealPlayer. That was a product that was built on a great idea, and then got fatter and fatter with each release, to the point where it is now one of the most irritating programs because it is so stuffed with crap. The same thing happened to ICQ.

Definitely ditto on Windows ME. My father had ME on his computer for a long time and it was easily the worst OS I have used. He was constantly thinking that people were downloading viruses because the computer would crash so much. I finally convinced him that the OS itself was just complete crap. Basically, it was an unfinished version of XP that never should have been released.

[Raphael]

I'm surprised to see the Nokia N-Gage or Nintendo Virtual Boy not on the list...


Hey, I had a Virtual Boy. I played Teleroboxer until I had headaches and my eyes wouldn't focus.

[Wowbagger]

I would add a few things to the list:

MSN Search (it still sucks, even after all the recent hype!)
Microsoft J++ 6.0, which supported more ActiveX technology than Java.
Microsoft Liquid Motion, an old attempt to kill Macromedia Flash
and, how could you forget the DivX players!! (not to be confused with the DivX compression algorithm) I mean, come on!

[Wowbagger]

Hey, I had a Virtual Boy. I played Teleroboxer until I had headaches and my eyes wouldn't focus.
In other words, you only played it for 5 minutes?

[Zep]

Oh my vote is for Windows ME. I suspect whomever convinced Bill to go with that is jumping UNDER the sharks now...

Close second to DOS, any version. Should have been UNIX of some flavour, then we would not STILL be stuck with its aftermath.

[SezMe]

Oh, it is worst computer-related product. I agree that WinME is a real competitor. I disagree with dBase IV. A lot of small businesses cut their teeth into databases from spreadsheets with this product.

Now, worst (any-type-of) tech product is a whole 'nother game. I suspect that none of these would make the top 100. Whaddya think?

[MaxHardcore]

Windows ME did suck filthy penis.

The first real computer I bought had the choice of ME or 98SE. I made the wrong decision.


I've got a zip drive here that I scavenged from a discarded computer. If only I have a zip disk I could see if it worked.


I do know someone with the largest collection of Beta video player/recorders in the world (4).


And the Voodoo 5 6000, 4 graphics processors on the one card, with a separate power supply for the card. It was about 20" long.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5_6000

[Wudang]

Ibm Os 2.

You mean OS/2? That had multitasking many years before windows, a true OO shell instead of that mucking about with file types? I ran it at home for years after NT came out as it was far more stable and had a much faster IP stack.

[treble_head]

In other words, you only played it for 5 minutes?

You were able to play the Virtual Boy for 5 minutes??? the lasers burnt my eyes to a crisp after 2. My congrats to you, my friend.

[El Greco]

Hey, where's Norton Antivirus ?

[a_unique_person]

Cheap, crappy, cordless phones.

[a_unique_person]

Those 3D pictures that gave me a blinding headache and made my eyes go all blurry.

[a_unique_person]

Cheap Taiwanese motheboards that never quite worked right, resulting in endless lost hours trying to make them work right.

[a_unique_person]

Rambus.

[a_unique_person]

2X CD Writers than never quite managed to work right.
Any number of cheap parts that were made by companies that went out of business so that their drivers for windows weren't kept up to date.

[a_unique_person]

Intel 80286. The 8086 was bad enough, the 80286 was just an exercise in seeing how broken a CPU architecture could be made.

[a_unique_person]

Just about every ink jet printer ever made. The consumables are incredibly expensive. If you try to save money and not use them much, the ink dries up. If you try to refill them, you ruin your clothes, and then they don't work properly anyway.

[Ian Osborne]

SCSI drives. A removable hard drive the size of a small dinner plate which held (wait for it) 40MB - yes, megabytes. And the fun we had plugging and unplugging the things, restarting our Macs in the vain hope the machine would notice it's connected next time it booted...

The Jupiter Ace. Not a bad computer, but why curse it with a software language (Forth) that no one was interested in at a time when everyone was learning BASIC?

Laser Disc coin-ops. Like an interactive cartoon. Without the interactivity...

[Ian Osborne]

Funny thing is though many of these bombs were bad only because they were ahead of their time, I mean wouldn’t a company making a big to do about VoIP in 1990 be an abysmal failure.
Quite. The team's anti-Apple bias is showing too. I mean, a portable computer in 1989 was heavy and expensive? Who'd have thunk it?

