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PC World's 20 Most Annoying Tech Products
Craig Sender writes to tell us that PC World has compiled a list of the 20 most annoying tech products of all time. Topping the list was AOL's ubiquitous free trial CD's. "This list hardly covers every annoying tech product ever made. But where did this list of 20 come from? [PC World Readers] picked the worst ones by voting in our Annoyances Poll, and you'll see your Top 10 most annoying products flagged with icons. Just for fun, we've added 10 more products that didn't get enough votes from you in our poll but that we found particularly irksome."
Can they possibly cram any more ads and ugly navigation into that abortion of a website. Blech!
Blar.
I predict a cavalcade of Microsoft "jokes." God bless Slashdot.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
No reference to the Cue Cat?
That was one of the most annoying, dumbest, biggest debacles I can remember. For those that do not recall the Cue Cat was a bar cade reader in the form of a cat, that clever marketeers thought consumers would use by scanning barcodes on print ads in magazines and newspapers.
Cue Cat was mailed to *all* Wired magazine subscribers.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Going from 31 dead people in a senseless mass killing to yet another top 20 list from a worthless site.
Worthless? Dude, you got first post!
Trolling is a art,
I recall a list much like this, not too long ago. Dupe?
Circumcision is child abuse.
There are a lot of really stupid ideas out there that I wouldn't put on a "most annoying" list because no one used them.
The Cue Cat is one of them. No one forced you to use it. The bar codes on the ads didn't cause leprosy or make your eyes bleed.
Of course, if I was one of the investors who paid to send out thousands of the things for free, then I'd have cause to be annoyed.
I'd put Microsoft Bob on the list too. The ads and promotions were annoying, but again, no one forced you to install or use it.
What about the other 100,000 or so people who die every single day, many of them senselessly? Should Slashdot be given over as a portal to count the dead, perhaps?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I've got a better idea for an article: "Slashdot's 20 most annoying duplicate articles."
Where's Lotus Notes??? Should be in the top 5. Horrible, horrible, non-intuitive mass of confusion.
Everything a UI shouldn't be.
#1 AOL CDs. I used to work at the post office, they some people decorated entire walls with undeliverable AOL CDs.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Why is it that when I saw another story above the shootings story, I knew that the first comment would be about this.
This may sound heartless, but the world marches on. Perhaps you need to take a personal day so that the rest of us can continue living.
The thing that really gets me, is that when you click the "Kill the dog" option, instead of instantly vanishing, like any reasonably annoyance, they have this obnoxious beast do a little animation.
Look, you clueless fools, if I like the dog, I would not be getting rid of him. You KNOW I don't want him, but you senselessly subject me to the EXACT kind of animation that I told you I disliked.
What's next? If I tell you to turn off the sound, will you up the volume to maximum and play a recording of "SHUTTING SOUND OFF NOW!" in a really whiny voice?
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In terms of pure annoyance, not just bad or lousy tech, I would rate CD burners before they were reliable and "click-of-death" zip disks as some of the most exasperating things that I have had to deal with.
I must have wasted dozens of hours with 1x and 2x CD burners before they became mature. I can still remember staring at the little progress bar.
95% completed -- 96% completed -- 97% completed -- 98% completed -- FAILURE BUFFER UNDERRUN.
AAAAAAAGH!
Best Windows Freeware
...getting a little bit sentimental while reading TFA?
man, was i YOUNG the time i held my first AOL cd in my dead, cold hands.
err. glad i grew older.
Too much emphasis on software, not enough on hardware, and non-computer items.
Also too much emphasis on marketing flops.
I am SO glad that floppy disks are just about finished with. I threw away hundreds and hundreds of them last year (3.5") and two years ago (5.25"). They still pop up now and then. I hope to eliminate all of them except for emergency boot CDs and the like.
Before CDs, AOL used to send floppies. I liked that. It was the backup-disk-of-the-month-club for me. I didn't have to remember, I didn't have to buy a floppy; it just arrived every month so I could backup.
Well if they didn't, you couldn't make a pathetic attempt at looking like you care.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
those 'Read more' links on /. that don't work when you click on them in Firefox? Or better still, the 'automated' phone menu systems that force you to 'press 1' or 'press 2' a squillion times before giving up and hitting a random number to get speaking to some human being somewhere.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
That list is all Jacked up. Considering the Zune has been out for what, 6 months and it's ranked higher than the Apple Pro Mouse? That thing was beyond annoying. Where are "Jazz" drives on this list? They crashed every month and were garbage. Tape drives aren't on there either! I'm guessing he and his buddies got together and made up the list. I don't argue with most of them, but a product that's been out for 6 months is rated up with Windows ME? I just don't consider some of those "ALL time" annoyances, rather than "recent and minor" annoyances. Just because they're happening now, doesn't mean they're worth being in the all time annoyances.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I don't get how RealPlayer is annoying. It's the best media player software I've ever seen. And on top of that, I've never seen software that has ... BUFFERING ...
