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The Ten Worst Products of the Year
WaZiX writes "Not sure what you want to buy for christmas? Well me neither, but PCMag has an interesting article on what they consider to be the 10 worst products of the year, so at least you know what not to buy. Helpful article that picked out products from different categories such as PDA's, Notebooks and MP3 players."
Slashdot subscription?
Would be funny if they put PC Magazine on that list.
His reviews mostly made sense except for the eMac rip. I'm not a huge Mac fan (nothing wrong with them, just not my cup of tea), but I thought he seemed to be targetting a different audience with his review of the eMac. 40GB would certainly not fill up quickly with the type of things my parents do on a computer, and I think anyone wishing to play "this fall's hottest games" wouldn't be considering an entry level computer. Finally, $800 seems to be about right for the price of an eMac. Sure, you can get a dell for $499 with a monitor (please don't correct the numbers), but Macintoshes cost more because they provide more value for their target audience. And when he said, "buy a Dell", does that mean if I pick an entry level Dell it will play "this fall's hottest games?" Although IANAG (gamer), something tells me you're not going to get stellar HL2 performance on an Intel 810.
so that cheap £9.99 webcam i bought for parents is no good :/ awww
...surely you can wait until Friday evening.
Yeah, right.
Long loading times, scratchable screen, bad battery life, a lousy UMD drive that ejects disc in midplay, the button that doesn't press...
I can go on all day...
Every gift guide is the same. Each focuses on the great products you can buy to make Mom, Dad, Sis, or the boss happy. But when you get to the store, they always seem to be out of the best stuff. So you're forced to make compromises and do the best you can out of the dreck that's left. Here are two handfuls of devices to avoid at any cost this holiday season, culled from the worst-scoring products we tested this year.
Digital Cameras: John C. Dvorak seems to think that a $99 Concord camera is just the ticket. Well, if it's anything like the Concord 5062AF--don't walk, run to another product instead. This camera claims to be five megapixels, and I'm sure that in some engineering fantasy land it pushes that many electrons. At about $200, it's probably the cheapest 5MP camera you'll see. But in this case, cheap doesn't equal good. In our tests, its picture quality was barely equivalent to a 2MP camera, which can be found for much less than two Benjamins. It starts up slow and cycles slower, taking more than five seconds between shots. Whites were blown-out and images were overly green. If Kermit the Frog is on your list, then maybe. Otherwise, no. Our Digital Camera Product Guide has much better choices for every budget.
PDA: iPAQ used to stand for quality. Then HP bought Compaq, and you can't bet on an iPAQ anymore. Witness the fundamentally flawed iPAQ rz1715. HP's low-end PDA was designed to compete with low-cost products from Dell and Palm, but it lacks any of their redeeming qualities. The glacially slow processor and anemic memory make using it torture, but at least the pain is short lived--because the battery wears out hours before the ones on comparable units do. It's a pity this iPAQ's so bad, but don't saddle yourself or your friends, with this boat anchor. There are better products available for less. Our PDA Product Guide has details.
Phone: Samsung has built a major brand around the twin concepts of style and quality. But as we found when we tested the Samsung D415, the first slider phone for Cingular, style without quality just doesn't cut it. Sure, the phone looks cool. But svelte it is not. In fact, our reviewer called it a "big chunky slab," which is not what I want to carry around in my pocket. It's both big and difficult to manage. The four-way navigation pad seems to have been designed by orangutans without opposable thumbs. Finding a command in the menus takes longer than it took the Minnow's crew to escape Gilligan's Island, and selecting that option requires either two hands or a stutter-step of rapid finger movement. The audio's bad, the speaker phone is muffled, and the processor is slow. Think again if you're looking for a fashionable phone--and check out our Phone Product Guide for better choices.
Desktop PC: For Apple, the entry-level eMac really does represent Think Different. That's because for a company that prides itself on quality, this computer is different. As in bad. On the plus side, it's stylish. On the downside, it's slow, underpowered, and pathetic. The 40GB hard drive will fill up quickly, the lack of a DVD burner makes offloading files impossible, and the Radeon 9200 graphics card won't even run this fall's hot Mac games. And at around $800, this eMac ain't cheap. If you're considering a home Apple, think different. Buy a Dell. Or be prepared to spend a lot more for an acceptable Apple computer. Our Desktop Product Guide can lead you to the best Apples, along with the best of the rest.
Notebook PC: Voodoo has made quite a name for itself in the enthusiast category, delivering super-fast tweaked-out boxes for gamers and power users who don't want to build their own. We've favorably reviewed a number of their PCs, and found them fast, well built, and good-looking. Yes, the VoodooPC Envy m:380 looks good, but one out of three is not enough. At an outrageous price of over $4,000, this notebook should be spitting fire and hauling butt. Instead, it just sits there and delivers less-than-stellar performanc
The Dell 1600n isn't as bad as he is talking about... We bought one a couple weeks ago for like 2 bills and it works fine.
It copies when the attached PC is down, works fine as a network printer and isn't that slow. It takes a minute or so to warm up, but it is a laser, that is to be expected.
SCO "Linux license".
Digital Cameras: Concord 5062AF
PDA: iPAQ
Phone: Samsung D415
Desktop PC: eMac
Notebook PC: VoodooPC Envy m:380
Multifunction Printer: MFP Laser Printer 1600n
MP3 Players: Mojo 1
HDTV: ADS Upconverter
Camcorder: Fisher's FVD-C1
Wireless: WF717-APR router
Worst Magazine Reviews of the Year, at number 1 we have ...
you get the picture
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
we need more "helpfull" things here. it's always good when things are "helpfull".
