PC World's 100 Best Products of 2005

insensitive clod writes "PC World published its top 100 best products of 2005. These include Firefox(1), GMail(2), OSX 10.4(3), Alienware Aurora 5500(6), Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive(7), Skype(8), PalmOne Treo 650(10), Google(16), PSP(19), GeForce6600GT(20), Ubuntu(26), iTunes(34), Half-Life 2(38), Wikipedia(60), ThinkPad X41(67), Mac Mini(75), Acronis True Image(83), Opera(88). Surprisingly, iPod only has IPod Photo at 78."

Comments

They published that list in JUNE

[Anonymous Coward]

It's OCTOBER. It's not news anymore. There was a big hubbub about Opera claiming the best browser award despite coming in at #88 compared to Firefox at #1.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera is the best browser.

If there is a best browser award, Opera should win.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[Mr. Underbridge]

PC World seems to disagree.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[Anonymous Coward]

PC World also puts iTunes above Opera.

I know that I'm comparing two completely unrelated programs, but considering that iTunes sucks and Opera rules the order of the whole list is suspect.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[Mr. Underbridge]

Wow, that was insightful. Most people who hate iTunes don't know how to use it.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[at_slashdot]

It is the best browser for me and for the guy you replied to.

I guess we are those guys that people at slashdot talk about when they refer to "the two guys that use Opera". Nevertheless I trust myself a little bit more that PC World, I don't need a list of best products to know what's better.

Did people who like Firefox better really tried Opera? Or it's an ideology thing (open source vs. closed source). I tried Firefox for about 2 months and when I returned to Opera I said to myself "yep this is how a browser should work".

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[deaddrunk]

I think Opera is quicker but doesn't work as well (or at all) with some websites as Firefox even when identifying itself as IE or Netscape. That isn't Opera's fault but it is irritating which is why I don't use it as much as FF (I very very rarely come across a website that only works in IE these days before you say anything).

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[Shaklee39]

How do you take songs off your ipod and put them on to your computer? Oh that's right, you can't. iTunes sucks.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[at_slashdot]

I agree. I think Firefox is more compatible with the crap out there. That's why I keep it close (the quick start icon for Firefox is on my Kicker next to the Opera one) I don't hate Firefox I like it, but in my opinion Opera does things better, as you said it's faster, not a browsing necessarily, but the GUI feels snappier, also back and forward works much better than in Firefox (although I think that has improved now in Firefox 1.5 beta)

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[deaddrunk]

Aye I thought I'd mention it as a reason for not using it as much (although I'm currently replying in it now ;)). FF has been a bit horrible since about 1.02 and if websites designers made more effort to support the three main browsers then FF would be uninstalled in short order. How damn cool is the voice control :)

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[toddestan]

Most people who hate iTunes don't know how to use it.

Or they are most familar with the Windows version of iTunes, which really does suck.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[at_slashdot]

"How damn cool is the voice control :)"

Unfortunatelly is not available in Linux :(
But I think although it's a really good thing, in some situations, hand injury for example, in most of the cases I'd still prefer to use the keyboard or mouse. I would like my coworkers to hear "Opera command: go to slashdot" ;)

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[neuroklinik]

Hmmm... I think it's as simple as:

1) Mount iPod as external volume.
2) Launch Terminal
3) ditto -V /Volumes/MyCrappyiPod/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Desktop/MyCrappyMusic/
4) Watch as each song is copied to my Mac.
5) Import into iTunes.

Sheez. That was tough.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[MBraynard]

For the longest time, I could not figure out why Itunes was saying it was moving songs to my Ipod, but when I checked my Ipod, it was Empty.

The worse part was I had it all loaded for an important marathon, got to the race, and then discovered it was empty. That was the end of Ipod and Itunes.

I found the problem was that what it thought was my Ipod - connected through a USB - was really a network drive. So it was acknowledging the Ipod when I connected it - but it was moving music to my 'G' drive. I had to remove all the mapped drives to get Itunes to see the Ipod.

Switched to Yahoo Unlimited/Dell DJ - problems gone.

And am I wrong, or are not "Top X XXX of XXX" simply the refuse of lazy journalists too tired to write a real article?

OR that 2005 ain't quite over. My perpetual motion machine will be released in November - surely deserving of #1.

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[lordofthechia]

"My perpetual motion machine will be released in November - surely deserving of #1."

I'll be finishing my Tyme Machine (TM) (friggin HG Wells estate and their trademark...) in early December, meet me by then and I'll make sure your invention gets submitted in time for this Top 100 list. After that I'll be going back about 100 years to trademark "Time Machine". I know, I think the y is stupid too...

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[lordofthechia]

"Opera command: go to slashdot"

Does that mean that all you need to redirect Opera to another site is to have a .wav file on your website that says "Opera command: download gator!" or "go to goatse"? Great feature my ass!

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[Asphixiat]

when voice control was all the rage in like 97-98, one of our managers (well he thought he was a manager, but he was just older, and thought he knew everything, yet he knew _nothing_) installed one of those progs on his windows desktop. It was surprisingly pretty good - good enough in fact, I could walk up behind him and say:

"start, shutdown, OK"....and it worked - everytime, hours of fun :)

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[richlv]

are there still people who browse with sound on for browser ?
i can understand leaving flash, js and java enabled, but sound... some of so called "music" and "sounds" can compare to goatse, unless you are deaf. and in that case there is no reason to devote your resources to playing that crap anyway ;)

Re:They published that list in JUNE

[at_slashdot]

I think that the computer filters the sound that comes from speakers (or it should). But interesting idea anyway.

I disabled sound in web pages, I hate to have any sound played when I open a page.

surprisingly?

[cryptoz]

There *are* better things out there than the iPod. How is this surprising? And when you have such a generalized list...well, you will always get strange results. What was the criteria for determining a product that would make the list?

Re:Surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

mods? redundant. second post=same question

Re:Surprisingly?

[Epsillon]

Posted at the same time, I imagine. Apparently, there are two of us who can see through the hype and recognise this set of devices for exactly what they are: Marketing tools.

Re:surprisingly?

[1u3hr]

There *are* better things out there than the iPod. How is this surprising?

Especially since it's about products of 2005; the iPod debuted in 2001.

Re:Surprisingly?

[dcstimm]

umm, you can do what ever you want with music you have in itunes. itunes music is not proprietary, it plays on anything, including linux, aac file format is universal, now as for the Drm its less restricting then you think...

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only elitist assholes pay a premium to use something with less features than the competition. The iPod is nothing special at all, except more expensive than everything else.

Re:Surprisingly?

[jmelloy]

It takes about 10 seconds to get music off an iPod.

The music is only hidden.

Re:Surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have time to fuck around with hidden stuff. Not to mention to get the music to play on the ipod you can't just copy it to it with a filemanager. Truly amazingly weird. iPod is a thing of the past.

Re:surprisingly?

[node 3]

>Especially since it's about products of 2005; the iPod debuted in 2001.

What's that got to do with it? Debuting before this year doesn't mean it's no longer a product.

This is easily demonstrated by the fact that the iPod is on the list.

As are more than a few other products that debuted before 2005, such as Google, and Photoshop Elements.

Re:surprisingly?

[jZnat]

Well, it's still 2001 technology; it's not like the iPod has gotten much better other than slimming down and featuring more space. The iPod Photo is a step forward towards catching up with established players like the iRiver, but it's no longer "the best" as Apple has lagged behind in the feature support like decent battery life, audio formats, the ability to turn the screen and/or player off when not in use, and other internals. Back in 2001, sure, I'd place it in the top 100 (probably even top 10), but now it's outdated technology.

Re:surprisingly?

[node 3]

There *are* better things out there than the iPod. How is this surprising?

It's surprising given that the iPod usually takes a couple of slots in the top ten on lists like these.

And when you have such a generalized list...well, you will always get strange results. What was the criteria for determining a product that would make the list?

Yeah, that's just it. Why would the iPod fare lower than a hard drive? Or a Rio mp3 player?

I mean, if I were going to bet on whether an iPod or a Rio would rate higher on a "best products" list, I'd bet on the iPod. This isn't a earth-shattering surprise or anything, just a "huh, didn't expect that" sort of surprise.

Re:surprisingly?

[Blondie-Wan]

The iPod has decent battery life, though it's no longer as good relative to the rest of the field as it once was. iPod audio format support is actually really good - all iPods except the shuffle support six different formats (AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, Apple Lossless, and Audible). No, they don't support Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, but most of the players that do don't support all the formats the iPod does, either. Most non-iPod MP3 players I see seem to support two or three formats, usually MP3, WMA and maybe something else.

Re:surprisingly?

[BasilBrush]

Which would matter if it wasn't for the fact that the other players have lagged behind in controller technology, ease of use, and integration with computer and music store. i.e. the important stuff.

Re:surprisingly?

[jessecurry]

The iPod is to portable media players what OS X is to Operating Systems; that is, something that doesn't get in the way of what you are trying to do, listen to music.

Re:Surprisingly?

[jZnat]

Let us count the audio formats that iTunes supports:

1. AAC (With DRM or without DRM, MPEG-4 Audio)
2. AIFF (Apple's raw audio format analogous to WAV or just plain RAW PCM)
3. MP3 (Love it or hate it, at least it supports the most widely used format as defined in MPEG-1, Layer 3 Audio)
4. WMA (Non-DRM'd Windows Media Audio can be converted to AAC or MP3)
5. ALAC (Apple's Lossless Audio Codec)

Tell me, where's the native (or even modular) support for Vorbis, FLAC, Monkey's Audio, Musepack, etc? I encode most of my music in either Ogg FLAC (if space allows) or Ogg Vorbis (generally between q6 and q7), but iTunes supports neither. Hell, they'd be more likely to support ATRAC3 than go and use an existing public domain format like Ogg. Yes, I commend Apple for using MPEG-4 as their primary audio format, so when I use ourTunes at a uni, I can generally get decent quality music rather than the shitfested 128k CBR MP3 or WMA commonly found on some P2P networks, but I prefer to use FLAC over ALAC and Vorbis over AAC. Don't get me wrong, I do generally buy old CDs and whatnot and rip those to FLAC, but if I want to "sample" some new stuff or things I've never heard of, I'd like to at least get a good quality sample (i.e. a song or 2 from that artist) rather than some 64k WMA that's only playable 5 times and only contains 60 seconds of the song before I go and buy more music from that artist. Also, iTunes needs to be made for Linux and *BSD at the least considering Darwin is a *BSD, so I'm sure Apple would have no problems making native versions for other operating systems.

Re:surprisingly?

[Halfbaked Plan]

It's surprising given that the iPod usually takes a couple of slots in the top ten on lists like these.

Yeah, the marketing staff at Apple and their teams of astroturfers usually are MUCH more on the ball.

Re:surprisingly?

[KanSer]

Mod me down and I will become stronger than you ever imagined.

