the entire article can be found here:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,1,00.asp

here is the straight list:

Quote :

"The Complete List of Losers 1. America Online (1989-2006) 2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999) 3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995) 4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000) 5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005) 6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994) 7. Microsoft Bob (1995) 8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001) 9. Pressplay and Musicnet (2002) 10. dBASE IV (1988) 11. Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000) 12. PointCast (1996) 13. IBM PCjr. (1984) 14. Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995) 15. Iomega Zip Drive (1998) 16. Comet Cursor (1997) 17. Apple Macintosh Portable (1989) 18. IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000) 19. OQO Model 1 (2004) 20. CueCat (2000) 21. Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004) 22. Apple Pippin @World (1996) 23. Free PCs (1999) 24. DigiScents iSmell (2001) 25. Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004) "

i realize this is old, and i'm sorry if this has already been posted, but i searched and did not see it.

[Edited on July 18, 2006 at 6:13 PM. Reason : .]

7/18/2006 6:12:43 PM

Meh

I like realplayer and dbase IV

7/18/2006 6:14:08 PM

leave it to gargs to "like" that piece of shit realplayer

7/18/2006 6:16:13 PM

ok i havent read this thread, but i use to want a number 15, number 4 i still use a lot when i'm reformatting and shit, and i hate number 2 the most, fucking hate real player

compared to like anything

7/18/2006 6:33:54 PM

It is old, dumb, and has posted before.

That's what's known as the old "message board hat trick"

7/18/2006 6:36:38 PM

honestly i could care less...i havent seen it, and i'm sure others haven't either

7/18/2006 6:40:56 PM

and i searched for it and didn't find it

7/18/2006 6:41:49 PM

I dunno about you kids...but I find the realplayer interface pretty nice, especially if you're into buying legal music and transferring it to CDs.

Not to mention that the realvideo codec is pretty darn good.

7/18/2006 6:45:10 PM

while i found rhapsody not so bad, ive hated realplayer for ages so no use trying to turn that opinion around.

7/18/2006 8:23:37 PM

everyone at real fucked up player should die in biggest pain

7/18/2006 8:30:42 PM

i've got a cue cat sitting around somewhere

7/18/2006 8:30:59 PM

real player fucking blows

unfortunately its the media player of choice for a bunch porn sites though

7/18/2006 8:45:14 PM

shit i had to use real player as my internet browser for like a week one time...i HATED it

7/18/2006 8:46:11 PM

Quote :

"13. IBM PCjr. (1984)"

haha, this was my first computer. 128k RAM, no HDD, 5 1/4" floppy, 300 baud external modem.

Thing was clearly a hoss.

7/18/2006 9:01:13 PM

I have a 75GXP that didn't blow up. It's well out of warranty and still runs like a champ.

7/18/2006 9:12:04 PM

my 75gxp started grinding in 2000

7/18/2006 9:13:23 PM

I loved my DataLink watch.

7/18/2006 9:56:11 PM

AOL was good for the time. Now it isn't.

I don't think it deserves to be on the list.

7/18/2006 10:02:53 PM

^ It def deserves to be up there. That company is retarded.

As far as realplayer goes, I dont use it and dont like its interface very much, but it has plugins that support the audio and video files my cellphone uses

[Edited on July 18, 2006 at 10:24 PM. Reason : ]

7/18/2006 10:23:58 PM

Not sure AOL can be the worst when they probably did more to bring the average person online than any other thing. It was an evil necessity, but not the worst product by any means. Hell, there is a reason why they kept beating out Prodigy, Compuserve, etc.

7/18/2006 11:03:25 PM

^it was because they had the most local access numbers and advertising. The software itself was/is garbage.

7/18/2006 11:06:34 PM

I forget what they were called, but those dvds that lasted for only 1 or 2 viewings sucked hardcore.

7/18/2006 11:13:03 PM

haha. the zip drive was like the nintendo 64 of the computer world

7/18/2006 11:13:48 PM

am I the only one who remembers computers and scanners with zip drives on campus.

7/18/2006 11:45:40 PM

^ I used them quite a bit

My Dell that I still use as my main desktop has a -ZiP!- drive in it

7/19/2006 12:01:34 AM

how can you say IE6 is a bad product...shit is skewed.

7/19/2006 12:04:34 AM

aol was great when dial up was the best most of us could have as was real player. real player was the first streaming technology I can remember. cue cat was great to hack and use for other stuff, and the mac portable was the shit. what a terribly formed list

7/19/2006 12:46:23 AM

Quote :

"am I the only one who remembers computers and scanners with zip drives on campus."

they still have zip drives in the digital media lab

i think they're on the PCs in the laundry lab too

7/19/2006 3:44:56 AM

Quote :

"I forget what they were called, but those dvds that lasted for only 1 or 2 viewings sucked hardcore."

