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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."
I'd also point out you can get an 80 GB drive with the emac if you wish, and a DVD burner is also available, their review of the eMac makes it seem that these options aren't available.
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
It is a bit odd. I just looked at Dell prices (of course I might have missed systems, do correct me if I'm wrong). Dells are 40GB drives until you get to $899 systems. Nor do they contain DVD burners( or even CD burners) until you hit above the eMac price. Nor do they have even ATI or nvidia graphics, but onboard intel stuff. Doesn't look much different to me.
"Don't buy an eMac cos it sucks at X, Y and Z. Buy a dell instead, they also suck at X, Y and Z"
Given that one of their "Best Fall Software Downloads" was riddled with spyware (as I found out the hard way!), I'm all for this. Any major magazine recommending vendors of malware will never get my attention again.
Also I have a Dual G5 PowerMac with a total of 1.3 Terabytes of digital photos which I don't have a problem moving about with GigE or Firewire. Hasn't this guy ever heard of Firewire, USB and Ethernet?
I have to wonder how real is the rest of the list?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
;o)
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
It takes a minute or so to warm up, but it is a laser, that is to be expected.
The HP 1300, which is an entry-level laser printer (PS), warms up in 8 seconds. 1 minute way more than is expected for modern laser printers!.
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You are probably looking at the wrong line of Dells. Dells website is pretty poor unless you know what you are doing and you'll soon find you can build the exact same machine with the same specs for radically different prices just by going on different paths on the website.
Look at the 4200 I think. They are the cheapest, and sure, they have onboard video but the Radeon 9200 is shit anyway. And you can add whatever AGP graphics card, something I'd take over a built in 9200 card.
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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!
So where is this "provide more value" you are talking about?
It's called OS X.
This is easy... because the auto magazines are too dependant upon advertising revenue from these companies -- invariably some of the worst cars come from manufacturers that advertise the most.
If you want to get honest car reviews, I'd recommend Edmondston's Lemon Aid Car Guide...100% independent, uses public access to information through safety councils, etc. Its Canadian based, but should be very applicable to all North American-available automobiles.
You'll find this same experience with most stereo magazines, and also to a great extend with video game and photography enthusiast publications.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Please note that the original read "...output quality that redefines GIGO (Good In, Garbage Out)...". Not the acme of technical humor (or the grammatical construction thereof), but it seems to have sailed over your head.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The Car Talk guys (from NPR) have the Worst Cars of the Millenium as voted on by their listeners.
It's funny and worth a read.
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
Actually, I bought an ADSL router from eBuyer without knowing what brand it was going to be, based soley on the good reviews it had there and the price tag.
Turned out to be an Origo (never heard of them) and a fantastic piece of kit that trounces the office US Robotics hardware doing the same job.
Don't immediately assume that brand = quality. There are some good names in the article.
You say that the eMac was made "primarily" for educational use, but you might not know that it was originally made exclusively for educational use. It was released in April 2002 and was only available to education customers. It proved so popular that Apple made it available to everybody in June.
Apple has a history of doing this kind of thing. There are Mac models out there that you've probably never even heard of because they were only sold to schools. Like the "Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One" for instance.
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However, I can surf with Safari without getting drive-by-downloads, or whatnot. It is pretty much secure out of the box. Besides, there is not a single service active on a newly installed OS X. Windows XP SP2 has a firewall to protect its services now, but currently all OEMS ship with XP SP1.
Tell your friend not to install all that stuff that gives him malware.
Well, there was spyware, but no program that traditionally includes spyware (Like Kazaa). I could enumerate the software that was installed on his machine, and apart from Yahoo Messenger everything seems to have been preinstalled. All problems that he had were caused by using IE.
I think you are being a bit obtuse with your view on Macs. My whole point is that a computer neophyte can buy a Mac and keep it running without being exposed to too much problems, and you can't with a OEM PC.
Up until last weekend I didn't know that he had a PC! How could I have educated him? So, the computer neophyte must be educated before he buys a computer... Hey, that would make him a non-neophyte. Funny how it works, eh?
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
No, they say buy a Dell because the eMac is slow, has a small hard drive and is expensive for what you get.
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
In retrospect, I probably should have said "buy an iMac"
Or a Penguin Revolution 2200.
jim louderback