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PC World 's Best 100 Products of 2007
javipas writes "The popular PC World magazine has published its annual list of the 100 best products of the year, with a few surprises on it. Google Apps Premiere Edition ranks first, with 4 other service products on the list. Apple has six products on it, with Tiger — a two-year old OS — on the ninth position. Microsoft and Dell have four each, and Canon and Nikon, three. Ubuntu 7.04 has made it, and has entered on the 16th position. That makes you think about the kind of ranking process, doesn't it?"
Save it for December already!
If X is the new Y, and Y is "X is the new Y", solve for X.
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http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,13193
That last question makes me think that the submitter should get -1 Troll for the actual submission.
Is something messed up over there at PC World? Vista clocks set wrong?
How can you do a Best of 2007 when we aren't even half way through 2007????? Seriously. 2009 cars coming out next week?
I like compression and all, but moving political primaries up, now this.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
it will be released in 2007..
Reads like a who's-who of PC World Advertisers...
Did they rate them by number of ads, or total dollars spent?
Wow ! I realy don't know why this on was there, but, every photographer out there think that a bad camera because the lack of AF-motor and the impossibility to use half the lenses of Nikon !
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
You'd think Vista would make a PCWorld top 100 list, wouldn't you?
Ouch.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
...annnnd coming around the halfway mark it's McAfee SiteAdvisor edging out Canonical Ubuntu 7.04 by a length with Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite hot on their tail. Pioneer Elite 1080p PRO-FHD1 is neck-and-neck with RIM Blackberry 8800 but wait ... Apple Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is coming up strong on the outside turn passing Adobe Premiere Elements 3.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
How about the Samsung u740 cellphone? It's the size of the Motorola razor, but isn't held together by hopes and dreams, and has a handy-dandy keyboard for texting (and of course it flips both up and to the side for calling and texting, respectively). Probably the best mobile phone I've owned, as it's compact but very functional and well-built.
:-P which is why I thought of it, but I do think it deserves a spot if something like the latest GeForce card is there (can it mow my lawn for me yet or it still just for marginally better graphics?).
Yes there was totally an ad for it on this particular Slashdot page just now
I like basketball!!1!
Google's terms of service for Google Apps has some alarming boilerplate about the company not being responsible for lost data.
I think a lot of organizations will have qualms about sensitive files living on some Google server somewhere.
The list is chock-full of piles of shit that have superior competition. It's paid advertising. Nothing to see here, move along.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm putting on my sound blocking earplugs and ignoring the rest of the rants...
...just scrolled through the list to make sure vista wasnt there?
- best products of 2006 are listed in June ...
- so companies release their 2007 products between January and May
- so best products of 2007 are listed in May
-
If you want to be generous in your interpretation, maybe you could say they included it to make the point that, even at two years old, it's still better than most of what's out there. (Reference: see almost every Vista review out there. Their quip: "Name a good Vista feature that goes beyond what's in Tiger. Yeah, we can't either.") Speaking of Vista, it didn't make the list at all. Not 1st, not 99th, nowhere.
:-)
Craigslist also made the list, and that's what, 10 years old now? I guess the list means "100 best tech products that you can still get this year"--in which case OS X and CL definitely belong. It's "The 100 Best Products of 2007," not "The 100 Best NEW Products of 2007." (CL just gets better and better, though I wish they'd make the jump from plain text to a database so I could RELIABLY find Macintoshes without having to look for Apple and Mac and Macintosh and IMAC (OMG CAPS!!!!!11) They don't have to go all the way and make people specify VRAM and 10/100 vs. gigabit, but mfg-make-model-speed would be nice. It could all be optional, so retards who don't want to mess with dropdowns can just accept that they'll get fewer views.)
More than anything, any "best of" list that includes Adobe Premier is immediately suspect.
If you want to get really picky, you could point out that 2007 is not over yet. You know what it is? I think it's "We Felt Like Making a List of a Bunch of Things We Like." Thank you, Slashdot, for slavishly supplying them with pageviews.
Suggested tag: slownewsday
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Absent from the lineup is Sonys wonderchild.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
...online porn tops the list.
Have gnu, will travel.
I would've stuck the Core 2 architecture at #1 as it's made such a huge impact this year across all platforms; desktop, laptop and servers.. There are some notable omissions; the MacBook for one. Why is the overpriced MacBook Pro on there when the oh-so-cheap MacBook isn't? OneNote 2007 deserves a mention. I'd also like to think the Momento 70 digital picture frame should be on there - it's wireless and actually works properly with a PC.
