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.'"

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.

I nominate the Platystation Move

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job ripping off Nintendo. Who the hell came up the glowing ping-pong ball idea?

I would nominate Kinect, but at least there are other uses for it.

Re:i hereby nominate

[mcgrew]

I nominate "3D" TV.

Re:The list was lamer than the products

[Belial6]

The funny part is how everyone just accepts the Apple PR. I'm not saying that an iPad is rocket science, but there are configuration setting in the thing that many people just wouldn't know what they mean. In fact, there are just as many setting to configure to use an iPad as there are to use a new Windows PC. And speaking of a PC, you have to have one and use it to get full use of the iPad. So, if a Windows/OSX mand simple book makes any sense at all, so does an iPad made simple book.

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

[Delusion_]

I've played with the Apple store Mac configuration tool any number of times, and the upgrade prices are preposterous. They are utterly divorced from reality, and it makes them look very bad - if you're charging five times the cost differential between hard drive A and hard drive B, you get the sneaking suspicion—probably accurate—that their initial prices for peripherals are similarly rapacious.

Take the $700 Mac mini. Set aside that it is overpriced, for the moment, since some people will pay more for the fact that it is designed well, and that they want to use MacOS.

Processor
Included: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Upgrade: 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo [Add $150.00]

Newegg: Difficult to give a precise comparison, but consider that the price difference between the 2.4GHz (P8600) and 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo (P9600) is $120. This is retail pricing, and not what an OEM like Apple would be paying.

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RAM:
Included: 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x1GB
Upgrade: 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x2GB [Add $100.00]
Upgrade: 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $500.00]

Newegg:
2x 1GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM: Starting at $27.98
2x 2GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM: Starting at $49.98 [Add $22]
2x 4GB DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM: Starting at $139.98 [Add $112]

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Hard drive:
Included: 320GB Serial ATA Drive
Upgrade: 500GB Serial ATA Drive [Add $100.00]

Newegg:
HITACHI Travelstar 7K500 HTE725032A9A364 320GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99 (this is the exact drive in the default setup, which I feel is the fairest way to go as I don't want to compare it to a drive whose vertical clearance might be slightly different)
HITACHI Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300 (0A57915) 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $59.99 [Add $0.00]

I'm told this faster drive also works:
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $64.99 [Add $5.00]

As well as this larger, faster drive:
Seagate Momentus ST9750420AS 750GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive $109.99 [Add $50]

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I don't mean to be "that guy", because I appreciate why some people prefer Apple, and they make some hardware that, if prices were less insane, I would be interested in, but their prices on upgrades is punitive to say the least.