I'd have to put PCworld on top of that list. Crap put out to the masses by crap artists that crap lovers love to read, the wipe crap on afterwards.
"Snatching defeat from the mouth of victory on a daily basis."
http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,130638 /printable.html#
i couldn't resist the chance at an M$ joke and movie quote all rolled into one!
The "print" version puts grey bars at either side of the article to ensure that the contents are wider than your window (I didn't check what mechanism they used).
You can manually position the page so that all the content is visible, but then the text is hard against the edge of the window.
Nice trick to annoy people into reading through the ad-filled multipage version.
really puts things into perspective, doesn't it? We, as geeks, enjoy tech. But there's nothing more important than human life. It does seem odd to be complaining about things that don't really matter, when a lot of people have just been murdered.
And what will really bake your noodle - this is an everyday experience in the middle east.
Yeah, 30 odd people I don't know were killed in a country over 3000 miles away from me. I should be ashamed of gettig on with my life.
Yes, it sucks to be the families of those people who were killed today. Are you one of them? No? Then what the hell are you concerned about? It's just yet more media-induced false grief for people you don't know.
The top ten "short list" can be seen here.
Less annoying, and you can vote there as well.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I could have one icon on the desktop that I click 50 times a day and that so called wizard will still tell me I have unused desktop icons. Even better, when Sally Secretary actually runs this fantastically annoying tool, she calls me ten minutes later to tell me Excel is gone.
i didnt know you could turn the act colloqually slandered as "killing babies" into a website, but i'm sure pc world would find a way to do it!
maybe your auto correction should be taught the word "aberration".
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
the PC World website
Free Software copies the proprietary world sometimes, but it always improves the user experience. ... you know... so good ... so better ... because it's ... you know ... you see ... Ubuntu, dude.
Take the aol CDs, you now have Ubuntu CDs which always come with an ubuntu user.
It wasnt bad enough to have all those CDs, you now have to listen for hours how all distros suck and Ubuntu is just
250,000 people died yesterday and the same will die today from old age, disease, war and famine. the disturbing thing is that it is likely no one here even thought about it. it will get worse too- especially if our consumerist ways continue.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Require us to retype squiggly letters that are virtually impossible for humans to decipher when signing up for new accounts. (Note to Microsoft: This means you.)
These stupid things get me every time. It usually takes me at least 3 tries and I think Yahoo's are the worst.
-Paco
one of them was developed at Virginia Tech.
I still get the shakes when I see a paper clip. Also for some reason the name "Bob" makes my hair stand up on end.
A lot of people have been murdered every day. You do realize that, right?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
That'd be my number one annoyance these days. The actual content of the article only takes up about one-third of the page and then they break it into 7 pages so you are bombarded with annoying adds and clutter. The other two-thirds of each page is full of adds and cluttered up links to other parts of their site. Their site is just as annoying as any of the 20 products they profile.
How about a nice clean layout that lets you actually read the article and not be distracted?
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
I suppose the most sneaky pop the print window open to try to tick you into printing the page without being able to read at all.
But there's nothing more important than human life.
If you're talking about "human life" in general -- get a grip, the species isn't going extinct just yet.
If you're talking about a (or even several) human lifes -- get a grip, there are plenty of things more important (to some people) than individual human lives, sometimes including their own; if not, nobody would risk their own life for anything.
-- Alastair
There's no such thing as a Mac Geek. Mac users are grandmas and people who don't have any interest in computers.
This site called PC world that gets people to read stupid articles while showing advertisements and interrupting our viewing of porn.
i vote for the "feature" of touch pads that emulates a click with every inadvertent touch.
-
oops (f*ck), my cusor moved to some random place mid-sentence,
oops i selected and deleted a section of text.
oops, i clicked on something.
addesso touchpad-keyboards suck because you cant turn this shit off.
let's just say that doing taxes online with an adessa touchpad-keyboard is a bad idea.
Any one else remember the guys in Harry the Handsome Executive who just sat there frisbee-tossing AOL free trial disks?
(IANAL)
I think the caps lock key is one.
It takes valuable space on the keyboard and rarely gets used.
I like the old control key there instead.
Yeah it's particularly worrying news considering the current world shortage of American college students.
This is an outrage!
My university made me use Pine to read email for fuck sakes!
vi and emacs deserve honorable mention, what's more annoying than two dillholes scratching their neckbeards, straining to find that ultimate zinger that will crown their favorite text editor as the victor in the FAGGIEST FLAME WAR EVER WAGED.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Every day over 100 people (I think) die in the US alone in road traffic accidents. About 30,000 children die in the world every day due to poverty. This incident is pretty insignificant, really. It just gets noticed because it's an unusual sort of death.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
If you're going to include ringtones and portable music players, why don't we include car alarms? Now THAT's an annoying tech product.
Have you read my blog lately?
