Fifteen Classic PC Design Mistakes

Harry writes "Once upon a time, it wasn't a given that PC owners should be able to format their own floppy disks. Or that ports should be standard, not proprietary. Or that it was a lousy idea to hardwire a PC's AC adapter, or to put the power supply in the printer so that a printer failure rendered the PC unusable, too. Over at Technologizer, Benj Edwards has taken a look at some of the worst design decisions from personal computing's early years — including ones involving famous flops such as the PCJr, obscure failures such as Mattel's Aquarius, and machines that succeeded despite flaws, like the first Mac. In most instances — but not all — their bad decisions taught the rest of the industry not to make the same errors again."

Comments

Re:Flamebait: Bundling the Mircosoft OS

[Sobrique]

One day I dream of having a post that's accumulated both -5 troll, and +5 insightful on the same post.

My favorite PC blunder

[EmagGeek]

Installing Windows on a PC with special hardware (like a raid controller) STILL requires a floppy drive to load the driver.

Re:Worst Mistake That Still Needs Fixing

[tibman]

RROD hurt their rep too much

Re:Worst Mistake That Still Needs Fixing

[Mister Whirly]

Proprietary ports, whether open or closed specs, still suck.

Re:Apple's fascination with single button mice

[Actually, I do RTFA]

But to claim that Apple requires you to Control-click when that's been no more than an option for years just shows ignorance.

Okay... Apple requires either that you replace the mouse it ships with (bad choice Apple), move the mouse around further to get to menu options that would be available via right-click on a Windows machine (worst choice), or Control-click.

I'd rather have only one option (right-click) then a choice of three worse options.

Re:Worst Mistake That Still Needs Fixing

[cpotoso]

No, I'm suggesting he spend sufficient money to get a machine he needs rather than one that is designed for an "average" home user. And last I checked, $1200 hardly counts as "multiple kilobucks".

Why? Why should I spend $1,200 in a machine that can be bought for less than half? Why is that I can buy an EEE that offers all I need when I want to travel light for under $300, weights ~1 kg, is very portable, and comes with 1M pixel camera, speakers, microphone, usb, wi-fi, ethernet, and SD slot, and yet there is no comparable beast from apple?

Simple answer: Steve. He knows. He knows best. He wants you to do things HIS way. Control freak...

Pity, OSX would have a brilliant future if not for the his narrow vision.

Re:Worst Mistake That Still Needs Fixing

[jedidiah]

> Apple is trying to preserve a certain "high-end" brand image and user experience
> which means selling higher spec machines that avoid the "my computer is slow and
> crappy" complaint that one often hears about "mid-market" PCs

You've got to be joking.

That's exactly what the mini is.

When I finally ran MacOS on my oldest mini (~2 years old) I was
rather shocked at the result. It turned out that it was not infact
sufficiently equipped to deal with the OS that it was bundled with.
The memory was gravely insufficient (512M) and the onboard video
was triggering warnings in the video apps.

This is how I came to be reaquainted with my putty knife.

The stock configuration was unusuable.

Besides. Things change. New apps come out. You descover a feature you
hadn't used before. Or they come out with a new version of the OS.

A compaq crap-box may be big fat and ugly and not nearly expandable
enough for the amount of space it wastes but I can at least easily
get at the RAM slots or drive bays and it doesn't cost $2400.