HDTV: High-definition content looks great on an HDTV, but on a regular TV, which is most of what you'll probably watch, it can look worse than an ancient Philco. And that's where the ADS Upconverter seems a logical choice. It claims to convert DVDs and over-the-air TV into video that'll stand up to real HD content. Don't buy it. Marred by a terrible user interface, a remote control seemingly designed by ascetic monks, and output quality that redefines GIGO (Good In, Garbage Out), it's a quick $500 flushed down the drain. For better HDTV choices, including sets with decent built-in upconverters, see our HDTV product guide.
just throw a bunch of components into a box, route the input to the output and sell the "working" box
make fake box
buy parts
sell
profit!
how come there is never a list of the 10 worst cars? Never saw an article in Car and Driver saying don't buy this - it sucks. Cars are far more expensive and more dangerous! and they probably sell more cars than digital cameras or camcorders in this country anyway.
BP http://www.card-central.com
Surely you mean SCO shares? ;-)
...an anti-advertisement!
Another iPod owner who has to tell us he/she has an iPod...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Hmmm. I'd have figured the SCO license would have surely made that list. $699 and you don't even get a pet rock out of the deal.
"Cowboy Neal's 'Thongs for Geeks'", which includes graphic instructions.....
Shudders
Monstar L
1. Find worst product in catagory. Mention it.
2. Post a link to the "PC Mag guide" for that catagory with the tex "for better options in (name of catagory) see PC Mag's guide
3.Profit!
I have blog like everyone else
But these are not usual headphones: the player is embedded is inside the headphones. These headphones can't play neither mp3 nor wma, instead, the software converts the files (mp3/wma) to a weird proprietary format with very low sound quality.
I think saying that eMac is the worst product in the desktop PC cathegory is like saying that a brand X toaster is the worst product in the baking oven cathegory. eMac was primarily targeted at the education market where it is mostly likely being used as some sort of a thin client. Therefore, the relatively small disk size is not very important (likely the end user files live on the servers), the video card choice is also not very important as you don't need a top end 3D card to run Microsoft Office or Mathematica. While eMac's CPU might not be fastest on the market, it is sufficient to run desktop productivity apps, a web browser, and for doing light numerical work. My $0.02 ..
I think he was dead-on. For $800, that is a POS.
;o)
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Whoever modded this "flamebait" needs to get over it. This was hilarious!
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
A better product is a subscription to WindBusiness !!
New technologic product, very important for you !
WindBusiness : because selling wind is our business...
Of course, it DOES support XML !
Great manager pictures here
GIGO (Good In, Garbage Out)
Way to show your tech credentials! Coming soon, to a PCMag article near you, the newest and hottest acronyms:
Could the article be anymore GigaLame?
Hmmm.
I think that's exactly what he's saying. If you're shopping for the best bang for $800, the eMac is the last place you should look.
Nothing but a plug for their 'best of' articles.
Seriously, why waste the time to write an article about 10 things you don't recommend?
We open our gifts the morning of January 6th ;-)
Make It Secret . Free JavaScript implementation of AES for your browser
Why do most "best-of" or "worst-of" kind of compilations have to be conveniently bracketed into well-rounded numbers like 10, 20, 100 etc. It clearly implies that the authors are just hunting around for products to slander just so that they can fill in the 2 vacant slots or whatever. I mean, if someone does honestly compile a list of bad products, they would simply make a list of products that are outstandingly horrible in a product segment, and end the list when they run out of horrible products!
These kind of list compilations only exemplify shoddy jounalism.
It is fairly common knowlege that the eMac is apples lowest end System. No one ever made the impression that it wasn't. The eMac was primarly made for educational usage. Which normally means that its useage would be Running a Word Processor, Browsing the internet. Running low end Sciencetific tools, that could probably run quicly on a 486 as well and some Educational Games. It keeps the CRT Screen because it is easier to clean up from pencel marks and takes scratches better. The extra price over say the $499 Dell is usually due to 1st Apple is getting a larger % of the profit, (Most PC manufacturars make there Low End system and sell it at very low margins so they can advertise the lower end PC and then most people will go to Dell.com then look around and order a higher priced one), Secondarly the eMac is build to be a little more solid then a Dell W. Monitor Which is part of the Educational Need for a computer, thridly because of Supply v. Demmand the supply for part to make an eMac is much smaller then the supply of part to make a low end PC, so the price is higher.
I find it disapointing that PC magazine decided to choose the eMac as its bad system to buy not because they chose an Apple computer but because there are so many Windows PC that are of very poor quality and are advertised as much more then they are. But it is no secret that PC magizene is no Fan of Apple anyways. Back when the PowerMac g5 was released their "Glowing" afermation of the G5s power was saying it was just as good as the top of he line PC.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
But we know the important question is really, will it run Emacs?
And fortunately, the answer is yes, yes, and yes.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Missing from list: the Bantam BA50 mp3 player. The buttons are cheap and poorly labelled, the MP3's play with a loud hiss. Worst of all, the thing looks like the torso of the Lost in Space movie robot. I think they recycled these from unsold movie tie-in toys. If this trend continues, look for thumb-drives built into unsold "Battlefield Earth" Terl action figures. Oh, almost forgot. It looks embarassingly bad. Don't want to be seen in public with it!