I remember having to blow into every single one of the 8-bit old school Nintendo games that I put in. That was pretty annoying and made me lightheaded, but it worked!!!
Grouphug?
tech is what allowed one person to kill many in a matter of minutes today at two locations. the middle east has alot more of killing now that we're there with our tech too.
Ok, 6,000,000,000 people, 60 years average lifespan gives 6,000,000,000/60/365 death per day to keep the population at current level if we see approx. same number of births. That means ~274,000 people die every day of various reasons. And this is probably conservative as the population is slightly bigger and the average lifespan probably lower, considering the poor conditions in "non-western" countries.
Although the article cited Office 97 as an "also ran" annoyance, I'd have to cite the entire suite in all its incarnations as one of the worst annoyances in my daily life. I have so many reasons for my conclusion, that I'm sure I could exceed the character limit of a /. post. But the top reasons for giving Office a Supreme Annoyance Lifetime Achievement Award include:
1. UI inconsistencies across the suite and even within products.
2. Bugs that have survived at least 7 years and 3 upgrades (upgrade = another chance to extract more money from the customer).
3. The fact that "Autosave" is a known cause of corrupted documents and crashes.
4. Automagical formatting and replacement wizards that you can't turn-off.
5. Word's horrible horrible outliner that singlehandedly killed off actually useable outliners.
6. The fact that O'Reilly was able to create an entire series of "Annoyance" books just from Office.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Cellular Telephones
They forgot to mention the sliding ads prevalent on their site in their list.& size=m
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=462047358
The word you were looking for is warranties. When pluralising a word that ends with a y, replace the y with ies. The apostrophe has two purposes in written English, pluralisation is neither of them. This was not meant as a personal attack, more as a 'PSA' since I see incorrect use of the apostrophe so often now.
That's just like the classic joke: The food here is terrible! And the portions are so small!
I look on my now crippled mouse hand with pride, all those fond memories will be with me forever. Of course, my baseball career is over, ditto with curling, pool, in fact I usually just cover the mangled stump with a black glove.
But there's nothing more important than human life.
What a silly statement. Imagine a population of 1000 slaves. Suppose that by the death of one, the remaining 999 will be released to live free lives. You're saying that the life of that one person is more valuable than the freedom of the other 999?
http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,130638 /printable.html
What, no Virtual Boy???
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I don't know about you, but those products have been giving me a living hell, and who likes to download ad-ridden 150KiB files just to read a few sentences?
The 1-button mouse was to keep developers from relying on extra buttons, thus adding to the probable confusion of the end-user. Unfortunately, a vast number of ports never bothered adjusting for that, so eventually Apple caved in and started bundling multi-button mice (and probably because of Boot Camp as well) which are wonderful in theory, and freaking annoying in practice. My Mac Pro came with a Mighty Mouse. The scroll ball is really neat, but the fact that if you hold your mouse like an artist tends to (only using your fingers instead of laying your entire hand on it) it tends to interpret left-clicks as right-clicks.
As for the puck mouse the original one sucked, but the one that came with the G4 was awesome. If someone made a multi-button version of it with a scroll wheel, it would be my favorite mouse. I had no trouble at all using it back in the day, as it had the dimple on the button so you could actually tell which end was the front, and it was a lot easier for me to work with due to its small size and light weight. I seem to be the exception to the rule, though; I also prefer modern Apple keyboards to the IBM Model M.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
You didn't need the # for anchor. :) Yeah, I am picky but what did you expect from a stubborn nerd/geek? :D
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Pop ups, pop unders, Flash ads that float, Flash ads period?
Guess they didn't include those on the list since their site uses these techniques.
Bemoaning the fact iTunes requires Quicktime to be installed ignores the fact iTunes is nothing but an XML front-end for Quicktime. It's a database and shopping app that offloads all of its media handling to the existing suite of software designed to handle such things.
If they had created another software package to replicate the services provided by Quicktime just for iTunes people would be lining up to say how it exemplified a lack of faith in the established suite.
PC worlds should list themselves for all the ads they shove on every page on top of the (actually, behind the) pop up ads they force you to close to read the stupid article.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
back in those days I worked for a graphics design shop and everything we did revolveld around those damn drives. this was before CD's but I recall constantly fighting with either zip drives or SyQuest drives. Reading reviews now they seemed great but I remember it being a crap shoot as you would spend hours copying the file the have to re-read it to make sure it worked. it took all damn day just to copy a file and check it.
"Please spell you street name"
"C-L-E-A-V-E-R"
"You said B-L-C-A-T-E-R. Is that correct?"
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
and there's a good reason for that.
This has got to be the first Windows centric article I've enjoyed. That is said as someone who remembers the transition of Byte from a computer magazine to a Windoze product review. In other words, Windows centric articles have bothered me from the very beginning.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Naturally the quicksilver bit could be some other OS's launcher for notepad/textpad/vi/whatever. (but not emacs because that would be inefficient)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Every day over 100 people (I think) die in the US alone in road traffic accidents. About 30,000 children die in the world every day due to poverty. This incident is pretty insignificant, really. It just gets noticed because it's an unusual sort of death.
