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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."
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.
He also mentions that it doesn't have a DVD writer which will *not* allow for the "off-loading of files".
Well, I know plenty of people that don't have 40GB HDs and no DVD writer. Some people don't even have a DVD-ROM drive. Most people interested in the eMac line are probably low end users that aren't going to be "off-loading" great amounts of data to permanent backup anyway.
I should also add that I know somebody who has an eMac (which he bought for video editing... He uses an external firewire drive for higher-capacity storage) and he's been playing the very hottest of "this fall's hottest games" (World of Warcraft) on it and has been very pleased with the performance.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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 ..
The Mac is still what Windows would like to be when it finally grows up. Win9x and it's variants have always been poor attempts to mimic qualities of the Mac that were present in 1984.
As a "computer for your parents", a Macintosh still trumps a PC running WinDOS.
With Linux, you can at least do remote support over a 2400bps serial connection if necessary.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
But it's an extra $100 for that!
Am I the only one that thinks paying $999 for a computer that Dell does with a flatpanel and twice the RAM for $699 is absolutely stupid?!
The eMac needs a real update. I'd be more than happy to pay $699 or even $799 for a G5-based 'pizza box' with which I can use my own monitor.
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The low-end eMac is a perfectly fine entry-level machine. It can't burn DVDs, but it can burn CD-R/RW discs. I've got a client with a dozen eMacs, and they don't feel slow to me when I work on them. It takes a looooong time for the average home user to fill up a 40GB HDD (on a machine that can't get pwned and become some Russian kid's private warez storage space, anyway). The only legitimate gripe he could really have made, he didn't make-- and that's that it should come with more than 256MB of RAM standard.
~Philly
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.
I thought that too. I've just spent the weekend fiddling with my gf's parent's new eMac and it's a really good computer. It's easily fast enough for most uses, easy to use, looks good, has a far superior mouse and keyboard to any low-end dell I've used and has an operating system that makes WindowsXP look like something from the dark ages.
I'm about as far from your average Mac zealot as you can get (typing this on a home-built dual-boot Fedora/win2K system), but I'd be perfectly happy with an eMac on my desk.
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.
No way the Slashdot subscription is the best way to read the article before it gets slashdotted. Plus it reduces the number of Lame Attemps to get first posts. Increases the chance that the first posts are actually insightful and are on topic.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
I think Fark's attempts at preventing FP wars are the best: replace the phrase "first post" with "boobies" or "weeners". Then you get publicly scorned and hilarity ensues.
"I got the Weeners losers! HAHAHAHAHA"
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
And as far as good for geeks, it depends what kind of geek you are. if you like hardware, there are limited opportunities. If you like software, the mac is the bomb. You can write GUIs using any number of toolkits. You can write code using any number of languages. Likewise you can use virtual PC as a sandbox to write and debug your little virus and spyware without risking infected your machine.
And the spyware issue is not a newbie issue. Anyone can make a single mistake. It is a matter of probability. It is the same as the STD thing. You may have a 1 in 1000 chance of accidently becoming infected, but if you have sex with 5 different people a day, in six months you have a pretty good chance of needing the free clinic.
You have, however, indirectly identified the may use of the emac. In an average classroom, you don't want the kids messing witht the hardware. Therefore the eMac, or it's nearly non-existant x86 equlivelent, is the best choice.
Would be funny if they put PC Magazine on that list.
Their website just made mine. My GF needs a new phone so I clicked over to their buying guide. It gave me the wrong price range to start with and then, when I tried to use the search criteria to find a specific phone (which I had already seen on the page) I got "no matches".
Nice.
a $799 eMac (where the "e" stands for "economy", I guess).
Actually, the e stands for "education."
The eMac was only ever intended to be a school computer. That's why it's really heavy, really sturdy, has a cheap-ish but rugged screen, and has the power button hidden on the back of it.
It just happened to turn out that a lot of consumers thought it would be a nifty machine for other situations where the LCD-based iMac was not really called for, and Apple decided, after the fact, to make it available.
I use one in my music studio with a MOTU DSP as my main record-to-HD system. I like that it's whisper-quiet thanks to the big slow-moving cooling fan yet still fast enough to run my multi-track recording software. Also, it fits nicely on top of my audio equipment rack.
Would I use it for a game PC? Nah. I know from seeing other people game with them that it can run a lot of games okay, but already I have a cheap home-brew PC for games.
It's all about the right tool for the job, as far as I'm concerned, and the eMac happens to fill a useful niche or two out there.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Windows XP on a Dell (or any OEM) is just not reliable.
This is your opinion, an opinion you base the rest of your argumentation on. Even if the Dell was $1 and the iBook was $50000 according to you the iBook would still be a better choice because I want a reliable computer and a Dell just is not reliable.
Stick to the facts next time and argument from there.
You forgot the beauty part: the post is moved to ten hours in the future, so their "first post" (only if it is the very first one) ends up (typically) in the middle or near the end.
I will never again download anything from download.com without thoroughly researching it, since most of what they have now is full of the nastiest kind of spyware/adware/crapware. It will be very hard to fight the spyware battle when some of the organizations in the computer industry that are thought of as reputable end up pushing out spyware to their users.
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.
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Now an entry level iBook is around 1200Euro, so it can't match in price.
*bzzzt* Wrong. If your cousin is a student, he can go to Apple's online store and get an 12" iBook for about 1000 Euros. Even if you consider the lack of AirPort in student offer iBooks you still get a decent machine for under 1200 (which is what I paid for one with AirPort and an 80G harddrive).
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White it wasn't a fantastic article, you write worst lists so that people don't make the mistake of buying a product. Like the worst list for toys that have objects that you stick in your mouth that have lead in them, you probably want to avoid those. Actually, they justify it in the beginning if you weren't so lazy and made that extra click (I know I know, it's slashdot). He said the worst list was made because usually when you go to the store, the "best" list stuff are sold out. These are things to avoid. Is that so tough a concept to grasp?
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"You have got to be kidding me. This board is known to have more fierce Mac fanboys then even Linux sometimes. I mean, look at the mods, is even one negative Mac post modded up? .... Go through the Mac posts again...watch legitimate opinions about Macs be modded down..while people say something as worthless as "I heard my friend got great performance on WoW with an eMac" get modded +5 insightful (real example from this thread even)."
You, Sir, are correct. I am a huge Mac fan and I am going to forfeit my option to moderate in this thread by publicly agreeing with you. Slashdot has become so pro-Mac that the backlash is inevitable. I don't care for the OS holy wars from either perspective and do appreciate that Macs and OS X get some of the recognition that they deserve. But I love my Mac because it's my Mac. I could not care less about what any of you use for your personal computers. They're yours so enjoy them.
That said, I imagine that PC Mag was just trying to spread the love with equal opportunity bashing. I guess one could say the eMac is "slow, underpowered, and pathetic," but it's a disingenuous argument to compare a Mac to a low-end PC just on specs. The eMac is not sold that way and is made to address a specific market. I also do not understand why "the lack of a DVD burner makes offloading files impossible." Impossible? I'm not the brightest guy around but I have been offloading files from my iMac for years and have never used my DVD burner. Maybe its mere presence is some sort of technology enabler.
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
Key** POSSIBLE... not probable.
/. .. I think someone got confused. :)
And the autoupdates thing in a mac is a little more reliable than autoupdates in winXP. I've ran several mac's with and without virus scanners. None have had any problems.
I've gotta call back EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN winXP dell laptop at least every three months and wipe the bish out of it. Even patched, reconfigured, virusscanned, they all get something freaky. I've given up on fixing them and just wipe the drive each time.
I was just amuzed to even see PC mag flouted on
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