While I can't assess this article's accuracy; the writer does a good job of explaining exactly why each of the products are "worst". I found the pointer to the magazine product reviews helpful to find something better. And it was funny too.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
And you will find out that cars like Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, and Volkswagen have really bad reliability and are too expensive (both intial value and repairs). Based on testing, Japanese is usually the way to go.
Well that's just rubbish. I own and iPod but I don't feel the need to tell the world.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
The Apple company has yet to make a PC. Saying that the eMac is a bad PC is like saying that a VW Beetle is a bad boat (Ted Kennedy not withstanding).
...10 worst Slashdot articles of the year?
I don't really know about the 5MP Concord camera mentioned in the article, but i did witness some photos taken with a 3.1MP (can't recall the model) and i was impressed with their quality. The build quality of the camera was quite nice as well, plastic, but sturdy.
Both Concord and BenQ have nice digital cameras for cheap - and they have some awful stuff as well; you just got to inform yourself a bit. Just in case anyone decided to steer clear from Concord after reading the article.
Err... you just did.
While anybody who trashes John C. Dvorak is OK in my book, I would disagree with this author's assessment of the eMac and I would agree as well. Underpowered? For A/V editing or number crunching, I would agree but for it's primary target market of education, I think that it's fine--or used to be. Word processing and web surfing don't require that much snap and pop. It's pretty much the same machine as an iBookG4. However, I would say that it's past time for Apple to update or jetison this model--the G4 processor is old news. I would expect to see Apple announce an update to this product to the G5 class at January's Macworld Expo or it will die a quiet little death.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
My faith in PC Magazines normally excellent journalism has been shattered. The missed the worst gift of the year...
an SCO Intellectual Property license for the Linux lover in your life.
A camcorder from Fisher...no thanks!
Who the hell is Concord anyway?
GiGaFast? Now there's a name brand! ;)
Some people are like Slinkies - Not good for anything, but you can't help smiling when you push 'em down the stairs.
From a terminal window just now:
You probably have to make the so-called BSD Subsystem a part of your install, but that's installed by default anyway (I have no idea if the sub-BSD-Subsystem that gets installed anyway whether you install the BSD Subsystem or not includes it)You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
all true
I think the fink install is more up to date than the currently installed default though.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
End result is same, you get screwed. eMac just makes it cost more money.
What exactly more do you want for a low-usage-user?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
And anyway, why pay 200$ for a freaking usb cd burner from Apple when most work on windows or mac?
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
My3578magnum says
but on a regular TV, which is most of what you'll probably watch
I keep hearing people say this. Coming from PCMag its not too suprising I guess. In just about any medium sized city now every local channel broadcasts HD. Combine that with movie channels, espn, discovery, NFL Sunday ticket and several others, for a lot of people just about everything they would watch is in HD.
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
I don't really know what the author was smoking. The high-end eMac model does burn DVDs, and the HD holds 80--not 40--GB of storage. Did the author know that the current low- & mid-end iMacs cannot burn DVDs either?
The eMac is a salvation to those who want a cheap Mac, without the LCD display.
Telling someone to go buy a Dell instead sounds like pretty lousy advise to me.
How about drugs whose manufacturers gave large amounts of money to the FDA for fasttrack approval, which turned out to be deadly?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I looked at Bob and Tom's list. It truly did not include all of the millenium's worst cars. It only included those from the end of the millenium.
Among the missing nominees:
Salem Motor Works' Turbo Zealot. The favorite car of Cotton Mather, it burned witches for fuel.
The Gutenburg. The moveable-type tires wreaked havoc on the roads.
Astin Martin Black Death. It looked sleek and dark, but few drivers who got into this one survived to the end of their trip.
Vaticanmobile Batwing. This ungainly contraption designed by Michelango himself would look good on Batman's back, but that was all that could be said for it.
"The Aztec" from Toltecar. This Mexican model was not fast enough to outrun Cortez' cavalry. However, it did look better than the Pontiac Aztec.
I've made this mistake more than once. I refuse to do so anymore. It's ok to do tech support for yourself when you succumb to the lure of cheap/free hardware. It's utterly AWFUL to do it for someone else. Sure, you can get your parents a shiny new PC for less than $300 using parts from that guy at the computer fair who always has the hot deals on stuff whose serial numbers seem to have somehow gotten rubbed off, but do you really want to? What you don't realize at the time is that $300 is really just the first installment on the new system. You'll be carving fleshy screaming bits off your soul for the next 5 years and trading them in for known-good replacement computer parts in an attempt to figure out just WTF is wrong with the system you built. All the while you get to reside in Tech Support Purgatory, wincing whenever caller ID announces that it's Mom & Dad on the line, because they never call unless the PC you got for them is on the fritz.
Save the risk-taking for your own system. If your relatives won't shell out the $$$ for a decent new/used system or at least decent parts for the system, they'll have to learn to support the crap they buy themselves.
sz
Still trying to make it work on /. :(
slashdot fucked up
We've already opened them on December 5th.
If you are wondering why your keen observation has not yet been modded up as "Insightful", I think you might find this link very helpful.
Read his post again after you have learned the concept, so you can laugh along with the rest of us, (for the same reason.)
I'm thrilled this review came out. I haven't even finished reading it yet and have found two products I was going to buy this week. I'll be looking at their alternatives now! Thanks slashdot.org and pcmag.com!
The worst digital slr of the year is the Pentax K1000. I mean it doesn't even have USB! See our review here.
