The 10 Worst Tech Products of 2010

Barence writes "PC Pro has a count down of the ten worst tech gadgets of the year. Included in its hall of shame are: iPad Made Simple, 'a book containing 704 pages of advice on how to use a device that's universally acknowledged as being ridiculously easy to use'; the Dell Inspiron Duo, 'a tablet that leaves you longing to return to a keyboard and a touchpad'; and the £99 Next Tablet, the highlight of which was the 'eight-page Quick Start Guide.'"

Comments

i hereby nominate

[smash]

the Dell E6xxx series laptops. In my 16 years in the computing industry, i have never seen such a high failure/random wierd issue rate - before the machines even leave the bench (takes 25 minutes to network build with SOE) in many cases.

cheers Dell, for convincing me to move to HP Elitebooks.

Re:i hereby nominate

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure how you could be so mean...

Expecting a company to make what is damn near an Intel reference design work properly after only 27 BIOS updates(and counting, it was 24 only weeks ago) is cruel and unrealistic. Some people just aren't satisfied with anything(or, like our network manager, satisfied with anything related to his E6400, which he deep-sixed for his prior laptop, despite the significant spec bump...)

Re:i hereby nominate

[ArhcAngel]

If an AC endorsing a product doesn't give you pause then you are a brave soul indeed.

Re:i hereby nominate

[mcgrew]

I nominate "3D" TV.

Time to put PC Pro on a list like this...

[jedidiah]

I'm not inclined to cut Apple any slack and even I would not have put the Mini on that list.

Overall, this list seems pretty lame and mostly filled with stuff that doesn't really belong there.

Re:Time to put PC Pro on a list like this...

[Patch86]

TFA agrees with you, and points out that they're being a little unfair. But what they really wanted to do was bitch and moan about £650 for something specced the same as an Acer Aspire Revo; and worse, ripping you off on "optional upgrades" by charging "triple the price difference".

All of which, if true, is pretty shitty. They could probably have found better "worst products of 2010" if they'd wanted to, but their criticisms of the Mac Mini seem valid enough.

Re:The list was lamer than the products

[Gadget_Guy]

People overestimate how easy the iPad is to use. My first introduction to the iAnything was watching other people struggling to use their new devices. Without watching the screen, I could tell it was not the intuitive interface that everybody claimed.

When I finally got an iPhone I discovered the problem for myself. The interface is littered with hidden features that have no visual indication that they exist, let alone how to use them. Then there is the problem of the inconsistent user interface.

The great example that I always use is to ask how you delete things in iOS. It seems that every app has its own way to do it. Some of them rely on the user just having to know that they have to strike through an item or click and holding on an icon until a little red X appears. The only way to find out how to do it is to try out all the possibilities. I still can't say for sure that you can't delete a song from the iPod app, because maybe there is some method that I haven't tried. Either way it is a rubbish interface.

So I think that there is definitely a use for an iPad how-to book.