Who modded this up? It gets noticed because a whole bunch of people were killed by one person, intentionally. They were not vitims of policy, unfortunate circumstance, living in a war torn area, etc., they were victims of one dude with a gun in an unexpected situation. That is why it gets noticed. And, while it may not be insignificant in the overall scheme of things, incidents like this do have strong repercussions for better or worse (think gun control, emergency response, movies like bowling for columbine, etc.)
And what about Flash?
Man invents. God creates.
Man invented the AUTOMOBILE. Called it AMAZING!
God made a tree said it was good.
Man invented the REFRIGERATOR. Called it INCREDIBLE.
God made a rabbit and called it good.
The wheels fell off the car. The refrigerator lost its cool. Tree's still up and rabbit's still runnin'.
"Installing Vista onto an older system? There's a good chance that your graphics card, sound card, and some of your older software won't work properly."
Really? If you try to install Windows 98 on an old enough machine it might not work! That's what happens. Technology marches on. The old must be left behind eventually or the new will get too bogged down to move forward.
Why Outlook 2003? I have it and I have no problems with it. It always loads quickly and is always responsive. Perhaps the only annoying thing about it is the balloon that says,"Outlook is not responding." Yes it is! Have more than a 1/4s of patience.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
that's annoying the fuck out of people reading the annoying tired article?
Fuck print general interest PC mags, they're for Grandmas and Managers.
They whinge about them in the worst 20, but the first thing they did was shove one in my face when I got there! ARRRGHH!!!
'nuff said.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
So, what you're saying is..
Lol @ unintentionally agreeing with the person you're disagreeing with.
That's simply inexcusable. Those defective vents also didn't allow you to brew your coffee inside!
"I seem to have mastered a certain amount of control over physical reality."
I was shot and killed today, you insensitive clod!
He said that it was an unusual sort of death. People get shot all the time; I'm saying that it is everything else that is unusual. Maybe he meant that too, I don't know.
One of my favorites was our previous accounting system.
:(
:/
After selecting to do End-Of-Month it would first give a pop-up:
Allocations not selected, do you wish to select allocations? Y/N
No ends program
Yes gives another pop-up:
Selecting allocations Continue? Y/N
again, No pretty much ends it all
Yes gives another charming pop-up:
No allocations to select, do you wish to continue? Y/N
argh....Got old every month for years.... and i think i missed pop-up in there
Another nice feature was selecting a module would prompt you for the date defaulted to today and Y/N buttons. YES would set the date to today and enter that module, while NO would set the date to today and enter that module....... funny for a few times. not so much after a thousand times. Took them years to add a default to assume it is today!
(the default was to not give a date box and assume last date entered, so you have to manually select to change date each day for each module, two more steps than the useless pop-ups and not useable in real-life)
Our current program is too annoying to even mention. Perhaps remembering what check number i am on is somehow hard on the computer. Maybe we could have the ablilty to scroll a list backwards like i have been doing even in DOS for 20 years or so
And because it is in the U.S. - if the same incident happened in Iraq, it would be forgotten by people in the U.S. within 24 hours.
Actually, so are the road victims.
Other countries have policies to reduce road death that work significantly better than the policies in the US. Some parts of the US live in unfortunate circumstances and have many more road deaths.
The US chooses to have as many road deaths as it does, because it is unwilling to face the consequences of addressing them. The US has fewer deaths due to rampages than other countries (Israel for example). That's because it is willing to face the consequences of addressing them.
It all comes down to priorities. At some point you have to choose to let people die because because saving them costs too much (freedom, money, intelligence in the gene pool, whatever).
Duh... especially if you come from a Unix background.
They say the mind is the first thing to
Annoying pop-over ads. Like in the article. Irony, anyone?
the point (and the point of the article) is that it is an annoying,useless, and harmful feature. which you agree with ?
yes you can disable it on most laptops. because they use synaptics chip or similar which has an interface to disable it,
and no, you cannot disable it on new adesso usb touchpad keyboards.
the default for this touch-click feature/bug should be off,
On a similar note I used to do unimportant volunteer stuff at a public radio station. Radio stations used to do a lot with reels of tape (probably still do) and any current affairs shows or other pre-recorded stuff would be dub edited from various sources to the final tape. Every month Radio Moscow would send out a nice big reel with the last months worth of english language stuff - the station loved it - it went straight to the bulk tape eraser and then into the newsroom where they could never get enough blank tape.
I'm with you on the hockey puck mouse. I liked the fact that you could move the mouse around in a limited range without moving your whole hand, just by moving your fingers left/right or up/down. I was also a fan of the much-derided early imac keyboard. I am not a fan of the current Apple keyboard, both because of its flat base (which wobbles on my slightly arched desk) and its lack of space in-between groups of F keys (unlike most keyboards, which group F keys in sets of four).