The worst desktop computer of the year is the super nintendo. I can't seem to get it to run Open Office and I have to fold my CD's in half just to get them in the ROM drive. See our review here.
The worst spread sheet application of the year is Windows Calculator. I see that you can congifure it to use Radians, but you can't even plot y=mx+b. How am I supposed to get my paper published in Science using diagrams created with a tool like that? See our review here.
Cisco makes these terific and robust managed routers, but the Netgear FS108 is a piece of junk in comparison. It only has 8 100MB ports. It doesn't have any built-in firewall. And, to top it all off, I still have to use cat5 ethernet cables. Can you image what the designers could have been thinking when they came up with that? See our review here.
Maybe I'm being too critical of this article.
0xfeedface
Why do morons like you insist on perpetrating such self-dellusion?
http://www.uvk2000.com/
Systems that offer a fertile breeding ground for malware will end up hip deep in it. Marketshare is irrelevant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A couple of bad things for a worst-of-all-list:
1. Missile defence - dated before it left the planning committee, and impossible to actually implement in real life.
2. Teflon tyres.
Sure... this article takes a swipe at the eMac and it should, it's too expensive for the 'puter it is.
But the article, another baloney tech review/marketing advert but I won't get into that, tells the reader that the Radeon video card that comes with the eMac makes playing "this falls" Mac games impossible... and to buy a Dell instead!
Well, we have a new Dell here in the ofice and it's got a Radeon card in it too. The Dell is supposedly a newer model than the eMac and it still can't play any games... not even crappy unaliased 3D games from years ago.
Really... typical tech-speak mind screwing by liars for the corporate Junta.
Marketshare has everything to do with it. If you have a lot of developers developing for a platform, you will get a certain percentage of bad ones making malware. If you have few developers, and a company that has a history of discouraging not encouraging languages and software development, you will get little software (and little malware).
What kind of sad sack-of-shit are you that you feel the need to drag MS into this when the article said nothing about them and their products.
An even sadder sack-of-shit is the moderator who give this piece of drivel an 'insightful' rating.
By that score, parrots and sheep must be hugely insightful.
Back when the PowerMac g5 was released their "Glowing" afermation of the G5s power was saying it was just as good as the top of he line PC.
That sounds about right. While the G5 was a huge leap in performance for Mac fans and generated loads of hype in the Mac community, it only matched performance that PC fans have been used to. In fact, when the G5 came out, it matched the speed of the fastest Intel systems but still came short of the top of the line AMD chips.
I remember when the G5 benchmarks came out, Mac fans enthusiastically pointed to benchmarks on Apple's website. They were not objective in the least bit. They compared optimized Altivec code running on the G5 with non-optimized code running on the Intel machines. Also the Intel system had less memory than the fully configured Mac. It was pretty sad, actually, that a respected company such as Apple would benchmark using such a slanted configuration.
wasn't GIGO originally SISO?
-youngen one
Well, a spellchecker might be, uh, "helpfull" for Taco.
Gadget A sucks. Now let us show you what products our sponsors have asked us to shill... er... products we've reviewed and consider to be of the highest quality.
the top pi^e devices
Completive Human Nature since we are a little Kid always wants to classify things as Good and Bad. Or Better and Worst. We like it when we see that the stuff we have is better then the stuff that someone else has and will often find methods of proving it to themselves and to others what they have is better then what others have. Some people like products just because they look nice, others for the number of features, others for simplify, other for the price, others for quality. The real question when you are comparing to others peoples products you need to ask them if they are happy with the product. There are a lot of people out there who don't like upgrading to a new computer because they are very happy with their old one, It does what they need and does it well. Other people after buying a top of the line system may be disappointed with it because it doesn't run the way they want it to, while an other person with the same system will give it glowing reviews. A lot of people don't realize how different all people are and putting them in groups rarely ever works. And trying to give a list on what is good vs. What is Bad will always cause controversy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If you are wondering why your keen observation has not yet been modded up as "Insightful", I think you might find this link [reference.com] very helpful.
Read his post again after you have learned the concept, so you can laugh along with the rest of us, (for the same reason.)
In the MP3 section anything by RIO, with the amount of spyware they add to your machine and the inability to veiw the item as a usb drive makes these units mostly unusable.
:)
I find it funny, they guy gigs a mac product and the mac 'ButButs' are all out for a party.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
"I think the eMac is for entry level PC users who want "the interweb" and email"
Except it is not a PC at all. Once the braindead newbies buy their first "PC compatible" software package and see that it won't work, they will find this out real quick.
"Nice big obvious-as-hell icons and you're done. And so is the Windows monopoly."
Not that they even have one, or had one. If they did have one, there would be no OS-X (or never have been an OS 7, etc).
The review made no sense,and shows no concept of what is needed in an average k-12 classroom. To add, and eMac is not the consumer or commerical model. It is the K-12 educational model.
My school had Macs, which we learned on, and later on I realized that it was a very bad idea. We learned on Macs and then got out into the "real world" where Mac skills were nearly useless. 95% of the market was IBM-compatibles. If you wanted to get a job where they called for "PC skills", they didn't mean knowing how to use a Mac. They meant knowing how to use Dos and Windows 3.1
If you were to teach something, would you teach something that 95% of people could use, or teach something that only 5% of people could use?
I'm not saying that Macs are bad, but we must face reality and admit that they're only a tiny percentage of the market, and when teaching subject matter that would help the majority of kids in school, learning on IBM compatibles would have been the smarter choice that helped more people in all practicality.
anything from Novell
err, ah well, what do I add more to it? :)
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Tubgirl Chocolate Fondue Fountain?
