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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.
...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...
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 !
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
My motto when it comes to buying hardware, especially when it comes to hardware that I'm recommending for other (usually less technically-adept) people is to buy a decent product from a good brand.
No-name modems, video cards, network adapters, etc might seem like a bargain but when you run into any kind of problem, or when you come to changing OS, then a no-name product is going to leave you up shit creak without a paddle virtually every single time.
Providing tech support to friends and relatives is one thing, providing tech support for a cheap, near-unsupported part is another thing altogether. If for no reason other than I don't want to piss off people I care about, I always make sure that I have them buying with reliability rather than false value in mind, and if that means I take the extra time necessary to research exactly what they need and handpick the product that they should buy then that's what I'll do.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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
;o)
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Eight hundred bucks for a thin client? Seriously?
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
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.
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?
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.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
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.
...10 worst Slashdot articles of the year?
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?"
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.
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
Nooo, it's a Mac, it's more than just a personal computer, right? Whatever.
Still, from the article, impossible to get information off of it because of a lack of a DVD burner? What's the author smoking? What did we all do with our 40+GB drives before DVD burners came along? Give me a break. I'd bet he wouldn't dream of trying to back up a 250GB drive with a DVD burner since that'd be over 50 DVDs. Why, backing up a 40GB drive with 700MB CDs yields just under 60 CDs. There's hardly a difference at all.
If not now, when?
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)
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.
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
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.
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
It's not about the number of viruses. It's the NUMBER OF INFECTIONS. As recent common experience should have made you painfully aware of, vast parts of the planet can be infected by a the work of a single developer.
In a highly connected environment, it only takes ONE virus writer to cause havok on a planet of billions.
Viruses exist on any platform because they can. If they can be made, SOMEONE will make them.
These things don't require army divisions to pull off.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
800 bucks for a Desktop PC that wont get virus infestations, can be directly hooked to the net, wont get spyware, and doesnt crash that my grand parents can use? Or a 300-400 dollar PC I spend hours building and setting up that any moron who comes along can trash?
Don't assume that just because the eMac is the crappiest mac it is useless and overpriced. peace of mind and keeping people from being dependant on techies to use their computer is worth a lot imo.
Sleep is for the weak.
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.
"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."
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 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.
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
whoa...talk about postmodern.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
It should have read:
...and the Radeon 9200 graphics card won't even run this fall's hot Mac game.
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
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
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
George Bush.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
(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.)