Fair comment about the company spending the middle of the 90s producing overpriced, underpowered tat, though...

[Ian Osborne]

Just about every ink jet printer ever made. The consumables are incredibly expensive. If you try to save money and not use them much, the ink dries up. If you try to refill them, you ruin your clothes, and then they don't work properly anyway.
Remember the ZX-Printer, Sinclair's thermal effort that printed on a silver bog roll the width of a till receipt? Fat lot of use that was.

Come to think of it, remember the ZX-Microdrive? A prime example of technology for its own sake, which never really got over its teething problems. Sir Clive was a great innovator, but he often didn't know when to stop. When the ZX-Microdrive arrived in 1983, there were already floppy drives out there which were faster, more reliable, had greater storage capacity and were no more expensive when you take the cost of the media into consideration, but instead of utilising an existing storage solution, he reinvented the wheel and made it square...

[Anti_Hypeman]

What about the Microsoft Agents? Remember that 3D wizard, genie, and robot you could use to make your programs and web pages totally awesome? Not many people do. I wrote a program that used them once and nearly got fired. http://www.microsoft.com/msagent/default.asp

I also nominate VRML and Microsoft Comic Chat.

[Anti_Hypeman]

dupe

[SphereGuy]

Quite. The team's anti-Apple bias is showing too. I mean, a portable computer in 1989 was heavy and expensive? Who'd have thunk it?

I still have my Compaq "luggable" 286 portable computer. In fact I have two but the IDE controller is out in one so I can only boot to the floppy. They don't do much anymore they are kinda neat to show the kids what we had to work with back then, including a keybaord that was about 20 keys short of what we have today. There's just something so calming about a green-screen monochrome monitor....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable

[Spindrift]

I still have my Compaq "luggable" 286 portable computer. In fact I have two but the IDE controller is out in one so I can only boot to the floppy. They don't do much anymore they are kinda neat to show the kids what we had to work with back then, including a keybaord that was about 20 keys short of what we have today. There's just something so calming about a green-screen monochrome monitor....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable

Ahh, the Compaq "portable". I had a 386 one for a job I had.

It had a 100 Meg hard drive, 1 Meg of memory, a math co-processor and I think it was 25MHz. And it cost about $10,000!! We ran Xenix on it as well as MS-DOS.

I thought I was so cool lugging that sewing machine around.

[The Kilted Yaksman]

And the Voodoo 5 6000, 4 graphics processors on the one card, with a separate power supply for the card. It was about 20" long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5_6000
Back off monkey-boy. When I did direct hands-on comparisons of the V5 6000, and all of the available top-end competition, it obliterated them. With rotated-grid FSAA turned on. It took two more generations of ATi and nVidia products before their FSAA looked as good as 3dfx.
We couldn't execute, and at the time there was no market for a $500 video card, but poor management of the company and flushing away the huge OEM presence that STB Systems had built up, doesn't change the fact that the raw power was there.
As for the power supply, it doesn't take much to mod one for a standard internal 4-pin molex connector, and that is what a few of the final Beta samples had.

[a_unique_person]

The IBM CGA Card, with the most awful colour combinations around.

it was always a problem deciding just which was the worst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cga

[geoman]

Without a doubt, Word 6 for the Mac. Word 5 was a slim svelte beast which almost changed my views on Microsoft. But then I got the upgrade (which, incidentally, came on about 19 floppy disks). :mad:

I'll throw in a vote for the Zip drive too, although to be fair Zips were better than the big 44MB removable platter drives I used for my thesis files. ("What, your thesis takes up 44MEG? Wow, you must be really clever")

[kevin]

Quite. The team's anti-Apple bias is showing too. I mean, a portable computer in 1989 was heavy and expensive? Who'd have thunk it?

I thought that one was a fair call. Come on, the thing weighed 16 pounds! and the cost was 5x greater than the luggables other companies were selling. Even for Apple that's a heck of a mark-up.

best thing about the Portable was Apple learned what was wrong and did it right with the Powerbook.