I'm not debating whether eMacs are good or crap, or anywhere in between, but in his review snipplet, the author stated that "the lack of a DVD burner makes offloading files impossible"
Ignoring the fact that the eMac is a Mac, and therefore has USB, Firewire, ethernet, supports Target Disk Mode (ok, some of that is slightly poweruser), the review model had a CD-RW?!?! Last time I checked, people still used those, Best Buy still sells CD-R's and you could use them to, I dunno offload files?
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Who listens to the words of someone who uses a phrase like that? I mean, damn, that line alone is a shooting offense in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Greater Antilles.
--- Ban humanity.
"glacially slow processor and anemic memory"
"designed by orangutans without opposable thumbs"
"longer than it took the Minnow's crew to escape Gilligan's Island"
"it's slower than a 330-pound defensive tackle with two bad knees on a muddy field"
"like watching the neighbor's TV with a periscope"
"look worse than an ancient Philco"
"control more twitchy than Jennifer Tilly in Seed of Chucky"
"this twisted offspring of a Norelco shaver"
"you'd be GigaWrong. Buy this one and you'll end up GigaSad"
"doesn't matter a NanoBit."
Some poorly maintained Continental Airlines piece of Boeing shit dropped big shards of metal all over the runway.
It's $799, not $900.
creation science book
There is something to be said for putting your archival device in the chassis, PC style. It really helps with the power supply and interconnect cable tangles and saves on desktop real estate.
Back in the 90s, I had an Amiga. Great computer, but precious little room in the box for peripherals. External equipment in my setup included: high-density floppy drive, CD-ROM, Zip Drive, Video I/O box, MIDI interface, Modem (with switchbox), and printer switchbox. Most of these required a wall wart of their own, with corresponding power strips plugged into other power strips. The collection turned into a pile, with the largest items on the bottom. Transporting the whole collection was also a real chore.
So there are advantages to the all-in-one-case approach.
I am not a crackpot.
Now that's a product idea only a dumbass could come up with...
There are enough programs for both Windows and Macintosh that any one individual could not possibly try all of them in her lifetime.
Unless you want software specifically targeted at some obscure niche, like an accounting system geared towards left-handed people who work in the trout farming industry, you'll find plenty of Mac software available.
Well, or unless you want ten million ways to wander around rooms and kill off robotic monsters, instead of only one million. Then I can't help you.
D
I'm not just being a Mac fanboy here, I really don't get that entry.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Jim Louderback [this story's writer]
John C Dvorak [mentioned in this story as having a credible opinion]
Both of these guys are Mac haters and neither have a valid merit to make any statement about the Personal Computer or electronics industry.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
that as an individual, rather than a mammoth corporation that can get huge discounts, I can get an 80GB hard disk for around 35UKP, and a 160GB one for around 45UKP. i can't even buy anything as small as a 40GB one anymore - so surely apple could have been just a little less cheap with the drives?
I am not a Mac fanatic, yet I do not like that eMac made the article. It is a solid machine for somebody who wants to have a stable client for checking e-mail, using a digital camera, surfing the web and being somewhat secure. Especially for $800.
Please do not give me "my Linux box can do the same for less" crap because there is no fucking way in hell I am going to recommend a Linux box to any of my relatives or non-techie people. Currently, I still see Linux as a great system for servers and desktops owned by techies who know the differences between kernel 2.4 and 2.6. Dell is okay, but as long as they run some sort of Windows, I am not touching them.
A couple of months ago I spent 2 days cleaning my friend's computer from every goddamn malware program out there. Then I cleaned my aunts computer, then I helped my mom because her box was extremely slow due to all the "addware" that she managed to install. Being a naive and a non-experienced user sucks, especially when companies do not want to be on your side. That is why I strongly push my mom toward an eMac because as far as I am concerned it represents a solid machine for beginners who do not want to spend all their free time maintaining it. Let's face the facts: not everybody enjoys configuring their computers whenever they have free time.
Here is why I like eMac:
It runs Mac OS X. This eliminates tons of malware available for Windows users. It is also easy to upgrade and maintain. I can enable SSHd and login to my mom's computer whenever she has a problem that needs to be fixed.
It is relatively cheap for what it is. Because I do not have to spend my time maintaining the computer, I can do something else. How much does your free time cost?
It has enough disk space. Believe it or not, 40GB is enough for any normal person. So far, all my software on my computer takes up 20GB. A person who does not download movies or music does not need a large hard drive to begin with.
eMac is pretty damn compact. I do not want my mom to deal with tons of wires, so a single box seems to be a perfect solution.
And that is just the beginning. Granted, I am a little biased towards Macs because since I got one, I noticed increase in my productivity. Now I can actually spend my time on writing code and doing fun things that do not involve system administration 24/7.
Anything.
Wait until after January 1st and get what you want for a lot less cash.
Wow. <span class="flamebait">For the first time in my life, I think I'd consider a Macintosh, if I were shopping for a new PC. You know, to use it as a real computer.</span>
No, seriously, does Emacs run with antialiased fonts, on the Mac? That's pretty much the only real annoyance in my Gnome desktop. I don't know how hard it would be for Emacs to use XFT or FreeType, but damn, that's needed. Badly.
