#10. Dell Dimension 4600 (2003)
Consumers who purchased this machine entered a new dimension all
right, the altered dimension of Dell Hell. The Dimension 4600 was
only a middling machine when new, but after about a year--or
shortly after the standard warranty expired--power supplies in some
machines began to fail. Worse, Dell's customer support misdiagnosed
some of these problems as motherboard failures.
Dell's support forums filled up with complaints from similarly
powerless users, but the company refused to admit to defects with
the power supply. (Dell politely declined to comment for this
article.) The Dimension 4600's problems were yet one more reason
why the "Dude, You've Got a Dell" tagline became a joke--though not
a particularly amusing one for some customers.
#9. New Internet Computer (2000)
At $199 sans monitor, Larry Ellison's New Internet Computer was
cheap, but not all that useful. Released in August 2000 when
broadband access was still just a twinkle in most users' eyes, the
NIC relied on painfully slow dial-up connections. With no hard
drive and a CD-ROM-based Linux operating system, it gave you no way
to install software so you could work offline--and back then we
didn't have Web-based Google apps to take the place of desktop
software.
Though hyped to the gills as a PC replacement, the NIC sold fewer
than 50,000 units--just a tad short of the 5 million Ellison set as
a goal for its first year. In June 2003, the New Internet Computer
Company shuttered its doors, more a victim of bad timing than bad
engineering.
Today, a $200 Linux-based Net client sounds mighty tempting--one
reason why a dedicated band of NIC fans are attempting to revive
the machine.
#8. eMachines eTower 366c (1999)
In 1999 eMachines zoomed from nowhere to become one of the top five
PC vendors in the country, thanks in large part to its knack for
selling full-fledged systems for peanuts ($399 sans monitor).
Better yet, you could get the eTower 366c for "free" if you signed
a three-year contract with a dial-up ISP (cost of the contract:
$720 to $790). But consumers who thought they had snagged a great
deal often got less than they bargained for--noisy fans, faulty
power supplies, bad modems, and tech support that was missing in
action.
Among other problems, some users reported their eTowers would
simply turn themselves on in the middle of the night. Quality
rebounded after the company changed ownership in 2001, and the
company continued to improve after merging with Gateway in 2004.
But when they first appeared, eMachines were simply
eGregious.
#7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)
Computers of a certain age tend to be beloved even when they may
not deserve it. Case in point: The Commodore VIC 20. Yes, we
know--it was the first personal computer to sell more than a
million units, and the first PC that Linux originator Linus
Torvalds ever used. And, of course, all PCs back then were
comically underpowered and horsey-looking compared with today's
machines.
But the VIC 20 was a special case. It offered only 3.5KB of usable
memory; most machines back then offered at least 16KB. It displayed
only 22 characters of text per line (or less than half the length
of the line you're reading right now), and its graphics were chunky
and cheesy-looking even by 1981 standards. Worse, its TV
commercials featured William Shatner as a spokesman way before
Shatner became cool in an ironic sort of way.
Shortly thereafter, the VIC 20 boldly went off the shelves,
succeeded by the more powerful (and more deserving of being
beloved) Commodore 64.
#6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)
Texas Instruments' foray into the home computer market didn't last
long, and the TI-99/4 offers a few clues as to why. At a time when
all other home machines connected to your television, the 99/4
worked only with its own display--which was in fact a bulky 13-inch
Zenith TV. Its keyboard came with Chiclet-sized keys more
appropriate to one of TI's hand calculators, and like your
computer-illiterate mother-in-law, the machine could type only in
SCREAMING CAPITAL LETTERS.
Two years later the company released the TI-99/4A, which featured
more powerful processors, a better keyboard, the ability to plug in
your own monitor, uppercase and lowercase letters, and a price tag
less than half the TI-99/4's $1150. But it wasn't enough. TI exited
the home PC biz a few years later, focusing exclusively on
laptops.
#5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)
The PS/1 was IBM's second stab at creating a consumer PC for the
masses, following the disastrous PCjr (#13 on our list of the
all-time worst products), but it wasn't much of an
improvement.