The iPod is JUST A FUCKING MP3 PLAYER.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because storage space, price, battery life and sound quality aren't important at all in a portable music player so long as it says ipod on it and work with iTMS.

Yes, i sold my ipod, got a zen xtra and have never looked back.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

iTunes sucks, it may be a good program for OS X but on windows it's like all oher Apple software. Total slow bloatware. At least it doesn't popup "buyme" warnings all the time like the quicktime player.

Re:surprisingly?

[jZnat]

Yes, it's quite the predicament, isn't it? =/

Why must you do this to us, Apple? You were supposed to destroy the subpar products, not make them!

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPod is to portable media players what OS X is to Operating Systems

OS X has 2-3% marketshare. The market has decided against it. It's finito. The iPod at least has a few years left altough other player have leapfrogged it in features already.

Just look at the online music stores. WMA compatible stores pop up all over the place. Meanwhile the iPod has only one and it's from Apple, iPods creator. Nobody else wants to support it.

Re:surprisingly?

[BasilBrush]

There's nothing sub-par about the iPod. It's the best range of players on the market. That's why most people buy them.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice touch with the Star Wars III Reference.

Re:surprisingly?

[eMartin]

But it didn't get really good until the click wheel.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that but it's also one with a stupid propietary database based file system.

And its accompanying Itunes software will delete mp3s from your disk if it thinks you shouldnt have them.

Ipods suck.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

And its accompanying Itunes software will delete mp3s from your disk if it thinks you shouldnt have them.

2500+ MP3s on my HD. Most probably shouldn't be there.

0 Deleted.

Now shut the fuck up.

Re:surprisingly?

[Mechcozmo]

Not just an MP3 player, but rather, an MP3 player that seamlessly synchronizes with your music to play it how you want to play it. The iPod is a part of the whole experience. So yes, it does just play music, but it does so with amazing ease. And that's why an iPod is different than a Dell DJ.

Re:surprisingly?

[NeedleSurfer]

As it turns out its the best of them, some people disagree but most people prefer it to anything else, hence the best product claim.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Image is everything.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPod Photo is a step forward towards catching up with established players like the iRiver

Best joke of the day. Thanks.

Re:surprisingly?

[triso]

...What was the criteria for determining a product that would make the list?

Unofficially--advertising in PC World will do it.

Re:surprisingly?

[Wicksta]

We're going on holiday tomorrow. Girlfriend has an iPod mini. She installed iTunes on her work laptop. Her work laptop is locked up at work. Tonight? She thought she'd put a few CDs onto her iPod and installed iTunes on a PC at home and synced it. Unfortunately it synced the 'no music' to her iPod, which means she's now in the other room, pissed off and busy ripping her CDs back to the iPod. And here I am copying files to my 4 year old Archos MP3 player, by simply 'dragging and dropping'. How quaint.

Re:surprisingly?

[Silvertre]

iTunes gives you a warning that you will lose your data if you try to sync an iPod with another library.

Granted, it would be nice if you could just add to your iPod, but I suspect that the ability was not added so the music industry wouldn't have anything to complain about.

Re:surprisingly?

[jp10558]

It's also the player that constantly is in the news with hardware problems ranging from malfunctioning batteries to screens that scratch beyond usefulness in a day or two. I recommend to everyone I know to not buy an iPod.

Re:surprisingly?

[BasilBrush]

The iPod is the player that's constantly in the news PERIOD. Those other players wouldn't get in the news if they tended to explode in the first day, killing small children.
You keep on telling your friends what not to buy. As if they actually take any notice.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an ipod that is synced to my computer at home. I went to my brother's office today to get some music off of his computer. I hook up the ipod, and it tells me I can sync with my brother's computer but it will erase all of mine. I don't like this so I click no. I then go to Edit>Advanced>iPod and set it to "Manually" update. Then I drag and drop the songs I want off of my brother's computer without erasing my songs. In fact, I can now hook it up to as many computers as I want and take whatever music I want.

Now my sister can't handle all that "techy stuff" and WANTS her ipod to always update automatically so whenever she adds music to the computer, it is automatically added to her ipod. Its easier for her that way. ITS A CHOICE if you want to drag and drop, or have it sync with whatever computer its connected to.

Re:surprisingly?

[Anonymous Coward]

but I suspect that the ability was not added so the music industry wouldn't have anything to complain about.

Still sucks.

Re:surprisingly?

[1u3hr]

What's that got to do with it? Debuting before this year doesn't mean it's no longer a product.

You can still watch Casablanca at your local revival cinema, so why doesn't it get an Oscar every year?

This is easily demonstrated by the fact that the iPod is on the list.

That's the "new, 2005" video version, I think.

Re:surprisingly?

[node 3]

You can still watch Casablanca at your local revival cinema, so why doesn't it get an Oscar every year?

Why would you think the rules for winning an Academy Award apply to a PC World "Top 100 Best New Products of 2005" list"?

I mean, seriously, are you trying to claim that since Casablanca can't win an Oscar for 2005, that the iPod can't be considered a "Best Product of 2005"? One's got nothing to do with the other.

That's the "new, 2005" video version, I think.

There is (currently) no '"new, 2005" video version'.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that this is a "Top 100 Best New Products of 2005" list (which it isn't), and not a "Top 100 Best Products of 2005" list (which is what it actually is). Last I checked, the iPod is not only still a product in 2005, but is a very popular and highly acclaimed product.

Re:surprisingly?

[1u3hr]

I mean, seriously, are you trying to claim that since Casablanca can't win an Oscar for 2005, that the iPod can't be considered a "Best Product of 2005"? One's got nothing to do with the other.

Seems a good anaolgy to me. Casablanca is still a great movie, you can watch it "in 2005"; but it's not a movie "of 2005".

There is (currently) no '"new, 2005" video version'.

They (PCWorld) placed "Apple IPod Photo Large-Capacity MP3 Player". Okay, photo not video, that's the model they gave #78 to; the point was it's not the original 2001 one, and like movies, sequels rarely win awards.

Re:surprisingly?

[node 3]

Seems a good anaolgy to me.

That says more about you than it does about the quality of the analogy.

Casablanca is still a great movie, you can watch it "in 2005"; but it's not a movie "of 2005".

But the iPod *is* a product (specifically, a brand with current products) of 2005.

The rules for the Academy Awards are not the same as the rules for PC World's list.

and like movies, sequels rarely win awards.

That's one of the dumbest things I've read all day. Look at the list and notice all the products which are "sequels".

In fact, the iPod that's on the list is a "sequel", and clearly it won.

the point was it's not the original 2001 one,

No one said the original iPod should or even could win. You know why? The original iPod hasn't been an contemporary product for years now.

The dateline of the iPod Photo article: Friday, November 19, 2004.

Your premise, that a product that was not released in 2005 is ineligible for a "Best Products of 2005" award is moronic, and the fact that products that debuted before 2005 (Google is on the list, you idiot) doesn't seem to clue you in.

You're defending a lost position and you know it. Your reasoning is not self-consistent, nor is it even consistent with the article.

Don't bother replying, you'll just make yourself look more foolish. The iPod (in various flavors) *is* a product of 2005, it *is* on the list, and it is *not* a movie. These facts seem fairly basic, and quite easy to grasp.

Re:surprisingly?

[1u3hr]

Seems a good anaolgy to me.
That says more about you than it does about the quality of the analogy.

Yes, it means I'm a two-finger typist. That invalidates any argument I make for sure.

In fact, the iPod that's on the list is a "sequel", and clearly it won.

1) I said "rarely", and 2) it came 78th, which is not my definition of "winning". Feel free to differ.

your premise, that a product that was not released in 2005 is ineligible for a "Best Products of 2005" award is moronic

Well, fuck you too.

nor is it even consistent with the article.

Who knows what their criteria were? Gather up 100 things they've reviewed in the last year or whenever and recycle them into an article that people will link to and argue about, perhaps.

You're defending a lost position and you know it.

No, I'm being trolled.

Re:surprisingly?

[node 3]

Who knows what their criteria were? Gather up 100 things they've reviewed in the last year or whenever and recycle them into an article that people will link to and argue about, perhaps.

That's just it, you moron. You're the one claiming to know what the criteria were, and that they applied the same criteria as for the Academy Awards.

The one requirement that you a promoting--that the product had to be introduced in 2005--is clearly not one they used. This is clear because there are many products that were not introduced in 2005 that made the list, including the bloody item in question.

Re:surprisingly?

[1u3hr]

That's just it, you moron.

Sadly, my original moronic post seems to have been modded "+5 insightful".

Re:surprisingly?

[node 3]

Sadly, my original moronic post seems to have been modded "+5 insightful".

Does that change the fact that the iPod *is* on the list, and was *not* released in 2005? I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

And Just one MS product!!!!???

[TarrySingh]

tch tch...

Re:And Just one MS product!!!!???

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised they even made the list.

I'm suprised at the wide variety of products.

[keeleysam]

Over the years, PC World has becaome very toned down, and I see them only reviewing full PC's, never individual components.

To see products like:
NVidia GeForce 6600 GT Graphics Board
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 SATA NCQ Internal Hard Drive
Plextor PX-716UF Rewritable DVD Drive
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard

That was a nice suprise, and even though I may not agree with the list, it was still interesting to see what they picked.

Re:I'm suprised at the wide variety of products.

[Ubergrendle]

On the whole you're right, PC World has long since outlived its usefulness... it focuses on the merchandising and mainstream products but usually only catches onto a new, cool device months (years?) after the fact. By the time PC World is trumpeting the 6600GT Graphics Board, the 7800GT is released making it obsolete.

At one point it was THE magazine to read if you were a home mod hobbiest, or you wanted to know what's going on in the industry. The internet has killed these types of magazines off for the most part... Wired got smart and went more for trend-spotting and reporting. But PCWorld is at the bottom of my list of consults after HardOCP, Anandtech, Toms Hardware, DriverHeaven, etc.

Re:I'm suprised at the wide variety of products.

[Afrosheen]

They are trumpeting the 6600GT for exceptional value given its speed and cost. It's really a bargain compared to other 3d cards on the market. Teamed up with SLI, you have a nice box for less money than, say, a pair of 6800's or a pair of 7800's. Personally, I bought the Gigabyte dual-chips-on-a-card, the single board SLI card called the 3D1-XL @ http://gigabyte-usa.com/VGA/Products/Products_GV-3 D1-XL.htm. The one I got is the non-gt version, the gt version is faster and of course costs more. Newegg has them if you want to get a closer look. All I can say is, SLI rocks and so does SLI 8xAA and SLI 16xAA.

Re:I'm suprised at the wide variety of products.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hob, hobbier, hobbiest? Or did you mean hobbyist?

Re:I'm suprised at the wide variety of products.

[ayden]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 SATA NCQ Internal Hard Drive http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,11949 7,00.asp

2005, really?

[Thantos_42]

Are we to believe that all those things came about in 2005? The wikipedia article on wikipedia, for instance, mentions that "Wikipedia began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia on January 15, 2001. "

Re:2005, really?