I agree with you about the market for a lower priced (less-expandable) box, but the eMac has many, many fans, and for good reason. Others at /. have made argued a good case that the price is reasonable, and they have done this without attaching a dollar value to FireWire, OS X, the all-in-one form factor!
The 1.25 GHz eMac Value Equation: Wow!
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Followed closely by XP SP2
Nice going, maybe they'll mention us in one of their shows!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Anyone else that every single one of these product damnings also includes a link to the related product guide on the site?
I guess the basic nature of this column is:
A: Do the customary bitching about Dvorak. (Not to say that Dvorak bashing isn't okay- he loves it and uses it to his advantage.)
B: Drive traffic deeper into the site to increase revenue during the Christmas season.
And people wonder why I'm like the freaking Grinch around this time of year.
Bah humf*ckingbug.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
that 40gb will vanish fast.
Already have gone the upgrade route on my parents PC compatible. They had issues before with a scanner and that doubled as they not only were making new photos but scanning in all the old ones.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
..the Geek Leak?
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 2000 Prof
Windows 2000 Server
Windows 2003
Windows XP
And Last but not Least
LONGHORN alpha
Ironically the article is lack-lustre, because the information presented is in many parts entirely incorrect.(perhaps /. could assemble the most uninformed tech articles for the year?) This is probably because the author didn't bother revising specs on the discussed items since the first time they reviewed them.
In other news the article is quite blatant with it's recommendation guides, and considering that it's Dec 21, it's naive to suggest that this isn't product placement.
whoa...talk about postmodern.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
this would have been nice to have this a couple weeks ago, before the vast majority of holiday shopping is already done.
Is the Uk beginning to censor the net like China?
Everytime you type Google.com it defaults to Google.co.uk.
If you click on the link below the search box to go to Google.com the url goes to Google.com/ncr/ and defaults to Google.co.uk.
in the desktop OS category, for it's tendancy to, for the slightest of causes, or none at all, decide to go down and take everything with it.
As for "the real world," 99% of the design studios I've worked at are Mac-based, so all that learning of BASIC, DOS and dBase back in high school was a waste of time, wasn't it? ;)
And what's the percentage of people who work in design houses compared to people who use Windows PC's in the corporate workplace? The VAST majority of computers used in the workplace are Microsoft based, like it or not. The Mac crowd is merely a very vocal minority. But no matter how loud they yell, it doesn't increase their platform's market share.
It should have read:
...and the Radeon 9200 graphics card won't even run this fall's hot Mac game.
And we open our gifts on Jan 6th. Well, at least we used to till Yanqui Claus took over.
I for one can vouch for GigaFast's (poor) product quality. I had one of their 8-port 10/100 switches. It failed after less then a year of normal use under my desk.
I thought about sending it back, but since I would just get another one in exchange, it didn't seem worth paying the S&H.
If they can't even make a simple product like this that is reliable, it really says a lot about the company.
The worst products of the year all scored a "2" or "fair" rating.
That scale needs to be zeroed out.
I stick to the reliable names, and it's a policy that doesn't trip me up. I've seen so many people get burnt on little stuff that saves you very little cash, but if it goes wrong starts taking up all your time.
I'd also count buying from "cheapest retailer". Sure, you'll save $5, but then spend an hour trying to get through to the call centre to get some support. Pay the extra $5, get the support and get on.
Yes, anyone who doesn't like Macs MUST be bad!
Great fanboyism..
That one went entirely over the mods heads didnt it? Must be some Mac zealots not realizing he's making fun of them.
when talking about the worst innovations.
They say buy a Dell because eMac isn't a gaming machine?!
I'm afraid that due to the BSD/Darwin integration with OS X, Apple has gotten some street credit with the OSS zealots so they have ganged up on you and modded you to hell. Your points are valid however, don't worry about the "I don't care but I feel I much preach to you and mod you down for disagreeing" trolls. All of this customization stuff makes them feel bad for paying so much for a shiny box.
Have you driven one? My wife & I test-drove one a few years ago. I was impressed with it's handling & braking, especially considering it's height. Not a sports-car, but reasonably peppy; probably slower fully loaded. "Ugly" is very subjective :) Inefficient: not compared to the minivans it's a smaller replacement for (that was my purpose, anyway; replacing an actual "real van"). PT is very adaptable for it's size. Didn't get one, but liked it more than I expected.
I do like Apple which is why it's sad they don't understand the real value (ie.e they are not worth that much) of there machines.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
How could they have missed the $199 SCO IP-powered NutSmasher package?
Talk about Malware, Too bad we can't return it to the programmer.
XP Service Pack 2
Well, the Moxi has been out for a while, and anyone who has used both already knows the Moxi is a pile of junk. It's quality of recording on analogue channels is awful compared to Tivos. It doesn't know what "first runs" means - It thinks any episode you haven't seen is a "first run". This is a problem for any show that is in syndication. It doesn't let you record by date and time recurring; you HAVE to use a pass or select the show by hand to record it. And to top it all off, the GUI is abysmal. It shows you a preview of the next THREE shows on each channel, instead of 12 like Tivos. The show DESCRIPTIONS are vague and dont list if it contains AL, V, N, AC, SC, etc ...
In summary, he likes jumping the gun.
I'm a left-handed accountant for the trout industry, you insensitive clod!
It's ridiculous to put a computer marketed and priced for the entry level in this list and to call it "pathetic." The eMac isn't made for 3D gaming, it's made for running Office and web browsers, etc.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
I've seen some surplus machines lying around where I've worked and I'd take some cheap old Pentium any day over the useless outdated Macs. Same will happen with these eMacs in time, plus you CAN'T upgrade them so they suck forever.