But my ultimate nostalgia/complaint about mac input devices is the lack of a keyboard power button. That button was perfect - there was no risk of accidentally powering computers off and it saved time spent either mousing to the apple menu or reaching around to the computer itself.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
A couple of days ago, 62 people were killed in Iraq in a single day's "senseless mass killing".
I doubt either of you even noticed.
People who can figure out using two buttons shouldn't be allowed to breath on their own, let alone use a computer. There is getting confused, and then there is just not trying.
The exhaust system on my Harley causes overly sensitive car alarms to go off - usually BMWs. Yes, I do enjoy cruising the supermarket parking lot.
-- Will program for bandwidth
pop-up ads. Heck include pop-under ads too please. Why didn't they consider this? Given consideration, I bet it would beat out AOL hands-down. If you really want to go that route including things like antivirus software, why not just include a Viruses and a Spyware category? Maybe viruses wouldn't get a ton of votes but spyware? rock the charts.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
#21: Those annoying PC World ads that pop up whenever you visit their articles.
-William Brendel
Yes.
Uh, hello? Spam? Anyone, Bueller? Spam is by far the most f*#cking annoying and should be high atop the list.
Obviously you didnt look at the pictures.
Did anyone else notice that "Zune" is like a cartoon character like the Ren or the Taco Bell Dog saying when it would work? "ZUUUUNE!"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Have you ever read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" (http://www.amazon.com/Ones-Who-Walk-Away-Omelas/d p/0886825016) by Ursula Le Guin? If I was one of those slaves and offered that chance to freedom, I probably wouldn't take it. Probably. I don't know.
klm codec eliminates two of the offenders... real player, and quicktime for windows
They forgot Twitter. Thats annoying and totally useless. They forgot all Apple products. The products are good, it is just sad they unleashed the hidden well of irritating morons. They forgot digg.com, where all the appletinnis hang out.
Ok, I like Thunderbird more than Outlook. But in fairness when I took on IT at the firm I used to work for one of the first things I did was ditch Outlook and IE for Thunderbird and Firebird. It did not take long before it's massive one file store of all email and attachments got corrupted and killed my users applications. The advice everybody gave "Email apps are not supposed to be used as data archival apps" That might sound good and elitist and all but when you are dealing with hundreds of emails with clients and vendors etc. you need your "paper" trail.
The majoy *annoyance* was however, not then mouse itself, but PC users crowing on about the 'one button' design, ignoring the fact that Mac Software was (surprisingly enough) designed for 1 button mice, and 103 more buttons were available on a nearby keyboard when required. (emphasis mine).
Yeah, Mac users having to use two hands to perform operations that PC users do with just one... thats such clearly superior UI design from Apple.
NOT.
My un-favorite is in OSX Preview app where in order to drag the view port around you have to hold the space bar PLUS the left mouse button. Brilliant design.
Apple: both retarded and inspired at the same time.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Well, at least we won't see anymore posts from that Anonymous Coward guy. He has to be the most annoying person on slashdot.
i thought that was pretty funny...
The pain it caused me in the 90's.
I thought I was the only one who prefered using my fingers instead of my entire hand/arm to manipulate mice. Are there any particular mice, other than the Apple puck mouse, that are designed for this style of usage?
The same old slashdot jokes/complaints/discussion that crop up every time no matter what the discussion.
Damn! what happened to my karma?
-- QED
It gets noticed because a whole bunch of people were killed by one person, intentionally.
An event like what happened today at Virginia Tech would be big news anywhere in the world. 32 students murdered is horrible no matter where it occurs.
Go... 1. PC World
No sig for you!!
10) people who talk about this really cool thing they did in World of Warcraft.
9) TV commercials (until you've banished the tube from your house for a year you have no idea how awful these things are)
8) Most cellphone interfaces (it often requires more keystrokes to pick a # from my list than to dial it from scratch)
7) People talking on cellphones while tailgating me.
6) People talking on cellphones with the earbuds in public (what? huh? you talking to me? oh.)
5) Microsoft operating systems in general (except XP which is often annoying but doesn't rate top 10)
4) MS Genuine Advantage (as bad as any other malware and my firewall doesn't block it)
3) Popups (thanks Firefox for mostly fixing this annoyance)
2) Browser Hijacks (you only have to have one once for you to be forever scarred)
and the number one annoying tech related thingy is...
1) SPAM (in all of it's myriad forms)
-- QED
I loved the keyboard/mouse that came with my G4 Sawtooth and dislike the new Apple keyboard/mouse, too. Smaller hand motions are usually better, and I liked being able to move just my fingers and not my whole wrist. But I've found that a Wacom tablet with the pen is easier on my hand than any mouse, and more accurate and faster to boot. You can hit anywhere on the screen instantly. Oh, and I have a Sanwa IceKey keyboard (the MacAlly IceKey is a rebadged, Americanised version of this).
