Weekend Open Forum: Your most regretted tech purchase?

[Wendig0]

My worst tech purchase was the Asus Transformer Prime. That tablet is an absolute disaster. Thankfully Amazon took it back, and fully refunded my money including the shipping. I took that money, and put it towards my best tech purchase in a long time, a Nikon D5100 kit, and some good glass to go with it.

 

[captaincranky]

For me, a slam dunk for worst tech purchase would have to be two(!) JVC S-VHS VCRs! OK, I used to sell JVC, was able to get it @ 1/2 price, bought a couple of pieces on employee purchase terms. Their stuff never seemed to meet spec, do what they claimed it would, or even last very long. I wound up selling every piece I bought in a month or so.

That said, I don't know why I though it would be different walking off the street as a "civilian" and buying these two turds. One broke in a couple of months. The other I simply stopped using, and went back to my Toshiba VCRs.

In my own defense I'd like to point out that DVD recorders, (free standing) were about a $1000,00 at the time.

My "second worst tech purchase", would be long and storied list, which would probably do me irreparable emotional harm by recanting it to you.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Zalman HD160 HTPC case. The airflow around the hard disks and expansion cards is woeful.

 

[SNGX1275]

Ha, you caught me there with HD-DVD, I still have that Xbox add-on laying around which serves no real purpose today. Another big and costly fail was a Sony 10" ultraportable that I loved at first, but a few weeks later and I regretted buying as it was too small for real productivity.

Other failed purchases: a couple of Palm PDAs that I barely used back in the day, and an iPhone 4 that took months until I could properly unlock and use. Add to this list numerous games that I bought on an impulse but never got around playing.

I got the Toshiba HD-A2? player when Walmart dropped it to somewhere around $100. I still use it though, you used to be able to get some really cheap HD-DVDs from inetvideo.com, I also got Planet Earth as a gift on HD-DVD it looks amazing, so it still gets some play. When I bought it, HD-DVD wasn't looking as strong as Bluray, but it certainly wasn't out of the fight yet.

I have a Palm PDA from Christmas 1998, it got very little use. Still have it. Haven't even tried to use it for anything since about mid 1999. Felt kind of bad about it because it was a gift that my parents thought I'd use, but I just couldn't find a legitimate use for it.

Not exactly in line with what the theme is here, but I bought some rechargeable NiZn batteries a while back. 1.6V, similar capacity to most NiMH rechargeables, sounded too good to be true and it was. They worked fantastic in my Canon S3-IS camera, I could take pics with a flash as quick as I wanted, but after a couple months one of the 4 died, making them useless in my camera. Shortly after another died. Only one works now, and the charger requires pairs to charge.

 

[gooderguy]

Bought a Packard Bell 386SX for $3000 in 1993, then a month later I spent $250 on a Sound Blaster card, then just a couple weeks after that my hard drive died and they refused to warranty it because I had opened the case to install the sound card, so I had to fork out another $250 for a 60MB hard drive.
That's also when I learned about proprietary systems that you couldn't upgrade easily. Went with clones after that and ever since for desktops.

 

[TrevDog]

Double dinger at a small office where I help out - Eight years ago they were using an Onstream USB30 30GB External USB tape drive which was starting to fail. Onstream was virtually dead, and they decided to try a brand new product, the Iomega REV35. The convenience it offered outweighed the $500 it cost. It was fast, compact, and came with simple backup software. It was a snap to set up, and easy for them to manage. Sadly, REV failed just outside of warranty and repair was more than the drive + 2 cartridges. They now have nice backup coverage with internal RAID and external hard drives hidden from burglars.

 

[Marnomancer]

Let's just hope I'm not going to regret buying a Radeon HD 5550. I've put too much effort into reading reviews.

 

[Guest]

A LeadTek GeForce 5950 Ultra...I spent $550 dollars on it only to have it become obsolete 1 month later...FML

 

[Guest]

Microsoft Sidewinder X6 keyboard. It had some awesome ideas and features but the execution was just terrible. The slightly smaller than normal layout and placement of the Esc key was bad. And then there was the ghosting. My god, I would encounter the ghosting every single time I played CoD 4.

But I really loved the volume and lighting dials on it, and the removable numpad was pretty cool.