Stuff that shouldn't be on there? iTunes (yawn) - yes, it's iTunes and in 2007 it's done nothing different from what it did in 2006. As I'm in the UK I'd also wager Apple TV too. The concept's nice, but until Apple start selling video over here, it's not particularly inspiring sat under my TV. Ditto for Adobe CS3 - until they start selling it an a realistic price in the UK, it's not getting my vote at all. We're paying something like $700 for a Photoshop CS2 > CS3 upgrade for Pete's sake!!
Oh yeah, and why are we doing top 100s in May again?
The awards list reminds of a manure spreader: Not much accuracy but lots of coverage.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Ok this is neither a consumer product (in the sense that it is sold for money) nor is it new for 2007! I suspect many other entries also fail one or both of these tests. So where is the top 100 list of things to smoke when writing for PC World to provide the most outrageous articles possible? Because THATS news I can use...
This would be better done as a Murray Walker impression, complete with totally inaccurate predictions and a pants-on-fire delivery. Or, at least, it would reflect rankings and prognostications in IT better than the athletic commentators who are generally more sober.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well I'm not sure about the integrity of the article but there are a couple of things that stand out
Games:
Wii at no 3
XBox 360 elite at 18
PS3 nowhere to be seen.
The 360 has been out for over a year and I'm not sure how much 1080p and a bigger HDD make now, I guess in a couple of years when HD downloads become the norm this will make a difference. 1080p TVs have been quite rare in the UK until recently but I saw a very nice looking 40" Samsung the other day for about £1000 so I might treat myself at the end of the year.
(for the record I've got a 360 premium and a wii, I'll probably end up with a PS3 if FFXIII is exclusive but not before, too expensive at the moment!)
OSX Tiger at 9
Apple TV at 11
80GB iPod at 26
Macbook Pro at 82
No Zune
No Vista
I'm assuming that the HP DV900t 17" laptop runs Windows Media Center
iTunes at 61
WMP 11 at 91
So it looks like Apple "wins" over MS in the home media dept
Strangely on my XP box I use iTunes for music and WMP / VLC for Video. I just don't like Quicktime. No rational reason (now it plays video at full screen) but I just can't get on with it. It seems slow and unresponsive.
Still it looks like Apple were right to drop the computer from their name and go for the media market. I get the impression that they've always had the Pro market and so the move to consumer seems to be quite easy for them. (now if they'd just drop the phone bit from the iPhone and sell me a widescreen touch sensitive iPod I'd be a happy man)
I don't see Windows Vista on there...Wow...
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
That list is rubbish. Where's for example the Nokia N95. The most advanced cellphone in the world to date!
They went from a $4000+ gaming PC which is the epitome of poor value for money to freeware like Firefox and Audacity.
:)
This list is just a bunch of stuff some guy thinks is cool. If I cared about that I would read people's Amazon lists all day instead of Slashdot
What the heck does this mean in the wikipedia article on four thirds?
"Four Thirds is an open standard, however, as it does not meet the "allowing anyone to use" criteria commonly accepted as the definition of an open standard."
Does that make sense?
I was going to say "indoor plumbing" or "forks" or something that is fundamental to modern existence to be among the top 100 products you can buy in 2007, but those are probably just assumed to be given.
Well, it is PC World's list so I guess that should indicate the bias... I assume the list is the ranking of the top 100 advertisers to PC World.
I could live without all of those products (I rarely use a handful of them), but life would be very tough without running water.
4 people modded this up, 3 people posted replies above me, and no one mentions the obvious counterexample: Vista with its $500 million marketing campaign doesn't make the list.
(Best 100 products) of 2007, not Best (100 products of 2007)
Once again, I get modded Troll when saying the same thing has others modded insightful. Can there be any doubt that the moderation system does not work?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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What if Gutsy Gibbon turns out to be better than Feisty Fawn, which, btw, will be released in a few months? Also, 7.04 is not an LTS(Long Term Service).
I'm glad that SightSpeed beat out Skype on this list. The video quality of SightSpeed is far superior. Works better on my mac as well.
<happiness>beer</happiness>
I'd rather look back on the whole year rather than 11/12ths of it. Or are we just saying that December is totally irrelevant?
This ridiculous game of one-upmanship that people play with each other to try to get their annual reviews in ahead of others, etc is just ridiculous. Frankly, it just makes them look stupid.
And while I'm on the subject, why the hell does EA title the annual releases of their sports game for the following years rather than the years that they're published? Are people really stupid enough to think that when they buy Madden 2008 this year that they're somehow getting next year's game in advance?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I owned an Olympus E-500 for a while. Regardless of my opinion of the picture quality or advanced features of this camera, the 4/3rds frame ratio stinks. The fact that it's smaller than the APS-C-sized sensor didn't help but didn't hurt. I went back to Nikon.