[houseofzeus]

It is indeed a little dodgey in that way, but I can see why they would include it now. Only in recent time has the amount of information in Wikipedia (and more importantly the number of people editing and monitoring it and keeping it as accurate as possible) grown to the point where it can stand as a really useful information source.

Re:2005, really?

[KrancHammer]

I don't believe its the PC World's Best New Products of 2005 list.

Re:2005, really?

[gmuslera]

Probably the date means "we wrote a review about this in 2005", maybe before 2005 they had no clue about what is the Wikipedia. You know, for them no product exist before they write a review about it.

And, of course, "best" in this case means "between all we reviewed, this is what we remember to like most", that could or not coincide with your or the rest of the world opinion or an hypotetical, objective truth.

Re:2005, really?

[NeedleSurfer]

Not to forget bang for the bucks, Nvidia 7800 might be more powerfull but for the money it cost it might be kinda dumb to buy it, especially since the power boost is almost meaningless outside an SLI rig, of course the alpha antialiaising is a great addition but again, its all about power per buck I guess...

And a product invented in 2001 might still be the best of the crop in 2005...

Re:2005, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they meant to restrict the list only to things that were created in 2005, just things that were the best around at the time of publication. You'll notice that google, firefox, and many other things are clearly older than one year. You'll also notice that June is not near the end of the year. I think they just added the "of 2005" to give it a sense of relevance.

Outrageous Omission

[Anonymous Coward]

Beer. Sweet, sweet Beer. Mmmmmmmm...

Did Slashdot make the list

[Spy Handler]

...... no

but Wikipedia did.

Re:Did Slashdot make the list

[Anonymous Coward]

Should it?

Re:Did Slashdot make the list

[jZnat]

Because Google's Adsense and Adwords reach more people and make more money than Slashvertising. :P

ads

[minus_273]

why do some of these products just seem like ads? Its hard not to laugh when you come up on something like this :

"Microsoft Windows Media Player 10 Media Player" . I have no idea how media player is the best media player. The article cant explain it either. hmmm

Re:ads

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Please note that iTunes at number 34 is also marked as a Media Player. Thus, the words after the link just describe what the product is rather than saying "This is the best _______".

Also, Windows Media Player 10 is much better than some of the previous ones with respect to interface. And compatibility, too.

Goodness it's hard to say that with a straight face. I mean, come on. QuickTime 7 beats it hands down in quite a few respects (Mmm. Decent H.264), and even then, QT7 isn't the best media player out there for everything.

Re:ads

[jZnat]

Not to troll or anything, but I like my program to be able to go fullscreen without having to spend $30 or whatever on a license, thank you very much.

My favourites? mplayer, VLC, XMMS (although XMMS2 is much-needed)

Re:ads

[Dylan Zimmerman]

Yes, well, there are programs that use the QuickTime framework (remember, it isn't just an application) that can go fullscreen that don't cost money. ;p iTunes, for example, can play videos fullscreen without a charge. There's even a quick little AppleScript to do it:

tell application "QuickTime"
        present front movie scale screen
end tell

And that was the first result on a Google search for the words "QuickTime", "fullscreen", and "free".

Here's another result: Fullscreen Movie Player - A free Full Screen Movie Player for QuickTime.

There. Was that too hard for you?

And yes, mplayer and VLC have their moments, I just prefer QuickTime for most of my media purposes.

Re:ads

[theManInTheYellowHat]

If you look at QuickTime as a video editing tool with a scriptable backend and extreme low cost you will never compare QuickTime to MediaPlayer ever again.

For >$30 you get an extremly awesome video editing program that can work with many different types of media and if you look at what you can do with AppleScript the product is very amazing.

Look at the codecs that you can go to from and then look back at Media Player.

Re:ads

[Dylan Zimmerman]

That's exactly my point. And yet the free version is quite a capable media framework in itself with a decent frontend.

Product Inflation

[Mulletproof]

Um, GMail? Now I know we love google and all, but its web-based email. Admittedly, it has more storage than its competitor, but I'm still missing the part that makes it thesecond best product of 2005. Are we that hard up for products? Of course when it comes to "Top Ten" lists such as these opinions are like armpits, but web-based email? I wouldn't have put it in the top 20, to be honest with you, but that's just IMFreakinO. Number two???? Sigh.

Re:Product Inflation

[Grey Ninja]

Hey, Mac OS X 10.4 made number 3. That's honestly not that much better. An OS with more prettiness, and a much slower interface than its predecessors doesn't really count as top 100 material to me.

Re:Product Inflation

[David Horn]

Sorry, I agree with the article. Gmail is the best web-based mail package hands down. I forward all my email to my Gmail account now.

Re:Product Inflation

[MrHanky]

GMail is good web based email. That in itself sets it far ahead of its competitors. It's really the finest example of what a web interface can do.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's all you saw in the 10.4 release, then you have serious tunnel vision.

Re:Product Inflation

[FidelCatsro]

10.4 is a lot faster in my experience , It works more swiftly on my old g3 iMac (400mhz g3) (turned off the widgets) .. but besides that .
It has a great number of functional improvements on the command line and in the system programs .. not to mention the user land programs .. though i do prefer the 10.2 look I don't think there are that many differences on the GUI front
On my g4 machine it simply flies . spotlight is also grand
I would rather that Ubuntu had placed higher though (not strictly a 2005 thing )

Re:Product Inflation

[notjim]

you can set up a forward to your work email; makes all the difference.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

sometimes I wonder if the usefulness of /. is only to make flames. So gmail isn't a great product, or doesnt deserve the 2nd place?
Well, JUST think of what were web-based mailboxes BEFORE gmail entered. Think how small they were, think on how horribly programmed the relative webapps were. And then, compare all that with the current situation. LARGER free-space, BETTER programmed web interfaces (e.g., see the new yahoo mail or the incoming new msn hotmail).
Are you still convinced that Gmail isn't a great product?
You are??? Shit! :)

(and btw... why on earth a web-based mail shouldn't be considered a "product", given that for example Wikipedia is?)

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe I have gmail to thank for massively increased quotas on my school servers, and of course Yahoo! and Hotmail store lots more stuff now too

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

though i do prefer the 10.2 look I don't think there are that many differences on the GUI front

You like 10.2's migraine interface? Amazing! I think that 10.2's interface with those horizontal stripes was one of the worst GUI's in a popular OS. 10.4's is much better, if not the best GUI.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't have a whole lot of memory on his machine, so the OS is completely unuseable.

Your comment is like saying: I have this 266 Mhz x86 with 128 MB RAM. XP is unusable. I think Microsoft fucked up way too much by making XP lust for so much memory.

Progress in software industry usually goes in hand with raising hardware requirements. Get used to it.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

Where should I send the razor?

Re:Product Inflation

[FidelCatsro]

It does require at least 512MB RAM but I have never had a problem with it (both my Macs have 768 , though it was not bad on a 256MB mac mini i had a go on .. till you open up too many programs , a ram upgrade fixed that little glitch)
I am more a *nix Zealot (though not really a zealot) than a mac zealot , but OS X is one of the best User level *nix's I have ever had the pleasure to use .10.4 has some noticeable improvements as a client computer and some great user level improvements . If your friend can afford it , tell him to get 256MB more ram in the machine , s/he will notice a world of difference .
Honestly though , the GUI has not really changed bar some of the removed um .. bars . I suspect the problem they are having is to do with Spotlight or running Dashboard .

Re:Product Inflation

[Grey Ninja]

A kindred spirit then. ;-) I speak to you on my laptop, which runs Ubuntu 5.10 almost exclusively. My biggest problem with Mac OS X is its complete lack of respect for standard *nix apps. In my experience, they usually don't com pile without a lot of work, and once you do have them compiled, they aren't well integrated with the OS. Simple things such as being able to place an X11 app on the dock, or be able to associate a filetype with an X11 app would make things ever so much more pleasant. A shared clipboard between X11 and Cocoa would be really frickin nice too.

I do respect Macs for being *nix based... but I really hate them for being incompatible with pretty much everything, and shoving everything with an Apple brand down your throat. I could never find a decent replacement for iTunes (which I loathe with a passion) on a Mac for example... and my girlfriend has an iMac with non-standard microphone plugs... which means she has to buy an apple branded headset, rather than just any old one off the shelf. It's the subtleties like that which really drive me towards hating the OS. I was considering buying an Apple laptop once though... because I don't have a whole lot of use for Windows, and I could install Linux on it... but then I remembered the one button touch pad, and all the nice incompatibilities, and I bought a good old Centrino.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably needs to turn off Dashboard and Spotlight. They're nice tools, but pretty memory-hungry.

I disagree with putting OS 10.4 on the Top 100 list for a different reason: right now it's contending with Windows ME for the buggiest OS I've ever had to use. Active Directory support is in pretty sad shape; even after all the fixes in 10.4.1 and 10.4.2, I'm still having massive problems with sudo (if you type in the wrong password when logged into a mobile AD account, the process just sits there doing nothing, and a lot of apps will refuse to launch or quit until you hard-reboot). There are also some weird performance issues, like one where running Swing apps in combination with some other apps will cause certain 2D operations to slow to a crawl. (The temporary fix is -- I kid you not -- to start and quit a bundled app called Quartz Debug.)

I still think OS X is a better OS all-around than Windows or Linux, but it really should have spent a few more months in testing and bug-fixing before being released to the public. I'm hoping 10.4.3 (which is supposed to fix over 500 known bugs) will finally get Tiger in the state it should have been in before going gold.

Re:Product Inflation

[jZnat]

I would seriously love to see an open source email client that can do all that Gmail does before I go back to LDAP or *cringe* POP3. Anyone have any recommendations as to a client that does this? I've used Thunderbird in the past, but Gmail is becoming so useful nowadays...

Re:Product Inflation

[bhtooefr]

Unfortunately, it's closed source, so not what you're looking for, but Opera's M2 claims "GMail-like functionality" (which is pretty much true - default settings, though, are kinda different...)

However, that GMail-like functionality is for POP3 only - IMAP gets a really crappy, poorly integrated interface.

Re:Product Inflation

[nwbvt]

Sure, its a nice web based email service, but is it really the second best product out there? Do you really think it is better than all the gizmos and gadgets that have come out in recent years?

I know I'll get modded down for this, but I'll say it anyways. The primary reason Gmail got as popular as it currently is is because they used the Eric Cartman "You can't come" business technique by requiring people to be "invited" in. I mean they have been in Beta for a year and a half now, are they ever planning to officially open it up to the general public?

Re:Product Inflation

[Tim Browse]

Well, firstly, they've opened it up to general use via their mobile phone sign-up thing (which I believe is only in the US though, at the moment).

But I also think it helped that Gmail is a fast, simple webmail service that works well. Hotmail etc had dropped my expectations of webmail quality to such an extent that, to paraphrase jwz, I considered a good webmail system to be one that didn't irritate the living fuck out of me.

