Tech FAILS. What was yours?

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Hawkes Bay
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#724470 29-Nov-2012 08:01

Alacatel Speedtouch USB only ADSL modem - the turquiosey/greeny/baby-pukey coloured thing that looked like a crab or something.

Touchy as heck, and no ethernet port. Went down more often than a $2... uhhh.... aeroplane.

wellygary

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#724516 29-Nov-2012 09:10

I have a Sony airboard that I bought in Japan,

I plugged its base station into a cheap DVD player that would do NTSC out and it allowed me to watch movies around the house, along with roaming internet,

I think I will keep it as a piece of history,

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/rambling--round/4373804/Failure-to-launch--Why-Sony-never-got-AirBoard-off-the-ground

jfanning

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#724532 29-Nov-2012 09:35

mattRSK: I bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner once. They are not very solid and seem to have very intricate plastic parts that tend to break.

Really? I give our one a beating and haven't had any issue with it

freitasm

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#724538 29-Nov-2012 09:41

I have a Dyson here, I wouldn't say it's a fail.

My definition of "fail" is when a product or entire category doesn't get adopted by the users, or the market shun it. I wouldn't say the product is a fail if it's still in the market, used by hundreds of thousands or millions and complaints are only personal dislikes of very few.

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#724544 29-Nov-2012 10:05

joker97: sony ericsson P800 for $1000 but i must say pretty bold attempt at a smartphone

There is no way that was a fail, that was amazing tech at the time. People loved them, heaps of people had them. The P900 and P910i were both great phones too, I had a P910 for about three years.

Huge beast things these days, but really there's nothing I can't do on my Samsung Galaxy WashingMachine S3 that I couldn't also do on my P910 - It had games, web browser, email sync, Instant messenger etc etc.

freitasm

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#724548 29-Nov-2012 10:11

I had both a P800 and P910. Very good pieces of hardware and software. People who think smartphones only existed after the iPhone are kidding themselves. They may have been made popular after the iPhone but it was a combination of cheaper (yeah right) mobile data, touch screen input instead of tap screen/stylus input and cheaper hardware that made things change.

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#724549 29-Nov-2012 10:12

HTC Harrier.

Windows Mobile.

Volatile memory and prone to ejecting the battery if looked at the wrong way.

Also if reserve battery allowance went flat loss of data too.

That thing needed more attention than normal just to keep data alive.

Thank gawd for the 5.0 Apache that replaced it!

dimsim

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#724553 29-Nov-2012 10:20

crackrdbycracku: I was reading the article below and it got me thinking of my early adoptions fails.

The best/worst one was mini-disk. I spent just over $1000 in 1998 to own a mini-system with a mini-disk recorder function and a bundled Walkman mini-disk player. Yep, just before MP3s took off.

What was yours?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/27/ten_technology_fails/

I still run my full size mini-disc player and have hundreds of still good quality CD rips from an optical source on my discs. At that stage it was the best pirating tool at the time as the only other option (although better sound quality) was a clunky DAT.

macuser

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#724559 29-Nov-2012 10:27

Behodar: I have an HD DVD player, which most people would class as a fail, although I think that picking up ~50 clearance movies at $1-2 each was a good deal overall :)

Oh man! I remember buying the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player!!!!!!!! That was a laugh.

dpw

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#724567 29-Nov-2012 10:42

geekiegeek: An ASUS UMPC an early attempt at tablet computing, only to big\ heavy\ expensive and no battery life. Was a nice toy for the first few weeks though.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3420&review=Asus+R2

Heh... if I remember correctly you brought that into EGL and showed us... quite a monster for a supposed "ultra-mobile" unit :)

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dpw

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#724570 29-Nov-2012 10:46

mattRSK: I bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner once. They are not very solid and seem to have very intricate plastic parts that tend to break.

Have got one a couple of years old... started life in a household of 3 Bernese Mountain Dogs and 2 cats... now 5 Berners and 3 cats and it's still going strong...

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#724667 29-Nov-2012 13:51

CYaBro:
Poll: Two of those early mp3 players, the usb flash drive sized ones with a tiny lcd and incomprehensible menu, 128 meg and 256 meg, terrible.

I got one of these for my wife a few years ago and we love it.
I use it all the time when mowing the lawns and she uses it when going for a walk or run.
It's a Samsung 1GB version so can fit quite a bit of music on it and the battery lasts for ages.

Indeed, they're not a fail at all. I got given a 512MB Samsung one a few years back when iPods were still relatively expensive and big. I liked the fact I could just drag and drop onto it and it was solid state and light. I still have it somewhere but it's been superseded by an iPod Nano which I use when jogging and my S3 which I use day to day.

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#724746 29-Nov-2012 16:23

Sony MD Player bought for $600 and lost it in a car theft.
No insurance for contents, so went and bought again. In about six months I could not remember where I last used it .. it went walking somewhere in the storage while moving houses. The next time I saw that thing it was missing cables and charger. I felt guilty to sell it to someone on TM without charger.

Dairyxox

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#724773 29-Nov-2012 17:43

Had a Sony Minidisc Walkman player / recorder. Got it in Japan for about $500 nzd. It got stolen and the insurance company gave me $1000 for a replacement, which I foolishly used to buy another here in NZ (I still had all my discs).
The second one got stolen too...and I'm really carefull with my stuff

scottjpalmer

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#724787 29-Nov-2012 17:59

The number of us that bought Minidiscs indicates it wasn't such a failure, even though it didn't stand the test of time.

Loved mine, no regrets!

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