I do think they were wrong to put the newton on the list. And I don't think the Pippin really counts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Pippin

[ZirconBlue]

I'll throw in a vote for the Zip drive too, although to be fair Zips were better than the big 44MB removable platter drives I used for my thesis files. ("What, your thesis takes up 44MEG? Wow, you must be really clever")

I'm not sure I understand the problem with the Zip drive. I had a SCSI version that lasted several years. It held a lot of data and was fast (I used to install games on the Zip drive rather than take up hard disc space) I actually still have the drive and the discs, but no slot in my new pc for the SCSI card. Anyone know of a good way to get at that data? Is there such a thing as a SCSI to USB converter?

[Ian Osborne]

Is there such a thing as a SCSI to USB converter?
Yes, but you might as well buy a cheap, second-hand USB Zip Drive. Being yesterday's baked beans, they go for a song.

[Miss Whiplash]

The Timex/Sinclair computers. It could have been great if only it had a raised keyboard instead of a flat touchpad.

[Wowbagger]

Hey, where's Norton Antivirus ?

I second the addition of Norton AntiVirus to the list, at least every version after the year 2000 or so. It may have started sucking a little, here and there, before then. But 2001 is when it really started persistent suckage.

[supercorgi]

I still have my Compaq "luggable" 286 portable computer. In fact I have two but the IDE controller is out in one so I can only boot to the floppy. They don't do much anymore they are kinda neat to show the kids what we had to work with back then, including a keybaord that was about 20 keys short of what we have today. There's just something so calming about a green-screen monochrome monitor....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Portable
Ah that brings back memories. My first IBM DOS computer was the IBM luggable. That thing was so freaking heavy! I remember wasting time at work playing InfoCom adventures on it like Leather Goddesses of Phobos and the such. Ah, good days, good days.

[supercorgi]

I'm not sure I understand the problem with the Zip drive. I had a SCSI version that lasted several years. It held a lot of data and was fast (I used to install games on the Zip drive rather than take up hard disc space) I actually still have the drive and the discs, but no slot in my new pc for the SCSI card. Anyone know of a good way to get at that data? Is there such a thing as a SCSI to USB converter?
I've got 2 SCSI zip drives (one for work the other for home) that I've had for about 7 years - never had a problem with them. Of course now I don't use them much since flash drives have come out, but I still occassionally use them. They were great back in the ancient days (when we only had floppies) for carrying files back and forth from work to home.

[Kopji]

No list could be complete without Lotus Notes.

[ZirconBlue]

I would add a few things to the list:

[snip]

and, how could you forget the DivX players!! (not to be confused with the DivX compression algorithm) I mean, come on!

DivX is among the (dis)honorable mentions, at the end of the article.

[kevin]

I'm not sure I understand the problem with the Zip drive. I had a SCSI version that lasted several years. It held a lot of data and was fast (I used to install games on the Zip drive rather than take up hard disc space) I actually still have the drive and the discs, but no slot in my new pc for the SCSI card. Anyone know of a good way to get at that data? Is there such a thing as a SCSI to USB converter?

I have several, one made by Zip in fact. Their first USB versions were SCSI with an adapter. I do believe a USB zip drive is cheaper to buy these days.

The initial zip drives were great. Somewhere in the manufacturing process in later years something happened and the drive started damaging disks. IOmega tried to keep in under wraps and was hurt much worse in the class action.

[kevin]

The Timex/Sinclair computers. It could have been great if only it had a raised keyboard instead of a flat touchpad.

I have one of these:
http://oldcomputers.net/trs100.html

Best portable made until the powerbook came out (and probably why I think the Mac Portable was so bad.)

[kookbreaker]

Is there such a thing as a SCSI to USB converter?

Yes, but not one of them ever worked. I've never heard of one that did, and the guys at the local computer stores said they didn't recommend them as they were crap.

[SphereGuy]

Not so much a product, but manufactuers can do stupid things, too, like Compaq changing the shape of their power cord ends for laptops to a clover shape so that you couldn't use the 10,000 industry standard power cords you have laying around-you had to buy their specific cable. No difference between the two, just the end was shaped different. HP did try to do the same thing to their printers (before they merged with Compaq) when they changed the size of their centronics port to a mini version. At least they listened and went back to the industry standard.

I wish there was a standard ink cart that would work in any printer instead of the thousands that are out there.

[tkingdoll]

The Amiga CD32.

Those two-wheel motorised scooter thingies.