I'm so annoyed with all of those lists that counts down to 1. Seriously, don't you all always read the list from 1 to whatever uninteresting product they put at the end of the list? The only reason they usually do it in reverse is that they want you to read more of their ads.
What if it took 5 lives, or 10 lives, or 100 lives? At what point would the cost outweigh the benefit? Why would that number be ok but one more be too much? It's easy to say it's worth it if you're one of the 999, but if you're that 1 then you might have second thoughts.
From my experience thusfar with Fedora Core 6, it ought to be on the list.
Just because a tech product is useful doesn't mean that it can't also be annoying. Cell phones in movie theaters, cell phones at a restaurant, cell phones distracting drivers...yep, pretty annoying.
Lotus notes has got nothing on the toy car my two year old son has. It plays Wiggles songs when he pushes it around. It's almost as bad as the little iron that makes stupid sound effects when he pushes it around or the doll that plays twinkle twinkle little star when he sqeezes it's belly. He has a toy aeroplane that sings a song so annoying that even he couldn't stand it and asked me in whimpery toddler speak to remove the batteries.
Whenever I see these stupid lists on /. and then read all the "Tech product X is way worse" comments, it just re-enforces in my mind the stereotype that slashdotters don't have kids. I agree that AOL, Lotus Notes, Norton Anti Virus and anything by Microsoft are pretty bad, but if you want a real list of annoying tech products, take the inventory of a toy shop and cross out anything without batteries. Seriously.
I don't therefore I'm not.
vi *ducks
That's just plain utilitarism and not everyone will agree with you. It's "common sense" as long as you are not the one slave :)
Car alarms beat all the rest put together. With most of the so-called annoying products listed in the article, if you are not fool enough to use them the annoyance is minimal or non-existent. However I don't even own a car and I still find car alarms annoying.
- free AOL discs
- Windows Me
- incompatible digital rights management (DRM) schemes
- Norton and McAfee are constantly prompting us to check our security settings, update our subscriptions, and/or buy more products
- RealPlayer, pushiness
- Bonzi Buddy
- MySpace
- Microsoft Windows Vista overzealous "Cancel or Continue?" confirmation windows
- Microsoft Windows Update (wrt WGA deployment)
- Apple QuickTime for Windows invasiveness
Also ran- Microsoft Office 97 (1997) non-backwards compat
- flash running, jumping, spinning, swirling, flashing, dancing, popping, peeling, and just generally irritating rich-media Web ads
- AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Windows Messenger, Yahoo Messenger
- ps3
- ebay random approach to policy enforcement
- Apple Pro Mouse
- plaxo automatic spamming
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
- Apple Power Mac G4 Cube
- Harmonium (polyphonic ringtones.)
- Intuit Quicken 2005 -- take features away if they don't upgrade
- Logitech Harmony 550
Ah, and at the end, a list of anoying things not to doAh. this brings back fond memories of an air show where a flight of MIG-27s passed overhead and every car alarm in the entire car parking area went off...
Who cares? It's not like those people were American, right?
I'm not American myself, I'm Danish, but it annoys me each time they report on a plane crash: "210 people were killed in the crash. No Danes were on board." and I just feel like: "Gee, well, that's good, I guess. As long as no Danes were killed, who cares about all those other people?"
Now, they say they do it because most people watching are Danish and have Danish friends and relatives, so they don't have to worry about whether they're OK, if they know no Danes were on that plane, but that's just not how it comes out: "210 people were killed. Luckily, none of them were Danish."
I couldn't agree more.
Funny, if 20.000 people drown in floods in Bangladesh, two liberals somewhere issue a two-line statement that "we maybe ought to help those folks a bit". If, on the other hand, some dipshit walks into a school in the Western world and shoots 31 people, I guess I'll be watching that and the discussions surrounding it for weeks on any news outlet I happen to stumble upon.
Way I see it, the 31 of this morning are just a natural part of the 12.000+ people that die due to fire-arm related violence in the US annually. Then again, it's not the guns that kill the people, er?
Frankly, I spent more time reading the useless article on annoying tech than reading about some school in Wichita that got another loony-attack. Because the latter I've heard so many times before, and the first is at least mildly amusing.
Another list for Annoying Technology:
1/ in-line advertisements
2/ multi-page articles
3/ 256kb for one page
I can remember when 256kb was an enormous amount of memory for a computer. And yet one could surf the BBS's and actually READ the information without needing more than a 300 baud modem - this is now impossible. Even on high-speed internet connection I have to wait for the javascript to load all these banner ads, click through to another 256k download for another paragraph of text.
And the articles seemed so much more interesting in those days. There were very few trolls, no adverts, no pop-ups, just information that you needed.
There seems to be an inverse proportion to the available means of communication and the actual value of what is communicated. Sometimes I just really hate technology....
Look at how the entire US of A will react to the murder of these 30+ people, and then compare with the Iraqi's reaction to seeing dozens of their people killed *every* day.