That was the Circuit City DiVX DVD and that made the dishonorable mention list. Let me post that here too for discussion:

Quote :

"Apple Newton Messagepad (1994) Apple Puck Mouse (1998) Apple Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (1997) Circuit City DiVX DVDs (1998) Concord Eye-Q Go Wireless Digital Camera (2004) Dell SL320i (1993) Motorola Rokr E1 (2005) 3Com Audrey (1999) Timex Data Link Watch (1995) WebTV (1995)"

7/19/2006 7:08:32 AM

that list is pretty retarded

7/19/2006 8:24:16 AM

since these are the ones that are being talked about most:

Quote :

"1. America Online (1989-2006) How do we loathe AOL? Let us count the ways. Since America Online emerged from the belly of a BBS called Quantum "PC-Link" in 1989, users have suffered through awful software, inaccessible dial-up numbers, rapacious marketing, in-your-face advertising, questionable billing practices, inexcusably poor customer service, and enough spam to last a lifetime. And all the while, AOL remained more expensive than its major competitors. This lethal combination earned the world's biggest ISP the top spot on our list of bottom feeders. AOL succeeded initially by targeting newbies, using brute-force marketing techniques. In the 90s you couldn't open a magazine (PC World included) or your mailbox without an AOL disk falling out of it. This carpet-bombing technique yielded big numbers: At its peak, AOL claimed 34 million subscribers worldwide, though it never revealed how many were just using up their free hours. Once AOL had you in its clutches, escaping was notoriously difficult. Several states sued the service, claiming that it continued to bill customers after they had requested cancellation of their subscriptions. In August 2005, AOL paid a $1.25 million fine to the state of New York and agreed to change its cancellation policies--but the agreement covered only people in New York. Ultimately the Net itself--which AOL subscribers were finally able to access in 1995-- made the service's shortcomings painfully obvious. Prior to that, though AOL offered plenty of its own online content, it walled off the greater Internet. Once people realized what content was available elsewhere on the Net, they started wondering why they were paying AOL. And as America moved to broadband, many left their sluggish AOL accounts behind. AOL is now busy rebranding itself as a content provider, not an access service. Though America Online has shown some improvement lately--with better browsers and e-mail tools, fewer obnoxious ads, scads of broadband content, and innovative features such as parental controls--it has never overcome the stigma of being the online service for people who don't know any better. 2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999) Click for enlarged view. In order for your browser to display the following paragraph this site must download new software; please wait. Sorry, the requested codec was not found. Please upgrade your system. A frustrating inability to play media files--due in part to constantly changing file formats--was only part of Real's problem. RealPlayer also had a disturbing way of making itself a little too much at home on your PC--installing itself as the default media player, taking liberties with your Windows Registry, popping up annoying "messages" that were really just advertisements, and so on. And some of RealNetworks' habits were even more troubling. For example, shortly after RealJukeBox appeared in 1999, security researcher Richard M. Smith discovered that the software was assigning a unique ID to each user and phoning home with the titles of media files played on it--while failing to disclose any of this in its privacy policy. Turns out that RealPlayer G2, which had been out since the previous year, also broadcast unique IDs. After a tsunami of bad publicity and a handful of lawsuits, Real issued a patch to prevent the software from tracking users' listening habits. But less than a year later, Real was in hot water again for tracking the habits of its RealDownload download-management software customers. To be fair, RealNetworks deserves credit for offering a free media player and for hanging in there against Microsoft's relentless onslaught. We appreciate the fact that there's an alternative to Windows Media Player; we just wish it were a better one."

7/19/2006 8:37:33 AM

what the hell was wrong with a zip drive.

it was very functional in its time, before the cost efficency of cdr

7/19/2006 8:54:44 AM

it talks about in the article how a big batch of them just died, leaving lots of backed up info lost. i think it was that specific model of zip drive.

7/19/2006 9:00:43 AM

^^^ I guess the rest of the explanation on why RealPlayer sucks is still buffering?

^^yup, good for their time. The flash/thumb/key drive and cheap CD burner drives and media killed it.

7/19/2006 9:04:29 AM

^ There were huge numbers of them that died just suddenly with what was the "click" problem.
my family had 2 drives both of which died the same way, most of the folks I knew who had one, it died on them too.

Admittedly, not all of the models suffered from the issue, but the most popular one for home use did. Which some schools and smaller buisnesses also bought into.

Some of the disks also had reliability issues if i remember right.

It deserves that list.

7/19/2006 9:06:47 AM

^Well it bumped the storage capacity from 1.44MB to 250MB in a container that took up roughly the same size. I don't know what brand you were using but I had about 40 iomega drives and not one went bad. Disks were hit and miss, if you bought the cheapest disks out there you'd be lucky to get a 50% good disk ratio.

