My Top 5 Tech Mistakes
Technology is great, that is when it doesn’t waste your money or time. Unfortunately, I have dealt with more than my fair share of worthless technology and gadgets. Overly advertised and hyped-up products that don’t exactly deliver make for a tasty tech blunder. The following are my top tech mistakes, please feel free to comment with your biggest tech mistakes.
Nintendo Virtual Boy
The Nintendo Virtual Boy was seen as a complete failure by Nintendo. Not intended to replace the Game Boy, the Virtual Boy never gained too much popularity - the screen was only red, and you had to stare through this uncomfortable goggle-like apparatus. I distinctly remember taking mine apart not too long after I got it.
Minidisc Recorders
Minidiscs were all the rage in underground tech culture, before MP3 players took over the market. They were small, had cool-looking square discs and you could record on them… in real-time (although with modern MD recorders you can record a bit faster). I bought into the whole Minidisc trend and found it to be a complete waste of money. The annoying recording procedures and lack of media offered in Minidisc format eventually lead to its demise. Although, at the time these players looked great and people would always ask me what it was.
This was my first MD player/recorder. It used one AA battery.
PDAs
I don’t know why, but I used to think PDAs were amazing. My first “PDA” was some color screen bearing Compaq Aero 2100 contraption running a horrible version of Windows CE. I got it in Greece and it had 8MB of integrated RAM, lackluster battery life and was crash-prone. The only thing good about it was solitaire.
A year or so later I thought maybe the PDA market had changed so I gave it another whirl with a Handspring Visor sporting a black and white LCD screen. Eh, nothing special. A few more years passed and last year I somehow got hooked on the Palm LifeDrive offering - 4GB microdrive, bluetooth and WiFi. This one had more utility with the WiFi and I often used it on campus but using it was still a hassle. I started lugging my laptop around instead and the PDA is sitting on my desk back home, boxed up. I now believe that PDAs suck and Smartphones are cool. There’s just something about WWAN connectivity that sets the two apart. Actually, I take that back - we all know what happened with my whole Motorola Q experience.
World of Warcraft
After becoming a switcher, I soon felt the need for gaming and decided that I should try out the only real game for the Mac, World of Warcraft. To give you a little background, I really don’t game that much and when I did it was usually a few rounds of the glass maps in Counter-Strike; I was generally the guy that ‘naded the floor at spawn so everyone fell. Needless to say I hated World of Warcraft and wasted $50 on the game and then $15 for the first month of service.
Not a tech mistake - Shuttle PCs
I couldn’t think of a fifth tech mistake, so I’ll tell you what wasn’t a mistake - Shuttle barebones PCs. Back in the day I loved these SFF computers. They were small yet just as powerful as their full-size companions. They only used one fan but had a cleverly-designed heatsink with heatpipes. I was also rather handy with a Dremel back in the day and went all out modifying them. I had won case modification competitions with them at LAN parties sponsored by Directron.com as well. One was watercooled and had superior cable management. Speaking of those LAN parties, I won a systems building race at one, building a computer in something like 4 minutes.
The blue one isn’t a Shuttle, it’s a tower pc that I built and modified with watercooling and an auxiliary LCD display. Most of these computers have been sold long ago.
The black Shuttle pictured, an SN85G4v2 powered by an AMD64 chip and an ATi X800Pro, got me in the Futuremark 3DMark03 hall of fame (#16/20) back in the summer of 2004 after I heavily overclocked it and voltage-modded everything I could.
If you’re in the market for a new Vista-compatible PC and know a thing or two about building computers, definitely check out Shuttle barebones computers. (But DON’T get the fully-built ones they sell, Shuttle has horrible customer service)
Anyone remember the Sony PSP? ;)
I agree with Jay. I snatched up a PSP right when they came out. While the thing was actually one of the sleekest devices I’ve ever used, I found that lack of storage on the thing a complete waste.
First, the PSP disc was hilariously stupid. You couldn’t burn your own so you had to buy them all. They were very expensive and just a hassle to find.
The other option was an SD card if I remember right, but that was back when a 2gb SD card ran you well into the thousands. And then you were still left with only 2gb…
That’s where the iPod really hit it for me as soon as the video one came out. It was all about the storage space.
It’s a shame though, just like the MiniDisc, sony knew what they were doing but they always seem to shoot themselves in the foot with their proprietary storage/technology.
If the PSP would have had say a 20 or 40gb HD where the PSP disc was, that… would have been awesome.
Oh, and good point on the PDA’s. I still remember being in University, I had a Compaq iPaq with one of those fold out keyboards. I thought I was so cool taking class notes on the thing… until I realized how much extra work it was and how stupid I looked. The laptop saved me.
Thanks Paul, you just inspired me into possibly building a shuttle PC for my next machine.
The only one that I disagree with is the PDA. My Palm III was a godsend. For me to be able to carry around and easily enter/edit my calendar and contacts was incredible. Back then (ten years ago?) battery life (two AAA’s) was fantastic; I could go weeks between battery swaps, especially when I compare this to the horrible sub-one-day battery life my Samsung BlackJack gives me today.
I gotta disagree with you on the Minidisc, although that’s because I work in the glorious world of media, and I still use these every day. They are still used in radio stations as a means of making a digital recording of a program, as well as location reporters. Its almost impossible to find a lightweight system for recording uncompressed WAV directly, and so Minidisk is the only option for “clean” non-compressed audio. I think its also because reporters like to know things are being recorded- you can’t hold an MP3 recorder and here it working away.