Those Sony robot dogs.

[Rolfe]

I do know someone with the largest collection of Beta video player/recorders in the world (4).Sorry, I have more than that. Working. My regular time-shift viewing is all done on a Sony SuperBeta 950.

Well, OK, you know me too.

So, why is MS Word for Windows not on that list? It sucks asteroids.

And the first computer I ever got to grips with was an Apple portable, 1989 model. If a friend hadn't brought hers to my house, I'd probably still be writing on paper and sticking a stamp on it. It rocked!

Rolfe.

[Ian Osborne]

The Amiga CD32
I watched Chris Evans fall asleep when he was supposed to be presenting the launch event for that! :)

There was nothing much wrong with the console - if it had been used to the max, we'd have got some great games for it. Unfortunately, Commodore was in a state at the time and everybody adopted a 'wait and see' attitude rather than commit resources to developing anything decent, so all we got was lightly-tweaked shovelware. Those Ed-awful joypads deserve to be on the list, though...

[tkingdoll]

I watched Chris Evans fall asleep when he was supposed to be presenting the launch event for that! :)

There was nothing much wrong with the console - if it had been used to the max, we'd have got some great games for it. Unfortunately, Commodore was in a state at the time and everybody adopted a 'wait and see' attitude rather than commit resources to developing anything decent, so all we got was lightly-tweaked shovelware. Those Ed-awful joypads deserve to be on the list, though...

I got a fair amount of mileage out of mine, mostly with a Tetris-ripoff called Hotblocks. All the best games were freeware that came on the magazine CDs, that speaks volumes about that particular episode in console history.

[Ian Osborne]

I got a fair amount of mileage out of mine, mostly with a Tetris-ripoff called Hotblocks. All the best games were freeware that came on the magazine CDs, that speaks volumes about that particular episode in console history.
Ever play Sleepwalker, the Comic Relief game? It was ever so good, but basically an A1200 title on CD. Ditto The Chaos Engine, Pinball Fantasies and just about everything else that was good on the CD32...

[Wowbagger]

DivX is among the (dis)honorable mentions, at the end of the article.

Yeah, but only a dishonorable mention?! It ought to go right up towards the top of the list - perhaps a step behind AOL, or so.

[bigred]

You kids. Including whatever punk came up w/this list.

ie Wordperfect (DOS) and Wordstar NOT being on the list is a total joke. The only reason they don't duke it out for #1 is because of WinME.

Agree that O/S2 and dbIV should not be on there, although dbIII+ was much better for its day. Zip drives were also not great but not horrible - usable and decent storage for the time (briefly at least).

[xenxabar]

Does anyone remember MS DOS 4.0 or even PC DOS 4.0?

[bigred]

Does anyone remember MS DOS 4.0 or even PC DOS 4.0?
Vaguely. The DOSs pretty much ran together for me.

[SphereGuy]

Does anyone remember MS DOS 4.0 or even PC DOS 4.0?

I still have a DOS 3.0 disk set and even (sit down) and AOL for DOS installation disk that is a single floppy! I think AOL was a glorified BBS at the time as the interface wasn't much different than a BBS console.

eta: This thread sounds like a future conversation in an old-folks home.

[a_unique_person]

I saw a set of DOS 5.0 disks for sale in an op-shop for $15 last week.

[xenxabar]

Does anyone remember MS DOS 4.0 or even PC DOS 4.0?
Vaguely. The DOSs pretty much ran together for me.

They were the Windows ME of their time. MS DOS 4.01 came out a few months after 4.0 was released -- Microsoft's first big service pack fiasco.

I also give DIgital Video eXpress a big dishonorable mention. Every year I celebrate its demise (and my birthday). It was the best present I could have hoped for back in 1999. Now the next potential war between Blue Ray and HD DVD is near.

[Miss Whiplash]

I have one of these:
http://oldcomputers.net/trs100.html

Best portable made until the powerbook came out (and probably why I think the Mac Portable was so bad.)

I had forgotten about those! LOL! Here is one I'd totally forgotten. Remember the Heath Kit/ Zenith (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=135) build it-yourself-computer?

[EvilBiker]

No list could be complete without Lotus Notes.

I quite agree. The sad thing is that I am still using it, thanks to company policy.