I'd put jazz drives ahead of zip drives, but that's me.

7/19/2006 9:28:24 AM

There are much much better tech failures then that pathetic list:

IBM PC Junior
Segue Worthless Scooter
Iridium Satellite Phone
That faulty Canadian X-Ray machine that Microwaved people
The "Unsinkable" Titanic.

And thats without even thinking

7/19/2006 9:50:27 AM

It didn't say tech failure, it said word tech products.

The Segway has been a commercial success, but it hasn't changed the world like it was hyped to

The Iridium Satellite Phone is fucking awesome, and was even more awesome when they first hit the market. I actually got to use and configure one, jesus that thing is amazing, if I had the $$$ there would be one with me anytime I went hiking.

The others I pretty much agree with you on though, althought the PC Junior IS on the list durr.

Realplayer was GREAT for the first year or so it was released. RealVideo was a major step forward in compression vs. quality and basically shut down the vivo codec (does anyone even remember vivo?) and ruled the roost until Microsoft came out with their ASF container format and the very first iterations of windows media video.

Then realplayer started in with their viral tactics, obfuscating menus, making it difficult to remove, adding adware, tracking usage and all the other bullshit that people hate them for.

[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 10:00 AM. Reason : .]

7/19/2006 9:56:39 AM

Quote :

"The Segway has been a commercial success, but it hasn't changed the world like it was hyped to"

That was a marketing strategy, not an actual expectation of the product.

Oh, and I'd like to add, while I'm currently fighting against it...

The Dell cases that have the usb ports on the front that are placed at an impossible angle instead of just being perpendicular to the box. Grrrr.

[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 10:03 AM. Reason : -]

7/19/2006 10:01:10 AM

i was over at duke gardens the other day and 6 duke...security guards?...came humming down the path on those segways...it was kind of cool to watch them go up and down hills...if the price was much much lower, then i'm sure they'd be able to carve a noticeable niche

7/19/2006 10:07:27 AM

Noen

You can argue whatever you want

But you can't argue that list is remotely credible.

/thread

7/19/2006 10:18:10 AM

I agree with AOL and Realplayer sucking. I cannot understand how anyone can like Realplayer. Its so fucking slow!!!! It took like 2 minutes to change from the main page to the library, and that was on a Athlon XP 2800 w/ 1 Gig of RAM. iTunes is the best media player on Windows IMO. I never understood why the Zip drive was popular. The LS-Superdisk was much better IMO, as the 240 version could format a floppy disk to hold over 30 megs (if I remember reading correctly). It could also read/write to regular floppy disks.

7/19/2006 10:32:01 AM

^^so the thread ends in a criticism of noen? that is silly.

[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 10:35 AM. Reason : ^^]

7/19/2006 10:34:46 AM

back in '95, i lived on aol and LOVED it
i got great use out of my zip drive

the worst tech products to me are unreliable and expensive (and I definitely got my money's worth out of both of these products and never had a problem with either)

7/19/2006 10:42:30 AM

you were also 12, so maybe you weren't the best judge.

7/19/2006 10:46:16 AM

Man, this thread reminds me of the 'dialup days', where a few things come to mind:

Whatever happened to NetZero's free internet access and free e-mail forever? They switched to 40hrs a month, and then to 10 hrs a month, and then to paid users only. What bullshit.

After the fallout of NetZero, I started using that K-mart internet "Bluelight" shit. The service wasn't that bad, but it didnt last long and I abhored the retarded music it would play while dialing up.

Then I started the AOL Trial-then-Cancel method, which worked for a while, until we got billed pretty badly for using a "local" access number that was actually long-distance. From that point on, we got RR. I'll never forget the day I cancelled AOL after we had gotten RR. I sat there arguing with the guy, until I finally told him "why the fuck should you care if I stay with AOL, i'm a time warner customer now and you guys are the same company, so you profit either way". That shut the guy up.

[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 11:14 AM. Reason : the memories]

7/19/2006 11:07:13 AM

Is the titanic or the canadian microwave a tech "product"?

That list isn't about engineering feats, or tasks, or projects on a grand scale. It is about technical products that were sold to the public and failed miserably.

Why don't you throw in the Tacoma Narrows, the tower of pisa, the NO levees, and everything under the sun if you are going to use a metric like that. Don't be so thick headed.

7/19/2006 11:09:27 AM

Quote :

"(does anyone even remember vivo?)"

I downloaded over a gig of VIVO files over AOL one summer.

Realistically speaking, AOL is probably one of the greatest things to happen to the world.

7/19/2006 11:24:45 AM

IE4Life

7/19/2006 11:30:57 AM

yeah i disagree with IE6 - i'd put IE4 on there before 6 - 6 has been actively used for 5yrs by over 80% of the web browsing population - how could you consider it the worst

7/19/2006 11:34:03 AM