The invitation thing helped drive the PR etc - your Cartman analogy is spot on there, but it also helped that the product was really good. I also got invited to orkut. However, it sucked big time, so I (and most other people I know who were invited) gave up on it. orkut sucked, Gmail didn't.

Re:Product Inflation

[TheRaven64]

Tiger does have some nice points. They have fixed aio support so that it works on on all kinds of file descriptors, not just regular files. It has full support for System V IPC mechanisms. It doesn't have STREAMS support yet, but then neither do any of the other BSDs (it's a bit of a SysV thing). Now they have more or less everything working, the next step is to make it fast.

Some of the userspace things they introduced in Tiger are a horrendous memory sink. Dashboard springs to mind. Spotlight is a complete waste of time and resources (although at least the metadata indexers have the decency to run with a fairly large nice value) - I have not yet found a situation when Spotlight has found a file faster than I found it myself, and I give it a head start of several seconds. The PDF rendering in Tiger also seems to have taken a step backwards - there are a few PDFs I have that opened fine in 10.3, but not 10.4. They also messed up the GUI a bit - Mail.app is an HCI abomination, for example.

On the whole, I think 10.4 is better than 10.3, but it's close. 10.3, on the other hand, was obviously, and significantly better than 10.2 - and the same holds all the way back to 10.0.

Re:Product Inflation

[DurendalMac]

The microphone ports were made standard a long, long time ago. That iMac was probably the last Mac built with the Plaintalk microphone port, which was indeed a pain in the ass. Is it Apple's fault that nobody has made a better MP3 Jukebox for Mac than iTunes? You can blame that on the market, not Apple.

Re:Product Inflation

[FidelCatsro]

I run Ubuntu on my PC's , Solaris and Debian on my servers and OS X +ubuntu on my Macs .
I haven't had that many problems if there is a PPC port of the code (unless the source contains no Arch specific code) .Fink is very very useful if you're ever using OS X (Apt-get on OS X , plenty of ports) if you don't feel like lumbering through miles of source code . I have rarely had problems though as most of the things I use the mac for are available (Plus I have linux running under Bochs if i ever need it , quite useful (if slow) for testing things) . OS X is not POSIX certified though the base system is based on FreeBSD .

The apple thing is all personal taste , I think iTunes is excellent as it does all it needs to for me (catalogues my collection , makes play lists , plays things and has a nice search ) . If you need a good Video player mplayer/VLC is ported and works like a charm . That is pretty much all I use my macs for , DVD / Video /A few games and testing/browsing web sites.

The laptops never gave me a problem because I loath any form of Touch pad ;) and just plug a mouse in ( not always an ideal solution , but one of those pointers would be lovely ) The battery life on iBooks is very good also .
I havn't really had a chance to play around with the latest iMac , Did it not come with an adaptor for the jack . The eMac has standard in and out for audio
.

Ubuntu PPC is great , though there are less pre-compiled binaries available which can slow you down (depending on what you need)

Re:Product Inflation

[KillShill]

the interface is mostly irrelevant.

how about the fact that it only runs on a very specific computer (apple brand)?

as long as it's tied to hardware it'll never be a contender for competition between OS's.

Re:Product Inflation

[NixLuver]

I think it's probably less about Tiger *specifically* and more about the continued development of *nix 'for the masses'. As a *nix Systems Integrator, I have to say that working on OS X is the single best userspace experience I'm familiar with. I love Cygwin - it actually makes windows tolerable for people like me! - and KDE is the Bomb in free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer UIs - but OS X is The Word... :D

Mac OS continues to be the leader in ergonomics ( scores best in first-experience usability and adheres to 'interface design theory' better than competitors ) and now offers people like me hard core tech head access... click on "Terminal" and Viola! I'm in bash!!! ssh, awk, tr, ls - all of my good old friends are there. And can be integrated via AppleScript...

Perhaps it's post facto reasoning, but I would say that it's reasonable to require applescript to integrate *Nix and Aqua. For har-core *Nix guys, it's no big deal to create scripts. For Grandma, it's probably better if she'd insulated from 'rm -rf' *as far as possible*.

I've been a Linux fan since '95, although never a religious zealot; I listened to the Fanboys scream about Linux bringing unix to the masses, and I have to admit that there was a certain amount of smug satisfaction in my heart when Apple released OS X. Not because they beat Linux to the punch, but because it shut up a lot of those annoying brats on IRC.

Re:Product Inflation

[KillShill]

ironic that people complain about winxp being ram hungry...

it runs just fine on 256m.

but no one serious about computing would have less than 1GB.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I agree with the article. Gmail is the best web-based mail package hands down.

But for every person that goes nuts over Gmail, there is somebody like me that lets out a resounding "meh". I disagree with you and the article. This is not a mandate! This is not a "second best product of the year" consensus!

Have you ever used any other webmail service? I have a Gmail account and a subscription to Yahoo's premium mail. I never use my Gmail one. I don't see any significant advantages, and there are significant disadvantages. The unprofessional interface (I mean, come on, I expect a 10-year-old to mark their favorite mail with a "star"), the advertising and unaccountability (get your advertising out of my email, it's not 1995 anymore) come to mind. Sure, it might be snappy - but it's not like the non-Javascript-heavy webmail is unusable.

I find Yahoo mail significantly more useful with it's calender, address book and maps integration - and the way everything all works together with mobile devices is awesome. I could see Gmail maybe in the top 50 to 100. But I don't see why a product - that doesn't bring anything significantly new to the table and for many is less useful than it's older competitors - should be number 2? Smoke crack much?

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent.

You're just the sort of customer we're looking forward to "serving" when we take over Google and put all your personal information to nefarious ends.

Sincerely

M. Burns,
CEO Industrio Megacorp PLC.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with the article. Gmail is a service not a product.

Re:Product Inflation

[Anonymous Coward]

...opinions are like armpits...

I have no arms, you insensitive clod!

Re:Product Inflation

[Overly Critical Guy]

My biggest problem with Mac OS X is its complete lack of respect for standard *nix apps. In my experience, they usually don't com pile without a lot of work.

DarwinPorts

Re:Product Inflation

[dr.badass]

Of course when it comes to "Top Ten" lists such as these opinions are like armpits, but web-based email?

I think Gmail is so hot because it's the first web-based email that is as flexible as a regular email client. Everybody has one little thing that Gmail does that they love. For some it's the space, for some it's the interface, some it's the forwarding and aliasing. I personally like being able to use it just like a regular POP account, but with encryption, unlike every ISP-provided account I've ever had.

Re:Product Inflation

[jimi the hippie]

For some, it's all three of those points you mentioned. ;-)

Re:Product Inflation

[cspeye]

i agree--it's not the best e-mail system ever, although it is good; i personally don't think any web interface so far can beat using thunderbird or some other e-mail program

2005 is not over...

[seven of five]

They're confident that nothing good will be introduced in October , November or December?

Re:2005 is not over...

[paranoos]

i know i'm confident nothing good is coming out the next few months. especially not the Xbox 360.

Re:2005 is not over...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the perils of publishing. I remember in the early Fall of 1989 seeing a great many glossy books and magazines that celebrated the great events that happened over the past decade. Then the Berlin Wall came down. Oops!

Re:2005 is not over...

[ghislain_leblanc]

Well, actually, there's a fair chance that nothing worth mentioning will be out before x-mas time spendings officially begin. The thing is, it seems to be coming earlier and earlier every year. In fact, last year I noticed some stores showing santa figures before the skeletons and pumpkins were even out. So maybe nothing new will come up in 2005, or it will count as early 2006.

Re:2005 is not over...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They're confident that nothing good will be introduced in October , November or December?

Well, if we're going by the year so far...

Re:2005 is not over...

[dcw3]

They're confident that nothing good will be introduced in October , November or December?

Ever notice that for most companies, the fiscal year ends in September?

Re:2005 is not over...

[Thnikkaman]

They published this in June, actually. So they were confident that nothing would come out July-December... What's that? A new iPod? Shit. Xbox? More shit. Seriously? What's the point of writing a list so freaking early in the year?

Re:2005 is not over...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever notice that most people think of calendar year before fiscal year?

Re:2005 is not over...

[superyooser]

Maybe they meant to say "Best Products of 5765."

Shana tovah!

One glaring ommission

[bigtallmofo]

I checked the list several times but I couldn't find "Slashdot using CSS" anywhere!

Re:One glaring ommission

[shish]

... that's a software?

Re:One glaring ommission

[ari_j]

That's because some of the CSS renders quite poorly in Safari. :P

Re:One glaring ommission

[SquadBoy]

Heh. I got my first Mac since 1984 on Friday. And was shocked at how badly /. looked. Yeah. They really did a bad job there. /. that is.

Re:One glaring ommission

[jZnat]

I hate to say it (well, not really :P), but KHTML and Opera, although both quite good standards-following renderring engines, still lack an enormous amount of support for any "advanced" standard. Gecko [1.9a1] wins hands-down for support, and it's only a few bugs away from passing Acid2 (it's almost a smiley face as of today!), and it renders plenty of the more "advanced" XHTML and CSS 2/2.1 correctly (or at all). There is something with lists in Opera that make it not want to allow "list-style: none" when trying to present a list of links for instance as a navigation bar for GUI browsers.

Re:One glaring ommission

[NotoriousQ]

Probably because they are still blocking w3c validator.

Re:One glaring ommission

[imipak]

Another obvious missing name: Microsoft. Which is nice, as it means that the list isn't _just_ composed of the holder of the biggest chequebook...

Re:One glaring ommission

[wheany]

Opera 8.5's Acid2 is also almost a smiley-face: http://koti.mbnet.fi/wheany/kuvei/acid2opera85.png

Re:One glaring ommission

[jZnat]

One step forward in the right direction. I'd like to see an Acid test that relies on proper renderring of CSS and [X]HTML. Being able to degrade gracefully or handle problems correctly is fine and dandy, but how about being able to render supported things correctly?

List of top 100

[Anonymous Coward]

This list reads more like just the 100 products/services that were available last year in no particular order.

Uh what?

[chadamir]

Product != Service. A lot of these things are services and not products unless they meant i.e. google.

Raw list??

[backslashdot]

I actually clicked the link to RTFA for once. And then all I see is a list! Surely they should specify what the ranking is based on? For me, security and reliability is important. For some people, it's ease of use. And for others, it's whether the icons use cartoon characters. Free advice to PC World: put some context as to what the ranking is based on! What were the criteria? And, if the criterias didnt weigh equally let us know that too?

gmail #2?

[CDPatten]

No offense to the Google lovers, but how in the hell did gmail make it to number 2? Yikes! The guys who did this probably also did the polls that said John Kerry would win the us presidency...

Re:gmail #2?

[bleaknik]

HAHAHAHAHA. John Kerry... President! OMG!!! ROFLMAO!!!!1111one (not that I like Bush, but Kerry's not a leader...)