Commiserations welcomed.

[Wudang]

They were the Windows ME of their time. MS DOS 4.01 came out a few months after 4.0 was released -- Microsoft's first big service pack fiasco.
.

It was also PC DOS 4 that loaded a lot of baggage up in high storage so that it ran like a dog, wasn't it? I think I have a PC DOS 7 boot disk somewhere.

[Dcdrac]

Remember the ZX-Printer, Sinclair's thermal effort that printed on a silver bog roll the width of a till receipt? Fat lot of use that was.

Come to think of it, remember the ZX-Microdrive? A prime example of technology for its own sake, which never really got over its teething problems. Sir Clive was a great innovator, but he often didn't know when to stop. When the ZX-Microdrive arrived in 1983, there were already floppy drives out there which were faster, more reliable, had greater storage capacity and were no more expensive when you take the cost of the media into consideration, but instead of utilising an existing storage solution, he reinvented the wheel and made it square...

Add in the Sincalir QL as well what a mess that was

[Rolfe]

ie Wordperfect (DOS) and Wordstar NOT being on the list is a total joke.And yet WordPerfect for Windows is a total joy (I use v7 but they say v8 is even better). It's quite funny hearing people slag off WordPerfect, meaning that dud DOS version, then show them what the Windows version is like. Chalk and cheese, man.

Rolfe.

[kevin]

And yet WordPerfect for Windows is a total joy (I use v7 but they say v8 is even better). It's quite funny hearing people slag off WordPerfect, meaning that dud DOS version, then show them what the Windows version is like. Chalk and cheese, man.

Rolfe.

Actually the DOS version was awesome. It was the first two or three windows versions that sucked. and sucked hard.

either the 7 version you have or 6 was when they really started to figure it out.

[Zbu]

I hear all this talk of ME, but what about the bomb known as Microsoft Bob? I got that in a bundle pack with my first Windows 95 computer eons ago and it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen.

[gfunkusarelius]

how could you forget the DivX players!! (not to be confused with the DivX compression algorithm) I mean, come on!

DivX was actually on the list as a (dis)honorable mention...

[bigred]

Actually the DOS version was awesome. It was the first two or three windows versions that sucked. and sucked hard.
Yeah the DOS version was so user-friendly. lessee, to save, Control K + F5 + ALT + note from your mother while standing on one leg and......

:boggled:

Drugs are bad mm-k? :cool:

I recall using the Windows version I think 1.0 and liked it - then the gubmint went to MS Word and never saw it again. Oh well.

[Wudang]

Hah! While people were grumbling about the DOS WP I was supporting users who had to use IBM's ATMS (Advanced Text Management System) on mainframe CICS systems. No coloured screens, no key combinations but a macro language that made assmebler seem fun. We lied to management that it wasn't supported anymore and got it dumped. We spent the savings on therapy for the users.

[Ducky]

in 1999 I was working for a company as an IT person and helped head up the migration from oracle mail to exchange 5.5.

I would like to vote for Oracle Mail. That was a piece of crap. Logins would stack up and we had to manually kill sessions so people could get their email.

Horrible.


Also, Lotus Notes is crap too.

[Lord Emsworth]

Interestingly the Zip drive alos makes #36 in the list of "The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years" (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123950,pg,5,00.asp#item36)

[LW]

Does anyone remember MS DOS 4.0 or even PC DOS 4.0?

I don't actually remember much about MS DOS 4.0 for one specific reason: about three hours after I installed it, I went to the bookshelf, grabbed the disks of DOS 3.3 and reinstalled it.

[Ririon]

I quite agree. The sad thing is that I am still using it, thanks to company policy.

Commiserations welcomed.
(Referring to Lotus Notes.)

Is there anybody out there who likes Lotus Notes? Except for managers in charge of making company policies, that is?

[malbui]

(Referring to Lotus Notes.)

Is there anybody out there who likes Lotus Notes? Except for managers in charge of making company policies, that is?
(Raises a shy hand)

We use Notes a lot in our business and there are certain areas where it's a pretty decent technology, especially where we've got multiple users working on local copies of databases (I use the word advisedly) that need to be replicated and coordinated. Cleaning up replication errors can be a laugh, but on the whole it works well enough.