Among other brilliant moves, the original PS/1 featured a power
supply inside the monitor, which made swapping out displays
impossible, and it couldn't accept standard ISA cards, preventing
upgrades. (Later models were more compatible.)
In 1994 IBM abandoned the PS/1 and tried again to capture the
consumer market by introducing the Aptiva line, but this too was
largely a disaster. IBM gave up the whole Aptiva idea in
2000.
#4. Apple III (1980-1984)
Many iPod fans probably aren't old enough to remember a time when
Steve Jobs did not walk on water. But the Apple III was a fiasco,
thanks largely to Jobs' design demands.
According to most accounts, Jobs insisted that the machine be built
without a cooling fan; instead, the system's aluminum case served
as a heat sink. (A mistake Apple repeated with the Mac G4 Cube in
2000.) Worse, the Apple III crammed too many components into too
small a case. As the system overheated, circuit boards warped and
chips popped out of their sockets; users were supposed to pick up
the machine and drop it to re-seat the chips. List prices between
$4300 and $7400, depending on configuration, only added to the
misery.
Apple was forced to replace the first 14,000 Apple IIIs it shipped,
and it redesigned the system twice, but the machine never lost its
reputation as a stinker.
#3. Coleco Adam (1983)
In 1983, toymaker Coleco introduced two revolutionary products: The
Adam, a $600 home computer, and the Cabbage Patch Kids, a line of
$40 dolls. It's a tossup as to which proved more obnoxious.
The Adam was marketed as the first home computer to come with
everything you needed, including a tape drive and a letter-quality
printer. The problem? Any media left in the drive would get zapped
by a surge of electromagnetic energy when you turned the thing on,
erasing all the data on it. And the Adam's power supply was inside
the printer, so if the printer was defective (and many were), the
computer wouldn't work.
The Cabbage Patch Kids eventually made it into orbit, hitching a
ride on the space shuttle in 1985. The Adam never really made it
off the ground.
#2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
Back in the late 1990s, the "concept PC" was all the rage. Goodbye
to boring beige boxes, hello to creative, colorful computers. But
instead of being sleek and stylish, the Mattel Barbie PC was merely
pink and putrid. (And her blue and yellow brother, the Hot Wheels
PC, wasn't any better.)
Trying to sucker parents by gluing toy parts to a crappy low-end
system is bad enough; what's worse is that Patriot Computer, which
manufactured these boxes for Mattel, went belly up in December
2000. More than 3000 customers who dropped $599 on these suckers
got burned.
The good news? Unlike the dolls, the Barbie PC did not feature a
string that caused it to say "Math is hard" when you pulled
it.
#1. Packard Bell PCs (1986-1996)
When PC World decided to name the ten worst PCs of all time, it was
a virtual lock that a Packard Bell machine would grace the list at
number one. The only question was, which model? It was an
impossible choice.
Part of the problem was Packard Bell's strategy of selling nearly
identical systems under different names, depending on where they
were sold. So the Packard Bell Legend 406CD hawked at Circuit City
was more or less the same as the Axcel 467 on the shelves at
Staples or the Force 480CD sold at CompUSA, making apples-to-apples
(or in this case, lemons-to-lemons) comparisons impossible.
But in other ways Packard Bell was maddeningly consistent. Between
1994 and 1996 the company was a perennial bottom dweller in PC
World's reliability and service ratings. One out of six Packard
Bell machines sold at retail was returned by dissatisfied
customers--more than twice the industry average.
And odds are good that if you bought a new Packard Bell system in
1994 or 1995, at least some of its components had been previously
owned. The company was sued several times for selling used parts as
new, ultimately paying out millions of dollars in
settlements.
After Packard Bell merged with NEC in 1996, things got a little
better. But when Packard Bell exited the US market in 2000 to focus
on selling machines to European consumers, few users on this side
of the pond shed any tears.
ANYway,
this might not b ur views, but
WADEVER
Okie, mods, if u think this thread not suitable hor , u can move to
it tech corner
pics ARE HERE
http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=4594343
From:MSN.com