Anyway, have you used Gmail? It's amazing! At first I was disappointed that it didn't offer POP3 support, but by the time they started offering it, I forgot all about <insert mail client here>. Would you like an invite? Would you like 100?

Re:gmail #2?

[FullCircle]

I still want folders. The mass of mixed up emails kills me.

It's still useful to manually separate information without searching each time.

Other than that I love Gmail.

Re:gmail #2?

[aconbere]

What is the difference between sorting emails into folders and archiving messages with labels? If you want to know what emails have the label, you click the link ... they're all there and yet... none of them exist in your inbox. If you want to remove them from the folder but still be able to search for them... remove the label. If you quickly want to remove all the messages with that label from the inbox, you click the link, click all, and click archive.

Seriously. The Gmail interface is quite a bit different than a normal email client, in order to be happy using I think one has to abandon previous notions of how to get things done. Using labels is a very powerful tool and can easily be made to mimik the use of folders, all you need to know is how.

~Anders

Re:gmail #2?

[jpkunst]

I still want folders

Use labels. Labels can do everything that folders can, and more. (A message can have more than one label, but in a folder-based system, a message can't be in more than one folder at a time.)

JP

Re:gmail #2?

[NixLuver]

I think gmail is the best overall webmail service available, but that cant' overcome the intertia of a yahoo account spawned in the earliest days of yahoo.com. I mean, that was what, 8 years, 10 years ago? Gmail can't possibly become cool enough to supercede the value of consistency over time. Now, if Yahoo would let me forward my mail to gmail... Hrm...

Re:gmail #2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of how you feel about Kerry, he could not have possibly been worse than the moronic coward that Rove, Cheney and O'Dell chose to put in the White House in his stead.

Re:gmail #2?

[Anonymous Coward]

K, troll. I'll bite.

How does Kerry really feel about the issue?

Re:gmail #2?

[Diag]

the earliest days of yahoo.com. I mean, that was what, 8 years, 10 years ago?

I recall browsing yahoo.com using the lynx text-based web browser via my 2400bps dialup to a shell account. That would have been about 1992 or 1993. At the time, yahoo was one of the best www directories around. But there were much better gopher directories. And most of the interesting content was on Usenet or FTP servers (I avoided IRC). I think yahoo was maintained by two guys.

The first web-based email that I knew of was HoTMaiL. I really thought the concept was cool - providing email via HTML - and liked how they tied HTML into the name. I got on early enough to get my_name@hotmail.com. But I abandonded that address long ago due to spam overload.

Thus endeth my history lesson :) I agree with you that gmail is is very useful.

Re:gmail #2?

[Tesla Tank]

I wish labels could work in a hierachical system. For example,

photos >> family >> 2005 >> vacation

Re:gmail #2?

[jpkunst]

I wish labels could work in a hierachical system. For example, photos >> family >> 2005 >> vacation

You could, sort of, emulate that with labels:

1. create labels photos, family, 2004,2005
2. label family photos 2004 with photos, family, 2004
3. label family photos 2005 with photos, family, 2005
4. search for labels photos and family and 2005 for your family photos 2005

Downside is that searching will be more work (you can't just drill down into a hierarchy)

JP

Yahoo desktop search

[broothal]

I know we all love google and all their products, and sure enough - google desktop search is on the list. However, this might be a good opportunity to mention Yahoo desktop search which is a far better tool imho.

Re:Yahoo desktop search

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT makes it better? Your post is about as helpful as their list.

Re:Yahoo desktop search

[ml0fl1n]

Yahoo desktop search looks interesting and at least as capable as Google, but ... it doesn't search Lotus Notes e-mail. No point to it for me, then.

The iPod Photo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'd love to know who thought of marketing an iPod with a color screen as a great way to view your photos... If you want a color screen, just call it the "iPod Color" or something. Calling it the "iPod Photo" just reminds people how Apple pathetically failed to come up with a good reason for a color screen (aside from the eye candy factor) on a music player.

Re:The iPod Photo?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'd love to know who thought of marketing an iPod with a color screen as a great way to view your photos... If you want a color screen, just call it the "iPod Color" or something. Calling it the "iPod Photo" just reminds people how Apple pathetically failed to come up with a good reason for a color screen (aside from the eye candy factor) on a music player.

I used to think this until they (Apple) brought out the camera connector. 60 gigs of photo backup on the road, with the ability to preview. Nice.

Re:The iPod Photo?

[Tink2000]

Which is cool and all, except on the other side of the pond (ie: not America) they've had this thing called USB-on-the-go for some time now. Quite simply, you plug in any camera that is USB Mass Storage Device compliant (the ones that you plug into your computer and it just sees a drive, or if you prefer - a decent camera as opposed to a cheap crappy one that requires some sort of manufacturer's application to retrieve the photos) into a USBotG device and the USBotG device is suddenly a host for the camera (or any other USBotG device, like say - another mp3 player) and poof, you've got a 1:1 connection going on.

So, I can take my iRiver H300 series mp3 player, hook it up to your iRiver H300 series player, and we can do sneakernet p2p all day long.

Why would you think Apple would restrict it to just cameras, hmm?

Re:The iPod Photo?

[zpok]

"Why would you think Apple would restrict it to just cameras, hmm?"

I don't know, feel free to fill me in though.

Cheers

Re:The iPod Photo?

[Tink2000]

Ok, I'll draw you a picture.
I have an mp3 player that supports USBotG.
You have an mp3 player that supports USBotG.
We connect and I give you some of my mp3s, then we reconnect and you give me some of yours.

Hey wait, there was no iTunes involved there! Oh no!

Better now?

Duh.

Re:The iPod Photo?

[zpok]

Ahem, got it.
Was thinking along the lines of "who in earth would be interested in MY pictures?"

Re:The iPod Photo?

[Tink2000]

Well, depends on who your signifigant other is ;).

Where's M$?

[bogaboga]

Guys, Microsoft is the innovator at least according to Bill G. But where is M$ here? What about M$ Virtual Earth?

Re:Where's M$?

[Moderator]

Windows Media Player made the list at 47.

Re:Where's M$?

[ilyaaohell]

I look forward to reading your woefully unpublished novel "Gates of Borg".

Interesting that...

[jpellino]

... only one of the PC World top ten is wintel dependent. Glad to see the blinders are off in this increasingly egalitarian tech world. Compare their 2000 list. And then there's this gem from 1998: "But you won't read much here about ADSL, Net PCs, or USB, among other hyped technologies." Yeah - glad to see we didn't get hoodwinked into that USB nonsense.

Re:Interesting that...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

ADSL sucks, too. Downloading the RC of OpenOffice 2 this morning would surely have been more fun over my old 56kb modem than it was over my 2Mb ADSL line. :-)

Treo?

[mdm144]

I wonder if they actually tried to use a Treo 650 for an extended period of time. If they had to deal with the constant hard resets and lock-ups, I don't think it would have been number 10 on the list.

Re:Treo?

[linuxgurugamer]

In the three months I've had my Treo 650, with a bunch of other software loaded, I have had exactly 2 lockups. Not bad IMHO

Re:Treo?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what Treo 650 you've been using, but I've been using one since last spring and have only had about 2 or 3 resets and only 1 lockup.

Looks like they got lasy.

[ubercombatwombat]

I started liking the list when I saw the first three. Then I scrolled to #100 - "Citrix Online GoToMyPC Personal" which was dated...Monday, June 23, 2003. How lame is that?

Did Citrix buy GoToMyPC? Were they going to?

While I am on the subject, whatever happened to Expertcity? I was offering service via their service for a bit and making some $. I took a month or so break and it was gone. Very odd. No notice of any kind.

Microsoft's only mention is a controversial 47th?!

[D4C5CE]

To be precise, it even says:

All Products Listed by Ranking
(...)
47. Microsoft Windows Media Player 10

If a distant (and disputed, as by parent) 47th rank is all they can score in the Top 100 for an entire year, and as the whole list seems so heavily populated by penguins (and related species), maybe in Redmond now they ought to worry even more, e.g. about their role as an "innovation leader"...

Ubuntu at 26

[killerface]

Ubuntu got #26 sweet

Firefox deserves the top spot

[Maven-X]

For something so simple as providing users with a browser that had a little imagination put into its design.

Who would have thunk it?!

Mac OS X 10.4 a great PC Product?

[notoriousE]

I wasn't aware that Mac OS X 10.4 was for PC? go figure

Re:Mac OS X 10.4 a great PC Product?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe that this is the part where we are reminded that all personal computers are PCs, but not all PCs are Macs, thus Tiger can be considered a PC product in the broadest sense of the term.

Re:Mac OS X 10.4 a great PC Product?

[legallyillegal]

PC = Personal Computer

OS.X = product for an Apple Personal Computer

Strangely strange

[FishandChips]

They seem to stick to the big names, perhaps because they are the names that provide a healthy chunk of the magazine's advertising? Perish the thought.

Unless I've completely missed them, strange they've omitted Open Office 2 (even if in beta), Debian Sarge (on which so much other software is based) and the Epox EP-9NPA+ Ultra nForce 4 motherboards which do what the tier one boards do only more stably and less expensively. Instead there is an overrated Asus board, a marque so beloved of the "independent" tests run in Tom's Hardware that it seems to win them all before even being switched on. In addition, HalfLife 2 may have been massive but arguably Battlefield 2 has given more fun to more folks without the Valve/Steam online nightmare.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Strangely strange

[MP3Chuck]

"strange they've omitted Open Office 2 . . . Debian Sarge"

Well ... I only read PC World on a few occasions but when I do it seems like it's "Windows World" rather than "PC World." As it stands I'm surprised to see OSX on the list. Seriously, though, most issues I've seen are "Best Windows Utilities" or "Tweak Windows YOUR Way!" or "Stop Spyware Forever!" Now obviously Win32 users are their target demographic, but I think my point still stands.

Re:Strangely strange

[j!mmy v.]

"Battlefield 2 has given more fun to more folks?"

That's the craziest shit I've heard in days, and I've been watching the Cooking Channel, too. Battlefield 2 is THE buggiest shit-crap beta game I've EVER played.

Even the developers agree.

Steam may have had issues, but they're mostly worked-out, and Steam/HL2 are mostly mature, or close to it. You're very, very silly to put them in the same room as BF2.

10.4 is good, but

[chrisxkelley]

I really dont think that os x 10.4 deserves that spot as a "best of" 2005, or at least on the top 10. It has some great features, such as dashboard and spotlight, but honestly I could do without. I was very impressed at first, but dont use the features as much as I would like to. So maybe Tiger could be moved down a little w the list. two cents in the jar :]

Re:10.4 is good, but

[Tony Hoyle]

As long as 10.3 gets higher ranking...

10.4 is currently sitting in its box on the shelf... kept it for nearly a month before I got so pissed off with it I just wiped and went back.