Biggest tech-type mistake… buying all the Lord of the Rings DVDs… will I ever watch them again? No, no I won’t.
I’m 100% with you on the Shuttle issue Paul. I bought mine in my first year at University after almost killing myself carrying my huge steel case halfway across campus, twice. That was 4 years ago and it’s still going strong in it’s new role as my parent’s media centre.
I also made the same mistake with the MiniDisc recorder, except my error was much more grave than yours… I actually bought one of the Net MD recorders that connected to your computer via USB and enabled you to download your music to MD, using possibly the worst piece of software that I’ve ever encountered. To make matters worse, you were only allowed to download about 3 copies of any song to MD, but you could ‘copy-it-back’ and get the token for it back. I loved it for the first month or so, but it soon became a £200 paperweight.
“and decided that I should try out the only real game for the Mac”
Civilization 4! Best game in existance.
I bought a Virtual Boy, but when it was on sale for $25. It was fun for 20 minutes, but my eyes started hurting and the batteries were running low (why run a non-portable device on batteries?)
I do have to agree with you on PDAs. I think my addiction began when my dad brought home a PalmPilot (back when they were called that) when I was in 6th grade. After that, I went through a ton of PDAs in high school. My first was the B&W Aero, which lasted all of 3 days until I returned it. I waited patiently for the Visor and picked one of those up (I also won another one in an online contest). When that got old I picked up a B&W iPaq, whose battery died and then I went to a color iPaq. First year of college I played around with a Palm Tungsten|T that did nothing for me, and now I have a Treo 650 that I use for phone & email more than the other PDA aspects.
After using my dad’s Blackberry for a bit while we were on vacation, however, I’m starting to look at what can replace my Treo (the internet on it is way too slow).
Ha ha, Virtual Boy. I was the poster-Nintendo-fan-boy growing up, but I knew better than to buy one. As for the PDA, I won my first and only PDA in a contest, and it was really useful for about a year… it was just so easy to keep track of things I needed to remember. After that, though, it just went back in the box and now I don’t use it at all. I guess it was always just a novelty.
How about Vista? It is a BIG tech mistake (like all versions of Windows).
@Kyle - do you have any backing/reasoning behind that? I may use a Mac everyday, but I don’t think Vista is a “mistake.” Gamers need Windows, Architects need Windows (AutoCAD is Windows-only atm), etcetera.
I think my biggest tech blunder was when I bought a crappy Creative MuVo MP3 Player….
I guess my other one was buying that old piece of crap IBM ThinkPad instead of waiting a few more months and getting my Mac.
I’m glad to say that I’m typing this from my MacBook, though :).
@Paul :)
Although I agree with you in the Gamers part, architects don’t need Vista, you have ArchiCAD and VectorWorks that are as good or even better than AutoCAD.
@AlexMC, you have a point there w/ ArchiCAD but many recent Architecture students/grads have all been taught on AutoCAD and getting them to leave that knowledge behind and take on a new system is a big challenge; hence the industry uses AutoCAD, most workplaces use AutoCAD, etc., so they have to conform to the system. =/
I can say that I have had my fair share also. Although none of those…
I bought a pretty high end minidisc back in the day, ~400$, it was one of those sp/lp2/lp4 ones where it could only record when the song was being played. So to get a 2 hour playlist into a minidisc, took 2 hours of syncing =\
Worst part is I bought it like a month before they came out with the much faster recorders, around 50x faster for transferring music, so the value of my one month old very expensive gadget simply plummeted.
haha paul did you just implement the CSS speech bubbles that were on digg?
@Dillon K: I was just thinking that myself… doesn’t take him long does it?
@Paul: “Gamers need Windows”, I was just wondering Paul, what you make of the news that VMWare is able to pull off 3D games, (max payne and so on), with Parallels following soon. I know your not much of a gamer, but does this intrigue you at all? Have we seen the last of ports from MacSoft?
I agree with Paul on the Autocad stuff. Windows is important as Autocad is the program that most firms/schools are using and other programs, such as Autodesk Revit (which I believe will eventually be replacing Autocad) take a while to learn.
Had the SN85G4v2 Shuttle for a couple years and loved it. Only problems I had were heat issues. Ended up dremeling a hole in the top of the case and adding an exhaust fan, along with keeping the original fans and heat pipe set up. Worked like magic. Since upgraded to an Antec mid-tower and while I miss the toaster-sized Shuttle, I’m enjoying the extra room for hard drives and such.
Paul I love the new bubbles from the digg article. Awesome!
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the Pioneer Laserdisc. It played discs kind of like a DVD but the size of an LP record. :)
EVE online! Best game in existance.
I totally agree with you on the minidisc craze. I wasted so much money on those things :(
I was just thinking…. when did Paul implement the bubbles… good work though i like it.
Here’s a 5th for you - DDR pads for the computer. =P
yo! on the windows/mac debate about autocad . . . architects spend alot of time on their computers but they don’t need to be chained to an 8 ton ugly machine. all it takes is the .shx file that autocad automatically generates to make it 99% compatible with archicad. i’m on a mission to convince people of this so that i don’t get forced onto a pc again. they eat my projects for snacks.
mac book air anyone :D