Whether this counts as "liking" LN I don't know, but I certainly don't despise it as much as some people do. :o

[ShowMe]

I remember when the Windows version of "Arcserve for Netware" first came out. It was soon discovered that, under certain conditions, instead of backing up your files it would delete them.

I wouldn't put it on the list though, since assisting in recovering those crashes made me a lot of money at the time.

[Tirdun]

Actually the DOS version was awesome. It was the first two or three windows versions that sucked. and sucked hard.

either the 7 version you have or 6 was when they really started to figure it out.

WP 6 on a Novell system has a special place in my heart for the "print from disk" abomination. The system would cache your print jobs to a seperate file on the same volume (drive) as the working file. If that cache filled the available space, it would send the print job to the print server, wipe the file and continue. Now, picture a college with dozens of computer labs. Every student has their paper written in WP5 or 6 on a floppy disk. Load the file in WP6, print. Ooops, that 1.4 MB doesn't go far when the WP files fill up most of the disk, send partial print job. Wipe cache, create new print file. Rinse. Repeat. Times 300+ computers.

The print server cache would go from zero jobs to tens of thousands of jobs in a matter of seconds. The printer would never actually fire up because the server was too busy queing more jobs. A single document could spawn thousands of jobs and the servers would spend so much time trying to resolve them into their respective documents that it simply up and died. Handovers to "less loaded" print servers was a wonder to behold. The network, meanwhile, is crawling with a sea of orphan print jobs and the monitoring servers are going batso crazy trying to let everyone know that the print servers are down. Eventually the print servers would come back up, their queues would flood, they were even MORE confused because the initializing jobs were lost and the monitoring servers would send out a cancel:all clear message, followed shortly by a oops, it's down message.

Ah. Memories.

[Tirdun]

Zip drives were also not great but not horrible - usable and decent storage for the time (briefly at least).

All the cool kids were using SUPERDISK!

[pgwenthold]

Actually the DOS version was awesome. It was the first two or three windows versions that sucked. and sucked hard.

either the 7 version you have or 6 was when they really started to figure it out.

WordPerfect 5.1 was sweet. Unlike 5.0, it let you use a mouse for a little, but it didn't overdo it. The endnote feature of 5.1 was awesome.

WP 6.0 was the first attempt at a windows version. It stunk. Basically 5.1 but with a Windows 3.1 look.

It wasn't until version 7 that they actually figured out how to make it a real windows version, and not just the DOS version configured to run in windows.

[pgwenthold]

Yeah the DOS version was so user-friendly. lessee, to save, Control K + F5 + ALT + note from your mother while standing on one leg and......


What are you talking about? Save was CTRL-S, just like it is in WORD today! I laugh when my students don't know how to cut and paste without the mouse.

This was a real strength of WP5. You ran the thing from the keyboard, with only minimal mouse usage (and then only in 5.1). A far more efficient approach to writing then having to pull off the keyboard to reach for the mouse, then back to the keyboard, then back to the mouse, etc.

I still have most of the same macros defined in Word that I used to use back in WP5.1 days.

If you are going to WP for Windows, you might just as well switch to Word.

[bigred]

It wasn't until version 7 that they actually figured out how to make it a real windows version, and not just the DOS version configured to run in windows.
Actually 6.0 was a DOS version that just had a sort of Windows feel to it (eg mouse usage, window-like menus, etc).

[bigred]

What are you talking about? Save was CTRL-S, just like it is in WORD today! It was hypothetical example - I just remember that do to most basis functions in WP and WS was very counter-intuitive/complex. It wasn't until Windows versions of word processors came along (and even then, slowly) that they approached the quality of entire systems which were word processors only.........or am I the only one that remembers the CPT Systems? Man they were sweet...then we were forced to give them up for Z-100s (and later 150s). gawd. Production plummeted.

[pgwenthold]

Actually 6.0 was a DOS version that just had a sort of Windows feel to it (eg mouse usage, window-like menus, etc).

I don't think 6.0 actually ran in pure DOS, did it? I only saw it in Windows (heck, I think it was even Windows 95 where I saw it, but the program looked more like Windows 3.1).

You are right that it had the window-like menus, as opposed to the DOS based 5.1 with the blue screen (although 5.1 did allow mouse usage)

[pgwenthold]

It was hypothetical example - I just remember that do to most basis functions in WP and WS was very counter-intuitive/complex.