The Oly produces pictures that do not fit any photo processor's standard print sizes. Get ready to crop, crop, crop 'til you drop (or get a hand cramp). You can send Canon/Nikon images straight to a photo processor if you're lazy; they're close enough. Nobody has figured out how to auto-crop the Oly images, and unless you crop every one by hand you'll be disappointed. Doing this hundreds of times for every shooting session is not how I wanted to spend my afternoons.
It's also pointless to buy an 8 or 10 MP camera if you're going to discard 2MP of every image.
Finally, 4/3rds isn't an open standard; they're all made by or pay fees to Olympus. Canon produces their own sensors and Nikon uses Sony sensors but at least they're the same size as the old APS-C film frames, so there's some history and experience with lenses of that magnification factor and processors know how to correctly print the images. Sony/Minolta, Pentax, Samsung, Fuji, and Sigma also use this sensor size so it's hard to call it proprietary or non-standard.
What we are waiting for:
What we don't want:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
So a whole article of opinion is worthy of the front page, but expressing an opinion on those opinions is troll?
When a major retailer like Dell has to sell XP again because Vista machines have so many problems (believe me, I've had to fix _brand new_ Dells with Vista), you have to think there's some honesty in NOT including it.
So maybe it is based somewhat on advertising dollars spent, but you have to give them at least some credit for honesty. Vista does not deserve to be called a "best" product at all. It's mediocre at best and a complete nightmare if you run more than a few applications.
Maybe SP1 will be better, but I, for one, don't intend to run the piece of crap. The only reason I use XP at all is because I was able to legally get a copy of the corporate version, sans activation and most of that other crap.
"The popular PC World magazine "
As opposed to the tired old rag that I see on the newstand occasionally?
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
Thanks to PC World for not making this a 10-page article with 10 items on each page, with gloriously large ads for each of the 10 products.
While we can argue on the merits of individual items on the list (which, arguably, is part of the reason to post such a list) the presentation format is top notch.
It's too bad Opera 9.x didn't make the list. Maybe they couldn't find the script to make google apps run on it.
One of the best newest features on Slashdot and it's left off the list! Those bastages at PC World!
I was glad to see Winpatrol there - been using it for a few years now and it's a nice little app that centralises management of startup programs and services, keeps an eye on these things (as well as others, like your hosts file) for you and notifies when they change, and has some other handy features. None of it's rocket science, but it's all been nicely put together and works well. No, it's not open source, and I know any competent Windows user should be able to manage these things themselves, but it's a handy utility that makes an otherwise fiddly set of processes extremely straightforward.
IANAL, but if you don't RTFM you can STFU. YMMV.
I expected this article in the December 2006 edition! Lazy Lazy Lazy!
Clearly, the products on the list don't actually have to be from this year, or last year. I think Audacity is the bees knees, but it's been out for ... pretty much forever (in internet time), so why is it on that list? Is there anyone out there interested in Audacity who doesn't already know about it? really?
burrocrisy
and that would be what? Ruling by jackasses? Never has a slashdot misspelling been more apropos
OK, we all know that this is only May, and that many of these products are well over a year old already, but even so, I'm not sure that there are a hundred products in the last 'while' that are worth being on a list. Well, a good list at any rate.
I've seen very very few products worth raising an approving eyebrow over in the last few years. The wii is one, OSX is one, Solaris 10 is one, and... I'm not sure what else. The iPod, I suppose. Either iTunes or WMP 10, but neither is without faults. Firefox 2.
Video cards? No chance--someone will come out with a significantly newer, faster, better video card every six months or so, but the evolutionary phase is over. Same with printers--nothing new since cheap lasers and reliable photo-quality inkjets. Certain segments of computing are starting to mature, to the point that there isn't any significant gain in new products. (Hence why vendors are forcing obsolescence on their older products more aggressively all the time.)
Then we have the downright bad products that make these lists. The blackberry provides one feature of questionable utility (mobile email--but it's a phone too, and that's already mobile!) and does it badly, dragging down its other functions at the same time. Office 2007, which was created for no reason other than (a) to sell an unneccessary product to people who already have a sufficient product, and (b) to disrupt the converging competitive standards. Google Groups. The list goes on.
So what genuinely new and innovative (and also good!) products are out there? Without an artificial number to reach (10, 20, 100, etc.) I wonder how many have come out in each of the last five years.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
How can I make it to 100? Credits cards and bank emptied. Got a pay-day loand and hocked the car too,
and set my bills off for another month, they can wait. Going to be interesting when FedEx and UPS start delivering all this stuff! Anyone know a deal on outlet strips and some furniture? Oh but wait. If I get deployed next month I'm going to have to sell it alll.
Thanks for helping me start my day with a laugh!