Tie between a few devices. E Machines tower PC back in the late 90's. Worked, but was really slow and almost completely un-upgradeable. Mach Speed MP3 player that bricked exactly two days after the warranty ended and was a pain to use before that. Belkin switch that would get very hot, then died after about a year and a half. Samsung refrigerator that cost 2400 and died one week after warranty. Luckily, after calling Samsung, we found they would honor one year from purchase OR fifteen months from manufacture. We made that deadline by exactly one day, and they replaced the fridge for free. The replacement has been running about two and a half years. Great service from Samsung.
What's the worst piece of tech you've ever bought?
- Thread starter Scorpus
- Start date
cliffordcooley
Posts: 13,141 +6,441
Well if we are talking about appliances, I just recently decommissioned a Dish Washer. The button interface had water damage in the flex ribbon for the control board. I looked up a replacement and the price was nearly $200 for basically what you would find in a TV remote. It may have taken 15 years to breakdown, but it was avoidable. Just like most issues that keep people spending their money on replacements.
I have to agree with the Acer comment 6 years ago I bought 6 PC's to build a network. 3 failed out of the box..... the others I did not bother with.
But the two worst: 1 Going back over 20 years now a Philips Mobile Phone the battery always fell off; and 2. A Ectacto 10"Jetbook. Great e-reader but was difficult to charge and lasted tops 4 months before it dumped its whole opsys.
But the two worst: 1 Going back over 20 years now a Philips Mobile Phone the battery always fell off; and 2. A Ectacto 10"Jetbook. Great e-reader but was difficult to charge and lasted tops 4 months before it dumped its whole opsys.
J
Jibberish18
Nokia 5800. Definitely, the 5800. Absolute TURD of a phone.
tavliban
Posts: 13 +0
Not the XBOX360, but the add on HD-DVD player...
Bought it and then after a week or so, HD-DVD protocol was abandoned...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_HD_DVD_Player
Bought it and then after a week or so, HD-DVD protocol was abandoned...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_HD_DVD_Player
hood6558
Posts: 353 +110
My first SSD - OCZ Vertex 4 SSD 128GB - worked great for 19 days, then disappeared from BIOS. I had spent those days getting everything perfect in Windows, was devastated when it failed with no chance of recovery. I remember thinking, "if SSDs are this unreliable, I'll stick with hard drives". Luckily I returned it and bought a Crucial M4 - a drive which still works great 3 years later in a system sold to a friend. Faith restored, I went on to buy many more SSDs and never had another failure ( most were Samsung but quite a few "cheapies" as well).
Wizwill
Posts: 129 +61
The Iomega Jaz drives in SCSI flavor were going to save the world for repair techs. Every OS known to man on a different bootable cartridge/drive.They probably did for the cartridge supplier. I must have gone through a dozen or more before that piece of crap went into the trash. What a piece of excresence!
I liked the Iomega Zip 100 and particularly the 250 zip drives fine, even had a bootable SCSI 100 one built into a old desktop with full Windows for Workgroups (all video and sound drivers etc) on a 100 mb zip disk. Worked pretty well.
I also used to use an external SCSI 250 Zip drive with a PCMCIA SCSI card to rather quickly extract data from client laptops. They were recognized from BIOS and you could also quickly boot the laptop from a disk with the correct files loaded onto it (in the right format and order). Still have that one and a few disks.
Wizwill.
My old desktop still has a 2 250 drive above the "real" Teac 1.44 floppy drive and keep a few 250 disks; never use it anymore. Thanks for the memories
Wizwill
There are too many to list but I name one: Abit's BX6 R2 motherboard. I couldn't get the damn thing to work with all four DIMM slots filled (only three) so I returned it.
I am challenged when it comes to maps and I eagerly awaited the arrival of a good sat nav device. It's probably nearly 10 years ago now but a UK company called Evesham launched their BM6300 sat nav. It got five star reviews from computeract!ve magazine amongst others and I rushed to buy. I spent over half an hour in the garden in winter trying to set it up. It would lose the signal constantly on journeys due to the poor aerial. I ordered an external one to put on the car roof. The carrier came when we were out and I had to go right out into the back of beyond to find their warehouse. I couldn't find it because the sat nav signal kept dropping. I took the sat nav back but was required to get a RMA number before the seller would give me a refund or exchange. All the phone numbers were premium rated and they kept passing me around. I got my refund in the end and soon after Evesham went bust but I've never bought any other tech item that was as aggravating.
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INKJET PRINTERS. Im pretty sure they're also considered "tech".
Been disposing at least 10 inkjet printers over the last decade because 99.99% of inkjet printers on the market is utter !#^&. Enough said.
So what's the 0.01%? I think it may be my brother inkjet printer. first it has wifi so I can directly print from my android phone. then it lets me print more than 1500 pages without a single change of printhead and cartridge. sounds impossible isn't it? not to brother. they designed the cartridge to be user-refillable. No "ink cartridge chip" or other stuffs. Too good to be true? Nope! while the ink is extremely cheap, the machine costs about $150 2-years ago. Not to mention this printer belongs to the slow and lousy image quality group. My previous lexmark wifi printer did print both faster and at much higher quality, until lexmark shuts down the inkjet division and naturally I threw it away.
While we're at it, Intel D946GZIS motherboard. Onboard sound conked out within first year and it died one year later. Replaced it with Gigabyte motherboard and the PC still runs 7 years later. Go figure.