And apparently we're supposed to be concerned that the so-called liberal media is not bringing the GOOD news from Iraq?
This is a BS list. The AOL CDs don't "bother" me. I just trash them.
Now Auto Dialers... That has to be the MOST annoying tech invention of all time.
I used to work for a dialer company and every time I told someone what I did, I got glares and groans.
How can a list of "most annoying tech products" NOT INCLUDE THE CELL PHONE? #1 by far!!!
With the exception of the AOL CD, how many people have ever been "annoyed" by one of the products on this list? It can't possibly compare to the number of people who have been annoyed by a F#*&^%$ cell phone going off in the middle of a class, meeting, or performance event. Not to mention the annoyance of having to listen to 1/2 of an angry or animated conversation. At least the AOL CDs made good coasters, or could be tossed in seconds.
If the "boom box" counts as a tech product, that has to be a "top ten" as well.
I don't know about you guys, but I cannot stand any of the defaults on Windows XP. With all the registry tweaks I need to perform to turn off all that eye-candy crap, perhaps I should consider writing one big registry hack.
Either that, or I'll just continue using NT 4.0 as I have been for over a decade.
Why do they pay people to come up with top 10 lists?
Why does Slashdot link to them?
I don't know, but I don't think I'd be as annoyed by them if I could get a cut. C'mon, people! I can write top 10 lists in my sleep! Hire me to do nothing all day... please?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Monkeysphere link needed methinks... http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/monkeysphere.h tml/
"If Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to electronic music"
Slightly off topic as it's not confined to a single product but....
My absolute pet hate are the utter fools that produce code where you close their app and it pops up a dialogue that asks "Are you sure you want to exit ?". Durghhh...
There is absolutely no excuse for this brain dead crap. Of course I'm bloody well sure I want to close your app that's why I clicked thhe close button/the Exit menu item/closed the window etc. etc.
The only reason an app should confirm closure is when there is unsaved data that the user might like to save. There is no other reason to prompt me. I've just effing done something to dismiss your app now be a good coder and tidy up and exit.
Thankfully you do see a lot less of this these days but it's still being used. e.g. I installed Ubuntu Fesity this week, ran Automatix, closed the program and here it comes again. Shame really as Automatix is otherwise top notch (as is Feisty) !
Ho hum... different decade, samme crappy coding.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Exactly! Coming from a Windows/Linux background I used to use a Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse before replacing it with the Mighty Mouse, which hase a lower profile and thus is more comfortable to use.
Regarding what the sibling said about Wacom tablets: The idea is good, however all Wacoms for less than ~150 bucks are not supported well on newer Macs.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Try this one:
You use Lotus Notes every day. You don't send 'emails' you send 'memos'.
You know that the quick-send key combination is: ALT-1 - SEND
UNLESS, oh unless, you have SAVED the 'memo'. In this circumstances ALT-1 will FORWARD the 'memo'.
Can you believe how much unsend mail you get in your SAVED box due to this piece of genius?
Exactly at which point in the Lotus Notes UI design did they say 'ALT-1 will always SEND unless the user has SAVED'. This, amongst other things, can really make you pound the desk in frustration. Daily.
I like danish.
courtesy of Dictionary.com -
6. any malformed or monstrous person, thing, etc.
or
9. Informal.
a. shambles; mess.
b. anything that fails to develop, progress, or mature, as a design or project.
Blar.
You bought your son a toy iron and a doll that plays twinkle twinkle little star? What's next, a Mac? If he's going to have a boyfriend down the road, there's nothing wrong with that. But, could you at least try to send him down the right path?
To be fair, none of the things you've described are really "tech products." They are kids toys. Sure, they use technology, but what doesn't? I wouldn't describe my car, my toaster, or my alarm clock as tech products, even though that last one is pretty annoying.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
This got modded insightful?
Here's some insight for you: if the sound-generating toys annoy you so much, don't buy them. I doubt your two year old is buying his own toys. Get him some good old wood blocks or giant-sized legos. Not only will you get some quiet, it'll help him develop imagination instead of attention deficit disorder.
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
What makes you think that GP bought the annoying toys himself? And I used to be able to make a lot of sound with my giant-sized legos when I was that old. :-)
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
When I turn off the stereo, I want it to go OFF. I don't want a little red light to appear to tell me it's off. Now, replace that little red light with a 1000000 candle power white LED. That way, my neighbours across the street can tell that I've turned the stereo off by that eerie glow in my living room.
For work, I'm having to configure a build machine to replace three life-expired P3 boxen. It's a Dell Opti 260.
It's configured as a triple boot.
Windows 2000 - Fine.
Windows 98SE - Patchy, but shouldn't be a problem.
And given the clients we support, I'm also having to install Windows 95.
I am in utter driver hell here. Intel 845G/GL graphics set? I don't think Intel even started to do graphics chips until about '97 - at any rate there's nothing listed in the vanilla drivers. I'm going to try and fudge the '98 driver.