Re:10.4 is good, but

[plalonde2]

I'd say the opposite; I use dashboard and spotlight *much* more than I expected. I have piles of documentation for a system I have to code that comes in ~100 PDFs that are non-printable. Spotlight finds my API and user guide sections for whatever I'm doing near-instantly. I use it to search in my code; I use it to find all the crap that I thought it couldn't index so well.

And dashboard! I get my stock prices at my fingertips - I'm a chronic reloader, and this is too easy. I keep clocks around for all the people I have to collaborate who are in different time zones. I keep the current weather at both ends of my commute visible (sometimes the distant weather has an effect on when I start my commute - it's right there to see in a hurry).

Way better features than I thought they were.

Re:10.4 is good, but

[chrisxkelley]

Sure, they are useful, but again, neccesary? I mean it just seems like everyone is trying to do this, and it's too much info. I open up the browser and google's personalized is feeding me everything from weather to quote of the day, slashdot xml feed, etc. It just seems like too much. I'm not saying dashboard is a bad thing, I like it a lot, but is that combined with spotlight and a few other tweaks really worth $130?

Re:10.4 is good, but

[Mechcozmo]

Family pack, $199. That's 5 computers with extra stability, extra features, extra everything. I never had a problem with Tiger, neither did the other 4 computers. GCC 4.0 and Xcode 2 are also great features for programmers.

Yes, it is worth $129... or $39.8 for each computer in the family pack. That's practically giving it away!

Re:10.4 is good, but

[CajunLuke]

What did you not like about 10.4?

Re:Avant browser is better

[Anonymous Coward]

sick of hearing firefox fanboys warship their holy browser...
it is not the best browser around, just gets the most publicity and isn't IE,
Avant browser is way better, anyone who has used it and knows the mouse shortcuts knows this. Tabbed browsing is obsolete if you can flip between fullscreen windows with a quick mouse motion.

http://www.avantbrowser.com/

Don't Forget GIMP and Google's Blogger

[Sundroid]

The latest versions of GIMP (the open-source graphics software) and Blogger (Google's blogging tool) are chock-full of improvements. I use both of them on a daily basis for my blog (http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/)

Somekinda sick joke?

[Muppski]

Why isent "Professional Notepad" there? http://www.atechgroup.net/ or vim?

Re:Somekinda sick joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid you're the only sick joke in this conversation.

There must be a mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find Windows anywhere on that list. Surely it should be at number one?

Re:There must be a mistake

[Eric604]

If it were a list of 2000 then it would be in there.

Ubuntu??? Why not Knoppix????Where is Suse &&a

[Anonymous Coward]

Knoppix was there first and is WAY MUCH BETTER than Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Knoppix imitation with KDE replaced by Gnome and with fewer packages.

Another thing I dont understand. They mention some crippled linux distribution for win users (Licoris, Linspire,or something similar, I dont remember which one) yet they dont mention any REAL linux distribution (Debian, SuSE, Gentoo, etc)

Re:Avant browser is better

[Maven-X]

avant?... sorry never heard of it.

i dont have time to scour the web looking for cult browsers. my point is that for mainstream browsers - part of which firefox has now become - it is clearly a crowd pleaser.

"crowd pleasing" = doesnt use gay looking icons to enable lusers to click on the correct button in the toolbar (read: internet explorer's BIG gold star favorites button, and the hugely fashionable history button with a big arrow pointing in a counter-clockwise fashion, just so people remember history means in the past).

Treo 650? Guess he hever had to Support Them

[puto]

Well I guess this should be take as a grain of salt.

I work for a large US cell carrier. I support devices across the data end, pda side, well everything on our network.

The 650 is the largest hunk of junk that EVER crossed the PDA world. About 1 in 50 work properly.

And the 650 is used mostly by non techies. Realtors, doctors, lawyers. And salesguys, and people who think it is cool to lug it around. Which is fine.

We have to replace them out at an alarming rate. Exchanges through the roof. One multinational manufacture of corporate jets, had to have 5 sent to him in one week. I personally oversaw the case, and each unit. Two screens died, one had the white screen of death, and another would not let itself be unlocked for international use..

Not to mention early models only supporting palm branded blue tooth devices.

And a PDA that needs a 30 meg update download? Try telling this to the exec on the go.

I am operating system agnostic, as well as eqipment. I am 35 years old and been in tech all of my life, and never NEVER has anything made me cringe when an escalation hits my desk, and it is usually a 650.

I wish these reviewers would not use it for a week and then write a review. They need to do a Car and Driver six month review. They would change their tune.

Puto

ipod

[Comrad_Black]

theses things are so under rated now a days and y is it that they make white ear phone with it y jacked so easily when there on, ipods should be at number 12(if they change their earphones).

SuSE much better than OSX 10.4

[Anonymous Coward]

I use both SuSE 9.3 and Mac OSX 10.4 and suse is my favorite. Sure, OSX 10.4 has a consistent interface while SuSE has many interface inconsistencies, but I dont care about that, in my opinion is a minor point. KDE, is a very flexible and customizable interface, which is more important. Try to move the Mac Menus to the left, it is impossible!

frankly, this list sucks

[js3]

seriously, gmail #2? firefox #1? We are talking about products here, not services or stuff you like. I would have liked to see more tangible things I didn't know about like.. you know real products.

Re:Avant browser is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Avant Browser uses the exact same flawed and poor engine than IE.

So, if you love IE security holes + an unpolished and ugly interface, yes, I admit that Avant might be considerable.

Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW

[moonbender]

This 24" wide-screen panel made the list - I'm currently looking into buying the relatively affordable smaller kin of this, namely the 2005FPW - any current owners got any thought about it?

(Sorry for veering a bit off-topic.)

Re:Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW

[Daniel Wood]

Great LCD. If you have ANY pixel problems or backlight problems(Take a picture with a digital camera and a black screen, much easier to detect backlight issues) make sure to RMA it to Dell for a replacement. Dell pays shipping both ways, continue to do this for as long as you don't get a perfect LCD.

Do not settle for the SLIGHTEST backlight problems, they get worse with age. Mine was near perfect, but now, a year later, the backlight is starting to bleed a bit, not really noticable unless I look, but it is only going to get worse.

Re:Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW

[Doppler00]

I have a co-worker who has one of these. It's absolutely amazing. No dead pixels on his model. I'm thinking of requesting one for myself at work, and maybe buying one at home. If the price gets down to $900 or less I might seriously consider it.

Re:Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW

[Bobzibub]

love it. (coming from a big bad old CRT)
The aspect ratio allows one to code on one side, results on another. Without having to mess with dual cards or Xinerama, etc. You can connect various sources to it, example: DVI and tratitional din. And a button cycles through.
Quite bright too. I used to want a glow-in-the-dark keyboard...

No dead pels.

Also, sometimes Dell bundles it with a low end p4 box for cheap.

It has hdcma or whatever that copy protection crud is too.

Cheers,
-b

Re:Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW

[KillShill]

sounds like LCDs have their own set of problems.

maybe in about 10 years they'll mature enough to replace CRTs completely.

i'll be waiting for that day but i'll continue to buy CRTs in the meantime.

Re:Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW

[magicchex]

Ben's Bargains had them for ~$750 a month or two ago but it was the end of the quarter and Dell needed some business.

Re:Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW

[radish]

I have 2 of the regular 4:3 20" Dell's and they're great. Fantastic screens for a fantastic price, I'm sure the WS models are just as good.

well, then it isn't #1

[YesIAmAScript]

Still seems odd to see only one iPod on the list, at #78. And that iPod isn't even the one that sells (well, sold) the most.

I mean, the Treo 650 is known for being somewhat buggy (heck, there's a lawsuit about it), and it can make #10.

And the Seagate USB 2.0 pocket drive at #8? A mini does all that does plus play music. It even has the same style of hard drive.

So, yeah, it seems odd.

Missing from list

[Anonymous Coward]

Breasts!

What?

[ShadowMarth]

I'd hate to come off as a fanboy, but the fact that PSP made a decent appearance on the list while the DS didn't touch it makes me question the research behind it. Shouldn't a device centered around software actually HAVE decent software to make this list? Sony's even been crippling homebrew, which negates its best use so far.

Re:What?

[Creepy Crawler]

---Sony's even been crippling homebrew, which negates its best use so far.

Homebrew MY ASS!!!

That's MY fucking machine which I PAID FOR. Any crap YOU put on there prior to selling it to me will BE RIPPED OFF. And I WILL tell others about it (yes, perferrably not to buy it), and how to bypass retard-checks.

Re:What?

[untouchable]

The DS came out in 2004.

Re:What?

[Draconix]

Agreed. In all honesty, I'd say that list is bullshit. The Nintendo DS isn't on the list, yet it's actually innovative, has better battery life, is more durable, has more good games + ability to play GBA games, and it outsells the PSP worldwide.

Re:What?

[ShadowMarth]

Good point, but this isn't a US-specific list is it? Both of them actually came out in Japan in 2004, the fact that sony waited until 2005 to bring it stateside is just a testament to their laziness.

Re:What?

[untouchable]

I just looked over the list again, and while it doesn't necessarily feel like a US-specific list, the editors were lazy enough forming the list I don't know what their point is. About 10 to 20 items listed all came out in 2004. Granted, the tail end of 2004, but still 2004.

Re:What?

[lordofthechia]

The Nintendo DS isn't on the list, yet it's actually innovative, has better battery life, is more durable, has more good games + ability to play GBA games

You also forgot that Nintendo has a *zero* dead pixel policy (as opposed to Sony's, try it for a few weeks, then *we* can decide if we replace your system with 5 (or how ever many) dead pixels). I think quality control should weigh in heavily in the product rankings. Maybe they should conduct surveys of owners to determine the reliability of products they review and include that in the article. That would get me to read PC World again!

Mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

FireFox the BEST product of the year????????????

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Pc World Lost my respect. Will never again purchase their magazine. This isn't serious.

Article has old parts to it

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at iTunes, the article was written back in 2003 and is grossly outdated

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,11048 2,00.asp

"streaming" vs. "Web-based access & control"

[montale127]

obviously i'm happy Orb got in the list, even at #50 (hey, Flickr was #51)

but "streaming service," though accurate in its description of the DELIVERY mechanism for your media, has never felt to me like it captures the true positioning of Orb - which is the use of the Web as your interface to all your stuff.

No. Client. Software.

If you've got the Web and a streaming player on a device (and you've got our tiny piece of Orb software on your always-connected PC to act as your personal server), you've got access to the media you want - Orb will do the format/bitrate/screen-res adaptation on the fly to make sure you can get an experience appropriate to your accessing device at that exact moment

today, that pretty much means your media at home and on the Cloud, for example: http://www.streamingmedia.com/press/view.asp?id=38 03/

but as i'll be unveiling at Web2.0 this wednesday the next level of the Orb vision - and its about access and control in ways that don't have much to do with STREAMING (there's a hint for what sorta control i'm talking about in http://www.tivoanywhere.com/)

how would YOU folks name what we do? "Web-based access and control" seems a bit... unwieldy

Why bother?