Most of the basic functions I ever did in WP were macroed in, so I always made them what I wanted, anyway.

I do the same today. I rarely use the mouse in Word - mainly only to move large amounts of pages (page down is still faster - I liked the ctrl-page down or whatever it was to get to the bottom of the document), and to navigate in endnote.

[bigred]

I don't think 6.0 actually ran in pure DOS, did it? Yep, pretty sure. That's why it was v6.0. The first Windows version (for 3.x) was v1.0.

[chucksheen]

Winner=WinME

[bruto]

I add a nomination for Macafee Nuts and Bolts. Un unrunnable registry-clobbering piece of junk.

Also Tax Cut, which I tried one year and found almost totally unusable, incompatible with turbo tax data, and unstable.

On the other hand I never had problems with zip drives. I had (still have) a couple of parallel port 100's, glacially slow but pretty handy. Back in the days of windows 3.1 you could install a complete version of Windows on a zip drive, and experiment with new configurations, risky installations, etc.

[CFLarsen]

You mean OS/2? That had multitasking many years before windows, a true OO shell instead of that mucking about with file types? I ran it at home for years after NT came out as it was far more stable and had a much faster IP stack.

Hear, hear.

[The Kilted Yaksman]

On the other hand I never had problems with zip drives. I had (still have) a couple of parallel port 100's, glacially slow but pretty handy. Back in the days of windows 3.1 you could install a complete version of Windows on a zip drive, and experiment with new configurations, risky installations, etc.
People who complain about Zip drives maybe never worked with the Syquest EZ135. Sure, 135MB over 100MB, and it was fast, but a hard disk platter in a plastic cartridge? :boggled:

[Mongrel]

People who complain about Zip drives maybe never worked with the Syquest EZ135. Sure, 135MB over 100MB, and it was fast, but a hard disk platter in a plastic cartridge? :boggled:

Or the LS120. The company I used to work for supplied them for all of 2 months before just compensating people when they went wrong

[sami_sdata]

Hear, hear.


Used it for years to run a FidoNet BBS. Great OS but lousy support from IBM. Last straw for me was when I tried to upgrade the video to a new 256 color card. Bought an IBM card to make my life easier. I found that IBM's own card came with only 16 color drivers for OS/2 but had full 256 color drivers for the just released Win95.

[Wudang]

Used it for years to run a FidoNet BBS. Great OS but lousy support from IBM. Last straw for me was when I tried to upgrade the video to a new 256 color card. Bought an IBM card to make my life easier. I found that IBM's own card came with only 16 color drivers for OS/2 but had full 256 color drivers for the just released Win95.

Even more annoying a full driver was probably available on IBM's internal tools disks. Do not get me started.

[CFLarsen]

I hear a lot of gripes here....but has anyone actually done something better than the products they hold in such derision?

[CFLarsen]

All the best games were freeware that came on the magazine CDs, that speaks volumes about that particular episode in console history.

Tsk.

In my day, we had to type in the programs ourselves, from listings in the magazines.

[SphereGuy]

Tsk.

In my day, we had to type in the programs ourselves, from listings in the magazines.

And if you wanted to save yourself from typing them in again you'd better have a cassette player handy.

[moopet]

I agree that most of those things mentioned were crap. But the biscuits are yet to be taken. To my mind, they're all 8-bit biscuits.
My votes would go for:
The 16k RAMpack for the ZX81 and subsequent anti-wobble device...

The Spectrum +2, which shipped with misaligned tape heads meaning that it'd only load something saved *on that computer*, and to fix it it came with... a little hole above the azimuth alignment screw and a piece of paper telling you to turn the screw until it worked right...

and the Oric Atmos. When it was released, there was a bug in the ROM tape loader code. So they fixed it by shipping a tape. You want to load a game? Sure. Load this tape first, to patch the buggy ROM (reducing your pitiful RAM allocation anyway) and *then* you load your game. Wicked.

[Ian Osborne]

The Spectrum +2, which shipped with misaligned tape heads meaning that it'd only load something saved *on that computer*, and to fix it it came with... a little hole above the azimuth alignment screw and a piece of paper telling you to turn the screw until it worked right...
Wasn't that the +2A?