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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,
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.
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
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.
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.
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!!
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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'
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.
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?
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.
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.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
'nuff said.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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!
> Yes, inane videocy was just what the web needed. Good going Macromedia.
I just finished playing 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself, and I can tell you, inane videocy is just what I needed. Thank god for flash.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Annoying pop-over ads. Like in the article. Irony, anyone?
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.
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.
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
Uh, hello? Spam? Anyone, Bueller? Spam is by far the most f*#cking annoying and should be high atop the list.
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.
Sleeps-With-DRM: I'm sorry, but old Runs-On-DOS will have to be left behind.
Plays-With-Kernel: But chief, I love Runs-On-DOS!
Sleeps-With-DRM: It's for the good of the tribe, she can't chew the instruction set anymore. It is our way.
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...
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.
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.
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.
To your post: 1) You can navigate dialogue boxes with the keyboard. You have to turn it on in system prefs though. 2) Pressing Enter is a Windows method. The Mac way isn't right or wrong, just different. As with most Mac keyboard commands, they usually require a modifier key so you don't inadvertantly cause the machine to do something you didn't want it to. A perfect example is deleting a file. With Windows, the delete key moves a file to the recycle bin. If you aren't paying attention, you can lose a file. Perhaps you have a sentence highlighted in Word and you hit the delete key to erase it, but you didn't realize the focus was actually on a file on the desktop...your sentence remains and your file goes in the bin. With OS X, you have to hold down the command key + Del key to move a file to the trash. This way it is impossible to inadvertantly delete a file because the computer requires a deliberate action to make it happen.
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 !