[bradasch]

These lists always embed marketing: when I first read it (in the june or july magazine) I laughed at item 56: Olympus C-8080 - they reviewed it in April 2004, and somehow it managed to end up in the 2005 list. There are superior cameras now in its class now.

Why bother with these "top 100 lists" in these magazines anyway?

no longer called iPod PHOTO

[green pizza]

You're not the only person who complained about the name. A few months after Apple came out with the color iPod Photo, they dropped the price a bit and also dropped the "photo" from the name. Now it's just "iPod" (although the URL suggests iPod color).
http://www.apple.com/ipod/color/

The liked the Alienware?

[callipygian-showsyst]

Mine's *much* too loud! And I ordered the acoustic dampening, too.. Anyway, they lost credibility by putting OS-X on the list.

Re:The liked the Alienware?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

And you lost credibility by talking about how Alienware configured XP for you on your little site.

Re:The liked the Alienware?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Obviously you've never ran OS X.

Alienware??

[Jugalator]

Why's an Alienware computer ranked so highly, even above Google?

God, that must be a hell of a computer... Or a hell of a sponsoring.

Re:Alienware??

[Anonymous Coward]

Because nobody builds their own Ferrari (TM)!

Re:Alienware??

[deesine]

Apparently you've never heard of kit cars.

iPod at 78?

[Anonymous Coward]

What this world is coming to? It should be 1 to 78 for Apple. Yeah.

Okay. I was just trolling. But frankly, what was SO surprizing about it? You should have written 'Thankfully' instead of 'Surprizingly'.

Re:iPod at 78?

[Thnikkaman]

I think it was in reference to the nano. This list was written way before the nano, however. I fully expect next year's list to have the iPod nano in the top 5.

Re:Avant browser is better

[Anonymous Coward]

Avant browser is just IE rewrapped with a different UI. I have used it and I would definitely say that Firefox beats it hands down. The Avant interface is so clumsy and confusing (like 200 buttons on the toolbar, come on now) compared to Firefox's simplicity. I am no Firefox fanboy. I gave Avant an honest shot (used it for over a month), but finally I had to give up on it once my computer became overrun with adware.

They missed the iPod Nano

[cgenman]

Whether or not it has manufacturing problems, the Nano is the biggest consumer electronics thing to happen this year. Yet it is nowhere to be found. The RIO Carbon? Someone needs to update the list.

They list Opera 8, which was a nice update to 7, but they don't mention 8.5 where the browser went free.

They don't mention Nintendogs. Say what you will about the "game," it is definitely a defining game of the year, in much the same way that Katamari was last year. They also claim that the PSP was the first handheld with Wi-Fi out of the box, but I'm going to stop talking about the DS before I sound like a fanboy.

June is way too early to publish a list of the best products of the year. The Motorola iTunes phone is still coming out. The Xbox 360 is still coming out.

Re:They missed the iPod Nano

[Halfbaked Plan]

Why is there such a noise being made about some MP3 player?

'Biggest consumer electronics thing' this year? Has it really been THAT boring a year?

Re:They missed the iPod Nano

[cgenman]

Has it really been THAT boring a year?

Some people found the PSP pretty exciting.

Re:They missed the iPod Nano

[fistfullast33l]

As grandparent said, this list was published MONTHS ago. I received this issue as a promotion in the spring. The nano wasn't even a blip on the radar yet. I have a feeling this was more like a best products list of 2004 year in review type thing more than a current year evaluation. They probably just use the current year as a promotional thing to sell magazines.

Re:They missed the iPod Nano

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this will be modded as troll, but I'd like to observe a sexual intercourse between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. :)

Re:They missed the iPod Nano

[radu124]

Well, I guess this tells you more about PC World than it does about the stuff they put on the list.

Re:Avant browser is better

[pjbgravely]

Looks like Avant is a Microsoft Windows only application. What does it have to do with a browser like FireFox which runs on almost all operating systems.
It doesn't even run on Windows 95, which is my only Microsoft Windows install. I run Firefox on that too.

Re:Treo 650? Guess he hever had to Support Them

[pluckey]

It looks like I beat the odds and got the "1 in 50" Treo 650s that works fine! I've been using my 650 since January 2005 without problems. It's been useful to me as a phone, as well as a PDA that syncs with my Mac, as well as an MP3 player, as well as a picture/small movie display, as well as a wireless modem to connect my PowerBook to the Internet via Bluetooth, as well as a portable web browser and email client, as well as a Palm platform for various Palm apps... ...and so on. I realize that others may have issues with their Treo 650s, but for the record, it's not ALL of them. FWIW.

Better than an anti-apple fanboy rant...

[zpok]

imnsho

Re:Better than an anti-apple fanboy rant...

[Epsillon]

Dear me, and here I was thinking that vendor lock-in was a Bad Thing[TM]...

So, let me get this straight, vendor lock-in is only a Bad Thing if it's done by Microsoft (for now, until Google becomes the next Microsoft - Ooooh! Quick, mods, he's trolling! He said something nasty about Google as well as Apple!), yes?

There's hypocrites and then there's /.

Re:Better than an anti-apple fanboy rant...

[zpok]

Vendor lock-in is a bad thing, in general. This in general doesn't mean "but if Apple does it it's OK". But what we have right now is a plethora of music players, some good, some bad. iPod is no worse than the others. It lets you play a few open formats and a few Apple formats. The only lock-in happens if you buy music at the iTMS. Why should you?
Now look at the other music stores: they don't sell to mac users. Period. Noooo, they choose WMA, because it's an "open" format.
As far as this discussion goes, disliking iPod for vendor lock-in reeks of I don't know, ignorance or fanboyism.

Re:Better than an anti-apple fanboy rant...

[Epsillon]

Ah, OK, I can accept that. I suppose that did come across as a bit of a Microsofty-fanboy-type rant, didn't it? Apologies for the semi-flame. Like yourself, I find fanboyism to be very, very distasteful, especially when it leads the ignorant into making bad choices.

Let the technology stand or fall on its merits, not some perceived holiness of the manufacturer. I'll be the first to admit Apple products are rather nice, but let's not assume that they're the right choice for everyone by being "surprised" when they don't make the grade for certain users.

Re:Better than an anti-apple fanboy rant...

[zpok]

I expected them to be somewhere in the list, it is a popularity contest after all. I personally would have put Skype on top of it, who cares if it's a service. Saved me tons and tons of money.

Cheers

Re:Better than an anti-apple fanboy rant...

[Epsillon]

Erm, Skype is #8. A brief scan of the list shows FWD to be strangely absent, though. With VoIP being the next big thing (if it isn't already) I'm as curious as you regarding the absence of at least one of the SIP/IAX based services. Perhaps next year if IP phones start to compete properly we'll see these making in-roads. I personally think those little ATAs (analogue telephone adaptors) look like the ideal solution, so granny can still pick up the receiver of a familiar device and dial a number. Technology at its best, IMHO, is that which enables transparently.

Anyway, we're (OK, I'm) wandering off-topic.

Thunderbird at 28...does not deserve to be on list

[Brad_sk]

I can't believe thunderbird is on the list. I have been using this email client for about a year and its totally a crap product as compared to Outlook 2003. No INLINE spell check, memory hogging, no easy way to sort messages...the list goes on.. MAY BE Thunderbird 1.5 would have a chance to be in the list.

How they came up with this list

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how they came up with the list:
1. Google searched for "best product of 2005"
2. Pasted the top 100 results into microsoft word
3. Sent to editor
4. ???
5. Profit

Re:Treo 650? Guess he hever had to Support Them

[aCC]

It's strange that you had such bad experiences them because you seem to be quite alone with that as far as I know.

I have one for some months now and I absolutely love it. I occasionally read the forums for treo users (mytreo.net, treocentral.com, ...) and I haven't seen anything like you mention on there. And those forums are normally very quick in showing if a product has problems. Like they did when the first version had problems with the memory which finally got resolved by Palm. I have the GSM version, so maybe it's the CDMA version that you have problems with?

Personally I think it is finally a usable pda-phone that works as it should. I can totally recommend it.

Re:Avant browser is better

[bhtooefr]

I've run Opera 8 (haven't run 8.5, as I've had no actual need to run a on 95 install, but there's no major changes, just bugfixes and removal of the registration features), just for kicks, FWIW...

One factor for Avant not running on 95 is that it needs IE, because it uses IE for rendering.

The year is not over

[klept]

2005 is not over yet. Or does PC world use the Julian calander? You also have to wonder if any of these ratings have to do with advertising revenues. Sort of like product placement. Integrated or branded entertainment.

Re:The year is not over

[angrykeyboarder]

Well considering most magainze are about to put out (or have put out) their November issue, it might as well be.

It's normal for best-of-the-year stuff to come out now.

As far advertiser incentives, thatg's a question. Personally, I doubt it.

Re:The year is not over

[klept]

Sure the best of the year stuff comes out now. It is the Christmas season. And dont tell me that starts after Thanksgiving. And what better guide for Christmas then an "unbiased" rating of products. Remarkable coincidence? Look it's simple. The year ends 12-31-05. 1/4 of the year is not over yet. So maybe the frist mag they get out after 05 is in 3-06. So what. How can you talk about the best products of 2005 when only 3/4 of the year is done. And your point about latency between story and publication only supports this point more so. Was the story done in August, or even July? Heck only half of the year is done if that is the case. You're entiled to your opinion. But I kind of think the facts scream out for a different conclusion. But then that is only my opinion, though I think it has a lot more solid foundation.

Re:Treo 650? Guess he hever had to Support Them

[gad_zuki!]

>And a PDA that needs a 30 meg update download?

Actually, you need 11 megabytes free on the device to upgrade the firmware. Arguably, execs on the go shouldnt even be doing this, their IT departments should be handling system updates. You wouldnt want them to upgrade from 2000 to XP on their own would you?

Granted, it is overhyped, but it does a lot of things people want. I just wish it wasnt so big and ugly.

Alienware, Schmalienware

[Frazbin]

I can't see why Alienware'd be on the list at all. They're effectively charging a heavy markup for the "service" of putting your very expensive computer together for you. So far as I know, they don't have access to any components that aren't readily available to the public. If you're spending thousands upon thousands of dollars for a gaming rig, building it should be part of the fun. Also, a quick google of "alienware sucks" will tell you that they have dicey customer service.

Heavily marked up components and spotty support. Alienware is performing a "service" indeed.

Re:Alienware, Schmalienware

[typical]

People buy Ferraris, right?

The same mentality goes into buying Alienware boxes.

Suppose you make a ton of money each year. You want to do something cool with it, and maybe you like video games (or your kid likes video games), but you aren't a computer builder any more than the guy down the street with a Ferrari is an auto mechanic. You just go find some expensive, fancy looking, powerful computer, and buy that. Ta Da! Alienware!

Re:Alienware, Schmalienware

[angrykeyboarder]

And?

Falcon Northwest, ABS, Velocity Micro (and to a lesser extent, Dell, Gateway, Sys, Systemax, mpc) do the same thing.