If they re-released an updated X6 with a standard layout and made the numpad wireless or had a cable from the main keyboard body to the numpad so you could sit it on your desk away from the main keyboard body I would buy it if my mind wasn't now set on something mechanical.

 

[MCJeeba]

Apple iPad. First generation. Bought it for the hell of it. "used" it for about a week. For another year, it sat on top of my fridge waiting to be awoken just for Netflix while I was cooking. Finally sold it on craigslist. Only lost $200 on it. Not too bad.

Then again, most of my tech purchases are bad purchase simply because 90% of the time, it's something I absolutely do not need. Example: I have a desktop PC with an eyefinity setup, that I've invested over 3,500 dollars into... And 5 laptops. Asus G74, Asus G51vx, Samsung, Macbook and Macbook Air.

Sincerely,
Losing His Mind

 

[Archean]

Almost every android phone I've owned (amongst them Galaxy S/HTC Sensation) due to performance/stability issues; so if I didn't have a secondary smartphone I'd be feeling pretty ruined but thankfully I usually use my droids for work cell sim and can turn it off

 

[Per Hansson]

A $800 Dell 2709W monitor, it had over 50ms input lag and was thus usless for fast paced FPS games, it made me write this article: https://www.techspot.com/blog/645/a...y-and-what-to-look-for-on-your-next-purchase/

I've made other small mistakes, like buying a 7800GT and than like a month later the 7900GT was released, but I upgraded anyway and sold the old one at not a bad loss...

Another thing which really put me off was trying RAID5 on my Maximus Formula (ICH9R) it was simply useless and after a while I gave up and bought a real nice $500 RAID controller.
But the thing is it would have been much cheaper to just buy another harddrive and run RAID-1 instead of RAID5

 

[Captain828]

I regret buying a Samsung 226BW monitor: over-saturated colors, poor viewing angles, crappy stand and backlight bleeding, and it wasn't very cheap either.

Replaced that with a Dell U2410.

To TS staff: would be cool to see next week-end's WOF about the best tech purchase made

 

[Guest]

Dual AMD Athlon MP's for a desktop system

 

[Guest]

apple ipad 2 two month ago

 

[Marnomancer]

Really Matt, if you had seen my draft for the mod I told you about at the time you bought that case, you surely wouldn't have bought it. Antec-like performance for $32!

 

[Guest]

N97 Worst Let down ever... Fake pub made me choose the N97 over the omnia HD. I would have chosen. Now I'm happy with my Droid SGSII.

 

[LinkedKube]

8800 Ultra upon release, 799usd, nuff said.

 

[Guest]

Bought 2x512 MB RAM for an old ThinkPad X30. Both expensive (100 USD) and incompatible! Also, the Cooler Master Sileo 500. Poor construction quality, it cut my finger during the built. Not worth the money.

 

[franxalot]

Ditto on the ZIP drive. Should have realized that the name told it all...

 

[Mister_K]

Hitachi 1TB HDD, RMAed 2 weeks ago and still no reply. Had it for few months ...

 

[Tekkaraiden]

Anything made by HP (a cd burner, digital camera and two printers), everything broke down a week after warranty expired.

 

[Guest]

Anything made by Apple. My iPod has been replaced twice, and can no longer be charged through USB. It truly is crapware. OSX in any form is an incompatibility nightmare.

Buying high end CPUs is ridiculous; now they are outshone by Celerons. Future proofing computers in general sounds like a joke. I have flushed money down the drain buying high end components in general.

In the future I will buy the components I find adequate at the time and that are the most power efficient.

The case and power supply are ironically the most enduring investments. A beautiful case could remain beautiful. Old outdated components are foul more often than not.

 

[hitech0101]

Regret buying a Avermedia t.v. tuner very difficult to get it working also placed very close to the gpu blocking its fan.Hence a waste of money.

 

[Marnomancer]

Anything made by HP (a cd burner, digital camera and two printers), everything broke down a week after warranty expired.

Manufacturers usually calculate the average time their products run without a hitch, and set that as a warranty period. That way, they know that if anything breaks down, it'll be after the warranty expires, and so they won't be bothered. Money saving policy, you see?
I mean, they can't be that helpful now, can they?