Chipset? Don't make me laugh!
Oh yeah - how are you going to transfer 6meg of graphics driver? USB? Hahahaha! [Before anyone suggests, I'm waiting until 2k is on then I'll use my USB laptop hard-disc].
At any rate, hardware and software are products of their time. When you mismatch them by more than about five years, you're going to have problems. That's life.
F_T
What I usually see on the news in Canada is the anchors adding an addendum when Canadians are killed in a plane crash/accident/whatever and not adding one when they are not. The same with local news outlets when local people are killed abroad (most commonly when Canadian soldiers are killed in Afganistan). It's: "Six soldiers were killed today, two of them from (insert local city/town)." not "Six soldiers were killed today but none from our (insert local city/town)."
I suppose there's not a whole lot of difference but it sounds a bit more tactful.
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
the advent of site requiring you to click through several pages to see 20 things
printer friendly
no i have not shot my gun in the air and gone 'Ahh!'
Go to Start->Run, type "services.msc", and then stop the "Automatic Updates" service.
What if I wanted to keep automatic updates and just eliminate the nag part?
I can see the fnords!
Well, I have a Logitech MX 310, and it works fine for me. It's big, but the buttons come far enough back that I can use it with my fingers without trouble.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Just reboot later and it will be back to normal, or you could restart the service.
By letting the public know no Danes were on board, other Danes who have relatives/friends/etc travelling in the area can rest assured their loved ones are ok.
In turn, this lets the airline, police and others not be overwhelmed by phone calls.
Lots of worries avoided by stating a simple fact.
I was not aware that the service would restart at reboot.
I can see the fnords!
Absolutely! I agree! iTunes is quite defective for several reasons.
:(
.wmv songs?
There. Fixed that for you.
Before we begin, I'd like to say that iTunes isn't so bad.. overall. However, there are some things that make you want to pull your hair out. If you have hair.
Here's a list, since you asked:
iTunes Bitching
B: Why isn't there a 'staging area' where you can add songs and do things to them before iTunes does what it does? (resolves names, artist, type etc).
Why: So many times I have dragged whole folders into the 'Music' folder - only to 'lose' some! Now I can't find them easily.. and not even search can help me
B: Can there be an option to keep the original name, or revert to previous information? Can this be held inside iTunes so reversion is possible?
Why: The 'offical' name/information may not be what I would like it to be
B: Why isn't there a 'broken' grouping in the Library - to list music that cannot be played/used on an iPod?
Why: An error message is displayed - after which you go hunting for music that is 'broken' for one reason or another.
While we are here: Yes, the 'convert to MP3' option is nice, but where is the 'Convert to MP3 and remove the original song and don't ever bug me about it again' option?
Continuing on, where, oh bloody where, is the 'convert this video to MP4' option?
B: Why isn't there an option to 'always convert to MP3' for
Why: This functionality would be nice to have.
B: Why is everything labelled as 'Music' or 'Movies'. I do have TV shows! I don't want my 'audio books' to be playing when I 'play all'.
Why: Having chapter 8 of Goblet of Fire play in the middle of music is disturbing.
B: Can we PLEASE, OF FOR THE LOVE OF THE DEITY OF YOUR CHOICE PLEASE, have an option to disable the 'double-click plays the song' functionality.
Why: I've lost track of how many times I have been modifying field values for songs and it has started playing the song. Not good.
Why: I have been building playlists and instead of dragging a song to a playlist it has interruppted the current song and started a new one instead of adding it to the playlist. Arggg!!!!!
This is enough to drive you insane after a couple of times.
B: Provide more information about what the options in Edit > Preferences actually do.
Why: Does the option 'shuffle songs' shuffle all songs? What are 'groupings'? What is the difference between the three? Why are these radio buttons instead of check boxes?
B: If a song has been converted to MP3 and added - then don't report that syncing it is 'a problem'.
Why: It has already been added - as an MP3!
B: If something cannot be played on the iPod then give me the options to do something about it! At the very least a 'remove this from the 'Music' folder or 'tag these items as faulty and don't report them again'
Why: It is very nice to get the error message, BUT I CANNOT FIND THAT SONG IN THE ITUNES PROGRAM ANYWHERE!?!
Misc: Yes, there is a column on the left hand side to indicate these problems. No, you can't sort on it. No, you can't filter on it - you need to manually scroll through the whole lot to find them.
B: I've found a song in my playlist that I don't want in iTunes at all - Why can't I delete it from iTunes from the playlist?
Why: Because sometimes you are playing through a playlist and would like to remove the song completely. Going through the main MUSIC folder for every single bloody song to remove is a pain.
B: Why can't my TV Shows go into 'TV Shows'.
Why: No. Don't answer. I know. Because they are 'movies' and I should create a movie playlist called 'TV Shows' to hold them.
B: Can't add I add my podcasts I have downloaded as MP3 files
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