What happens if you don't patch a Mac? Possible intrusion is what happens, Same as on Wndows.
Two things of note - if you don't patch a Mac, right now you have a working unpatched Mac. If you don't patch Windows (or even if you do), you PROBABLY have a comprimised computer for the majority of users. You are confusing two possibilities with the reality of the situation at hand.
Which leads me to my second point. All Macs come set up to update weekly, so issues are patched quickly - AND because of the security setup in OS X you'd have to have the administrator password from the user to be able to disable this process. On Windows it would be a lot easier for some spyware to stop Windows Update, or even redirect it to install more unpleasant things!
Macs may not be an unbreakable fort, but at least that have a fence and are in a good neighborhood!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have to agree here. PCMag is full of it. If you look at the eMac benchmarks posted over at Macintouch just yesterday, you'll notice it has surprisingly good performance. This is likely something John Dvorak threw in there to attract angry Mac zealots. It's his M.O.: Piss off Mac fans to increase ad revenue.
Seriosly, this program routinely gets editors choice (think Motertrends car of the year) but truly sucks. This program has single handidly pulled down two computers I was working on. It takes about a hour and a half to install and it really just does not work well. Perhaps this program would do good on a brand new computer from Best Buy, but my development machine??? In my opinion an AV/Firewall program should only do that. It really does not need the fancy interface and all the dependancies that go with it to run. Any other rants???
The draw of the other Emacs is that they are full versions - the one that comes with OS X is sadly only text-based (you have to run it in Terminal).
That's why I downloaded GnuEmacs and use that. And in answer to the other posters question, yes it uses standard OS X widgets so the text is AA.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here is some more Bush for you :-)
This rant seems bit unfair for me.
We use bunch 1GHz eMacs EDU (without optical drive but with 512 MB RAM) for video editing (Final Cut) and basic audio editing (Garageband).
All what i can say- this machine rocks! It's cheap, its fully supported (A/V editing in cheap hardware, yuk), its fast. Having 2 FW jacks (working jacks, if you want use camcorders and DV decks this matters) is enough for anything you can imagine.
And about 40GB drive: 5 min ~ 1 GB DV video. This is lots of minutes, you know.
Offcourse, YMMV
I don't know how hard it would be for Emacs to use XFT or FreeType
Chris Gray did a proof-of-concept port to XFT, and as I understand it, XFT's claimed compatibility interface (with existing X font mechanisms) was not compatible enough to work well. He expressed the opinion that Emacs would have to switch over to using native XFT interfaces, and this is something of a large task for Emacs, which demands a lot from the font interface.
[Note: I don't understand the details, this is a paraphrase of a message Chris sent me; any bogosities are likely due to my misunderstanding!]
We live, as we dream -- alone....
The beauty is that not only can you run SSHD, but that you can do so securure in the knowedge that Apple will be patching it for you through the weekly update check!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So are you agreeing because you wouldn't use a PC that slow to do the same thing?
I have a Powerbook 667 MHz (substantially slower than an eMac) that works very well for video editing. Rendering clips can take a little while some time if you have a lot of effects, but there are no problems whatsoever with capture or editing of normal video, and a lot of it.
There are no consumer tasks (including video and picture editing and most games) that the eMac would not be fine with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
says the AC posting via a WGR624.
George Bush.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Man, my vi bias is showing: I automatically read that as "And unfortunately, ..." Heh.
This article isn't really informative or funny at all. It's just a plug for their buyer's guide.
Basically they took each category in their buyer's guide and said which product finished last (most of which nobody had heard of anyway, I imagine), and then flogged the buyer's guide.
Weak.
Good post! I found it funny as heck, since I recently dusted off my old Myth:The Fallen Lords CD and have been playing it on my iBook G4 while commuting on the bus.
I still shake my head when I can play Myth on my iBook, when back in the day the requirements for that game were considered "hefty" and you needed a relatively modern Power Mac, preferably with a Voodoo card.
HBH
"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
I was thinking more along the lines of a program tampering with software update, but had not considered how a user being able to turn it off would mean a program might be able to do the same thing - I wonder what that really does. I'll have to check into that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And I'm a trout, you even more insensitive clod!
NOTE: These are a bit dated--done back in April and June respectively; I'm sure that Dell's current offerings have changed since then. Still, they give a reasonably fair and detailed comparison of what you get for your money:
p /2 004/0413_dt0800.html
l /2 004/0616_edu_dt0650.html
Consumer: $800 eMac Combo Drive vs. $800 Dell Dimension 4600
http://www.systemshootouts.org/shootouts/deskto
Educational: $650 eMac CD-ROM vs. $650 Dell Dimension 4600
http://www.systemshootouts.org/shootouts/specia
... that audio player embedded in the headphones supported Ogg, /. would be going ga-ga over it.
..or best product, if you are a mmorpg-aholic.
Sun was charging 1200$ a pop for Rays back in the day, if not more... and they didn't even have hard drives.
Oh, and they required a hugeass expensiveass server to boot and run. And a shitload of network infrastructure. So the total cost per unit was quite a bit higher.
It's the mac, people. This platform has shit for games. With a Doom3 port stuck in limbo, WoW is the only Major Title to have a mac release this year.
I suppose you can count the latest Unreal installment, but I'm talking Quality Games, not buzzword compliant buttsucking- UT doesn't come up in the same conversation as, say, GTA, Doom3, HL2, etc.