Not everyone wanting a high-end box also wants to build it themselves. 8 months ago I bought a "gaming" box from ABS for $2600.00 (no Monitor).

I don't have the aptitude to build any computer, but I stitl lilke a kick-ass box.

I seriously considered Alienware but I just find thier cases ugly AND I saved a few hundred with similar components from ABS.

I have no doubt that the Alienware model PCWorld put in it's top 100 is a kick-ass box and that's why it got there.

Re:Alienware, Schmalienware

[Edmund Blackadder]

That is true, but a Ferrari is truly unique ... for example you cannot find anything like a Ferrari engine anywhere other than on a Ferrari. An Allienware comp is a bunch of available, if expensive, parts assembled in a standard manner.

Re:Alienware, Schmalienware

[Rod Beauvex]

Heh heh, I don't think I've ever seen one car analogy on all the time I have been wasting reading Slashdot that hasn't been shot down. :D

Re:Alienware, Schmalienware

[Profane Motherfucker]

You'd be a dumb fuck to compare a computer with off-the-shelf components to a hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind dream car specially made for each owner.

Sometimes the results are suspect.

[Futurepower(R)]

In my opinion, PC World, and all the product reviewers, sometimes skew results in the direction they want them to go. Sometimes they do that by not reviewing the most popular product, but comparing the competitors only. Sometimes they change the results with tricky writing.

Very unfortunately, it has become entirely acceptable in the U.S. culture to take money to allow corruption. For an example, look at the U.S. government.

An example of what appears to be corruption is that magazines and columnists are recommending Sunbelt Software's CounterSpy. Until September, at least, CounterSpy would crash Windows if it couldn't get an internet connection. None of the reviewers noticed that, giving me the impression that they didn't test the software thoroughly. If they didn't test the software thoroughly, how can they say it is the best? Who supplied the collection of spyware they used to test?

Also, CounterSpy seems to try to take advantage of customers who don't have technical knowledge. For example, CounterSpy sometimes tags text (.TXT files) as serious threats, even when the text file has nothing but printable ASCII characters. Is this done to try to make customers think CounterSpy is more important than it really is?

What I say here about CounterSpy has been verified for me by Sunbelt Software employees.

Re:Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that you're a f*cking moron! But that's always the case with you "I have no life so I have to try to get 'frist psot' on a Sunday afternoon" morons.

Go outside. Get a f*cking life. (Before you say anything I'm taking a quick 5 minute break before going back outside to enjoy the sunshine.) :P

More examples of suspect results.

[Futurepower(R)]

Look at PC World's review of Roxio Easy Media Creator: "While version 7.5 remains a bit ponderous to navigate and threatens to overwhelm users with choices, this solid update pulls EMC even with Nero 6.6 Ultra Edition."

Why is Easy Media Creator first choice if it is "even"? Also, did the reviewer take into account Roxio's history of releasing buggy software?

The review of one of the most expensive APC backup power supplies reads like an ad to get customers to pay more for power they don't really need. Also, the reviewer did very little testing.

The reviewer says "Power surges and outages can impair productivity and damage expensive equipment." I've never known a power outage to damage computer equipment. (With the Windows 98 FAT file system, it is necessary to run Scandisk after a sudden power outage.) The statement seems like a sales message. Computers need backup power supplies, but a much smaller one would be fine for most users. That fact isn't mentioned.

Another suspect result.

[Futurepower(R)]

Why does PC World rate Dantz Retrospect number 1 when the reviewer didn't think the upgrade was worth the money?

I agree with the reviewer. The user interface is screwy. The product CERTAINLY does not rate a number 1. There is no explanation of the other backup products, and how truly bad Retrospect is in comparison.

Good product, but 100 best?

[Rich Klein]

Surprisingly, iPod only has IPod Photo at 78.

Not everyone drinks kool-aid.

c'mon, FF better than Opera ? that's jive...

[big_ugly_face]

I wonder how could possibly Firefox be better than Opera, but I agree it's in the eye of user. Anyway, to place Firefox as number one and kick Opera down to number 88 is stupid. But that's not all - pathetic plugin(!) Maxthon for "much beloved" browser Internet Explorer is actually 12th ! Shame on you, PC World.

Uh-Oh

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like somebody got a Rio for their birthday...

Re:Treo 650? Guess he hever had to Support Them

[puto]

Sorry, should have said the download of the patch to the pc os approx 30 megs.

And a lot of IT departments handle the updates, but I would say the majority of the users are people off the street and bought them. Real execs have secretaries or assistants at beck and call.

Also you might want to include this link http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo650up dater/sprint_dl.html Which is not who I work for, but the instructions for each carrier are as about as long.

Nothing plug and play about them. Having to update just about all of the supplied software packages as well.

Puto

Re:Thunderbird at 28...does not deserve to be on l

[Anonymous Coward]

You also have evidence to contrary. I routinely access my work e-mail through IMAP server for example. Thunderbird works as one would expect, even through slow dial-up lines, but if you try to make Outlook do that it regularly hangs.

ENOUGH about Google!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that Slashdot has managed to sneak in at least five "news" stories about Google within the past two days?

Enough already.

PC world's top products of 2005 (Oct 2)
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/10/02/1424228.shtm l?tid=99

Google Backlash (Oct 2):
http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/05/10/02/002 3257.shtml?tid=217&tid=219

Goggle Ant (Oct 2):
http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/10/01/17142 41.shtml?tid=217&tid=14

Google and free Wifi (Oct 1):
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/01/131620 5&tid=217&tid=193

Google strategy (Oct 1):
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/01/083123 4&tid=217&tid=187&tid=109

BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!
BOYCOTT GOOGLE!

Re:Treo 650? Guess he hever had to Support Them

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had a Treo 650 since last fall. Best phone/PDA I've ever had and absolutely zero problems.

I think you have an axe to grind somewhere because the Treo forums are not reporting these widespread type of problems.

Re:Ubuntu??? Why not Knoppix????Where is Suse &

[olcrazypete]

Don't know why I'm bothering, but FYI. Knoppix is most known for it's liveCD based uses but can be installed, while Ubuntu is a distro meant to be installed, with a liveCD for demoing. If you want to talk about who was first, try debian - both of them are debian based. I like knoppix, I like ubuntu, I like debian - all for different uses. P

no, he's not alone

[YesIAmAScript]

Look at the lawsuit to perhaps change your mind on that.

But I had one (GSM) for almost a month, and it failed to work correctly at least twice a week during that time.

I understand the new firmware is better, but I dumped mine before it came out.

The phone has a lot of positive attributes, but the quality is too poor to use day-to-day.

Re:no, he's not alone

[aCC]

Look at the lawsuit to perhaps change your mind on that.

Thanks for the pointer. I wasn't even aware of it and had a look at it, but it doesn't change my mind.

To quote an article about the lawsuit (filed by only 3 people by the way):

Palm is expected to have shipped about 480,000 Treo devices in the company's first fiscal quarter, which ended in August, said Todd Kort, principal analyst with Gartner Inc. About 90 percent of those shipments are of the Treo 650, which was first introduced in October of last year. The Treo 600 made its debut in 2003 from Handspring Inc., which was later acquired by Palm.

No manufacturer is immune to problems with computer hardware, but the Treo has been a success for Palm and wireless carriers over the first few years of its life, Kort said. If the problems with the device were as widespread as the plaintiffs claim, it's likely that wireless carriers would have pulled the device from their shelves after receiving complaints, as T-Mobile USA Inc. did earlier this year with HP's h6315, he said.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/09/21/HNtreosu it_1.html

If there really were that many problems, then I'm sure we would have heard more about it. It's more likely that those people who have these problems either a) had a bad batch of the Treo, which is not unlikely with that many sold, or most likely b) installed software on the Treo which made it totally unstable.

It is very unlikely that with 480,000 units sold there wouldn't be a huge outcry if only 1 in 50 units work as expected like the original poster claimed.

So why is Firefox #1?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, why is Firefox number one? I'm using it right now, and other than tabs, it's not doing anything special. And I could get something to do that with Internet Explorer.

So, why is it so special? What does it offer for me that makes it special? And I have been to the Firefox plug-in's page, and looked and looked, and found nothng.

Where are the clothes?

Re:Thunderbird at 28...does not deserve to be on l

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird has inline spell check now in current
Preview Release. Also, can sort or search easily.
User defined filters, LDAP support ....

The Treo 650 has no business being in the top 10.

[Jerk City Troll]

PalmOne Treo 650

This is so much bullshit. To list the Treo 650 anywhere near the top 10 is silly. Yes, it is a cool product with some nice features. However, it is probably the single most buggy, unrefined product I have used since Windows. Really. Frequent crashes, missed calls, and flaky software abounds on this thing. You would think that the phone functionality would be flawless, but far from it.

True, numerous patches have been releases for the firmware since, but none of them make much progress towards a polished product. That and most users would never even know where to begin with the patch procedure (it's very ugly) let alone even know there are patches available.

Perhaps with a little more refinement, it would deserve its spot on any given top 10 list (where quality is a criterion). But saying it's great is quite a stretch.

Re:Treo 650? Guess he hever had to Support Them

[puto]

Well here is the axe as you so put it. I compile statistics and collateral on devices I have to support. 50 million customers is a fair sampling of the market I would say.

There are cell phones I would not reccomend to my worst enemy. LG1300, any low end Motorola. Suprisingly enough the Samsungs, though not as feature filled, are workhorses and have rare complaints, very high customer satisfaction. Nokias, well great devices, and a very loyal user base.

The Pocket PC phones work well.

Motorola Mobile Devices, well not so good. MPx220 was recalled, retooled and reissued, the Audiovox beat it hands down.

The 600 and 650 do not share common accessories, so chargers, etc you have to buy over. Caveat emptor on that one.

And you say the Treo forums are not reporting them? Hmmm, because they are buy fanboys? Are because generally support forums are by loyal users, who use the glass half full theory. Nothing wrong with that.

And of course you have the large number of people who just live with the problems.

Check this link.

http://www.google.com/search?q=treo+650+lawsuit&hl =en&hs=NGE&lr=&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.m ozilla:en-US:official_s&start=10&sa=N

Puto

Re:Thunderbird at 28...does not deserve to be on l

[Profane Motherfucker]

I'm with you there. I switched from Thunderbird to Outlook. Vast improvement in satisfaction.

Tor got 40?!?

[postgrep]

And was placed after iTunes? What an outrage! iTunes doesn't allow you to access hidden services!

wikipedia?

[teklob]

how is wikipedia not #1?

Re:wikipedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

it can only be because the editors are short sighted.

Whole lot of chair throwing going on

[Anonymous Coward]

Must be a lot of chairs flying across the room in Redmond after a list like this.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Thunderbird at 28...does not deserve to be on l

[Anonymous Coward]

You got a very valid point...Surprised to see that moderators gave -1 score...Probably they were afraid that everyone will come to know that thunderbird is pathetic!.