Been disposing at least 10 inkjet printers over the last decade because 99.99% of inkjet printers on the market is utter !#^&. Enough said.
So what's the 0.01%? I think it may be my brother inkjet printer. first it has wifi so I can directly print from my android phone. then it lets me print more than 1500 pages without a single change of printhead and cartridge. sounds impossible isn't it? not to brother. they designed the cartridge to be user-refillable. No "ink cartridge chip" or other stuffs. Too good to be true? Nope! while the ink is extremely cheap, the machine costs about $150 2-years ago. Not to mention this printer belongs to the slow and lousy image quality group. My previous lexmark wifi printer did print both faster and at much higher quality, until lexmark shuts down the inkjet division and naturally I threw it away.
While we're at it, Intel D946GZIS motherboard. Onboard sound conked out within first year and it died one year later. Replaced it with Gigabyte motherboard and the PC still runs 7 years later. Go figure.
agb81
Posts: 79 +40
Anything Biostar makes
Bought a Biostar Nvidia FX 5500 (IIRC) that overheated until system crashed.
Biostar MoBo that had some bad capacitors.
Regarding appliances
A simple 2 door, 15 cubic feet GE fridge. POS failed after 2 years and repair was 80% of the value of the fridge, still have it taking space in my house.
Bought a Biostar Nvidia FX 5500 (IIRC) that overheated until system crashed.
Biostar MoBo that had some bad capacitors.
Regarding appliances
A simple 2 door, 15 cubic feet GE fridge. POS failed after 2 years and repair was 80% of the value of the fridge, still have it taking space in my house.
It would take me hours to recount all the awful products I've owned, from the Archos Multimedia Jukebox 20 to some 5.1 surround headphones to the Zalman 5.1 headphones that were a colossal waste of money. Oh, I also had a Blackberry Storm. I was about to explain how crappy the Samsung Droid Charge was, but now that I think about it the Blackberry Storm was even worse. I will give it credit, it was pretty durable. Had a giant chunk missing out of a corner, but it still worked. I was constantly pulling the battery on that thing though. And the whole click-screen typing was a good idea that worked like garbage.
robb213
Posts: 352 +123
I was always interested in those from Bigfoot, but could never convince myself of why I should actually get one. Seeing the past handful of years, glad I never bothered with them--onboard NICs have been fine for me anyways.
Yeah towards the end OCZ was having a very tough time--products either worked or were pretty much DoA at high rates. I had a problem with the original Vector, but thankfully they cross shipped an RMA replacement, so I wasn't too PO'd. Although, since Toshiba bought them out a year or 2 ago, I've seen improvements.
Tough call.
-Microsoft Zune
-iomega Jaz Drive, $100 a disk, and the MTBF seemed to be about 50 hours a disk.
-Razor mouse, I hear they tend to be good, but it was one of my worst mice, and shortest living.
-$1 generic molex to SATA power adapter. One of the pins popped out while moving. When powered on it made contact with my video card and lit my PC on fire.
-Every RC vehicle ever
-Microsoft Zune
-iomega Jaz Drive, $100 a disk, and the MTBF seemed to be about 50 hours a disk.
-Razor mouse, I hear they tend to be good, but it was one of my worst mice, and shortest living.
-$1 generic molex to SATA power adapter. One of the pins popped out while moving. When powered on it made contact with my video card and lit my PC on fire.
-Every RC vehicle ever
NightAngel79
Posts: 230 +79
I didn't buy it but, it was a 3" Chinese handheld video player. This was before video on devices was a real thing. Right before the iphone was released. It required a POS software to convert stuff to play avi's and UI was horrible.
Worst part? I traded my electronic Super Star Destroyer, my Power of the Force Snow Speeder, and a Atarti 7800 with 30 games... fml
Worst part? I traded my electronic Super Star Destroyer, my Power of the Force Snow Speeder, and a Atarti 7800 with 30 games... fml
cliffordcooley
Posts: 13,141 +6,441
Oh my, don't even get me started talking about all the crap I haven't bought. I could start on page one of a Dollar Store sales paper and list everything.
p51d007
Posts: 3,930 +3,877
I actually loved the zip drive. I never had the COD problem. I'd like to plug it in one of these days and see if any of the 100 zip disks I still have, will read anything, just to see what's still on the disks.
It occurs to me just how different items can operate. I had the exact same D-Link router and it ran stable for 4 years straight. I only rebootet it 4 times and it wasn't even nessecary, I did it "just because".
Phr3d
Posts: 404 +87
Late to the party, but the absolute winner for me was the ABit mobo for the Athlon (have since exorcised its model number from memory, sorry) . Was a fantastic mobo, best available said I -FIFTY NINE times-.. oddly my business suffered a bit when Every One melted its capacitors right on schedule. Imagine the laughter from my ex-customers when I called to inform them that due to a class action suit, they could send their long-since-replaced monstro-board in to ABit and get a replacement mobo for Free.
On the plus side, a few forgave me after a few years and we talk occasionally.
On the plus side, a few forgave me after a few years and we talk occasionally.
Dude...YES I hate WD ExtHDs. I bought a 2TB Elements portable ExtHD and it worked long enough for me to take all my files off of my laptop before I installed Fedora on it. Went to recover the info a week or so later, and somehow the ExtHD no longer functions.
Never again.
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