I guess he's never heard of burning CD's.
Dude, that guy has never even heard of FireWire. He thinks that a $499 Dell comes with a DVD burner, 80 GB harddrive and the r4dest graphics card on the market. He is a loser, much like Dvorak who has megapixel blindness and don't know what a lens is.
You seem to be saying: "If person is strongly uninterested in hearing about some subject then they should be indifferent to hearing about that subject." That is illogical, Captain.
Oh I see, the reason that the eMac is a bad product is because it is too expensive compared to a $500 Dell. Dells are bad products because they are built poorly and badly serviced. Maybe this arse should learn the first rule of geekdom: Things cost money, good things cost more.
I better buy any other product in the market than buying a Dell. Stupid PCMag recommends Dell over eMac - absurd and senseless.
The author is being unfair here. Now, I have been using an eMac for almost a year now, and I dont seem to find it underpowered at all. I do freelance graphic design and illustrate childrens books, and do all my Photoshop/Illustraror work with it. Yeah, a G5 with a cinema display would be preferable, but I didnt have $6000 laying around. But I did have a thousand bucks, and that bought me this here eMac which is a pretty nice little platform for Photoshop and Illustrator. Oh yeah, Rainbow Six 3 runs great on it.
I was using the Ray as a price comparison, not an Ultimate Convenience comparison. A properly managed Mac network can be tightly secured- not quite as secure as Solaris, but close.
The local Library used to have a Ray network- your options were Netscape Navigator, or..... Netscape Navigator.
Quite secure.
John, quit posting as anonymous coward.
(Disclaimer: This is just a knee-jerk cynical joke. I have no first hand knowledge that HP and Apple have declined PCMag advertising. And as Linux Magazine has been good enough to explain to us, advertising money never influences a responsible news source. I'm sure that PCMag is not dominated by multiple pages of Dell ads.)
Yay for a flamebate mod. Proves the moderator is either still a wet-behind-the-ears platform convert (I know a few), or can't articulate a convincing counterargument.
:P
The mac is not gifted in the games department, people. This isn't rocket science.
Now really! This is just ONE opinion of a single person. The fact that Jim Louderback has a platform to speak from doesn't mean he has ANY qualifications to make these judgements. In fact people like him keep disqualifying themselves all the time by their own embarrassing writings. Nothing but a Rant in this case!
the DVD rewinder!
Perfect gift for losers
From the Desktop PC section: and the Radeon 9200 graphics card won't even run this fall's hot Mac games HAH!
Yes, but that's because no one bothers to write Mac OS worms. There have been plenty of remote root flaws in OS X.
I dispute "many", but even so - who cares how it comes to arrive at this state? If a big bag of money fell from the sky and landed at your feet, would you dismissit saying that all that money could get you addicted to crack?
The whole point is that even though there COULD be exploits, there are currently none!! It's the big elephant in the room that people seem willing to ignore so they can play HL2.
Furthermore even though there might have been a number of root exploits, the actual community of users affected by most holes is small since OSX ships with all services off by default. Remote SSH exploit? There are a lot of people that would never be affected, even if someone did finally write an exploit.
Microsoft does beg you to run the security updates, but because it's more intrusive fewer people do so. Isn't it better to just quietly leave that on in the background and let people disable it when they need to? It does ask you to install at the time an update is ready.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I read an article recently about the VHS/Betamax wars in the early 80's. Now everyone knows that the Betamax was a better machine, the quality was better, the tapes didn't degrade as quickly BUT the argument he gave for VHS can be perfectly attributed to the PC/Mac argument.
I am a web developer in a design studio dominated by Mac's and Mac users. It has to be the only place in the world where i am a minority being a pc user but whenever they start on me i can always come back with this salient point.
When i decide to buy a pc over a mac i am not just buying a computer. I'm buying a CHOICE. With my new pc i suddenly have the choice of dozens of computer magazines all specialising in specific pc attributes. I'm buying the ability to walk into virtually any computer shop and know they will have products and parts to fit my machine. I'm also buying into something the Mac will never have: Competitive Pricing!
I can scour hundreds of websites all selling parts cheaper than the last that will make my computer that little bit better. I can buy motherboards, CPU's, PSU's, Gfx cards, memory, etc. I can mix and match according to my budget. I know you can buy seperate memory and HDD's for the Mac but the choice is certainly not as extensive as it is for the PC
I can walk into my local PC World (PC Warehouse style store in the UK) and pick up anything off the shelf, take it home and install it. The only Apple shop i know is in London. I know that virtually all cameras, digital video cameras, mp3 players, etc. will work with my machine without even having to check the box for compatibility.
This is precisely the reason VHS took over from Betamax, not because it was a better machine, but because it was more popular. You didn't have to root around at the back of the video store to find the right tapes for your machine, everything was at the front of the store in rows and rows in different colours and designs. If it broke down, people were fighting over each other to fix it, each undercutting the last on price.
Mac users seem to delight in pointing out all the viruses, trojans, etc for the pc but for them i have 3 words: Nortons Internet Security. Any pc user knows before the computer goes anyway near the internet he needs a firewall and antivirus. Of course no internet protection software is perfect but as long as the user is completely brain-dead he's relatively safe.
You can keep your £1000 average Macs. I'll stick with my PC i made myself with parts from different stockists. I'll keep my foul Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and most importantly i'll keep my ability to purchase so many more products for my PC than there are for the Mac.