Stupid product designs.

[CZroe]

It is better than that. Most Americans have credit cards that give a free 1-year warranty on top of the manufacturer's warranty for everything they buy. So, if it were just 2 months, we actually get 14 months. Yet, few of us know that little fact.

Most credit cards only allow you to claim once per year so people cautiously don't use it on anything that isn't massively expensive.

 

[Fallingwater]

Nothing more retarded than the Chrysler Sebring, to change a burnt headlight bulb you have to remove the entire left (or right) side exterior fender, plus some engine parts.

Probably to convince people to get xenon headlights...

 

[kranky]

Nothing more retarded than the Chrysler Sebring, to change a burnt headlight bulb you have to remove the entire left (or right) side exterior fender, plus some engine parts.

Now that IS stupid.

 

[alfa147x]

VESA mounts are not only used for wall mounting

We use them at work to mount the screens to movable arms
But yeah that shit is stupid

 

[CZroe]

Nothing more retarded than the Chrysler Sebring, to change a burnt headlight bulb you have to remove the entire left (or right) side exterior fender, plus some engine parts.

My motorcycle service manual says that I have to take off the left, right, and front fairings to change the light. That usually means replacing rubber wellnuts too. I just reached through the handlebars, pulled off the rubber bulb cover, and figured out the latching mechanism on the bulb sockets blindly by touch.

 

[sactoking]

Nothing more retarded than the Chrysler Sebring, to change a burnt headlight bulb you have to remove the entire left (or right) side exterior fender, plus some engine parts.

I dunno, my parents' old Pontiac Grand Prix forced you to remove the tire, brake calliper, wheel well/firewall to remove the alternator which was located right on top of the engine block. Turns out Pontiac used some ridiculously long bracket that extended the entire depth of the engine compartment to secure the alternator, pretty much for the sole purpose of hindering people from fixing it themselves.

Also, their old Pontiac Bonneville had the battery located under the back seat with a positive terminal lead run to the engine compartment. In order to change the battery you had to take out the freaking seat!

 

[JohnnyGage]

Yugo AND the Yugo Sport

/thread

 

[69Mach1]

I dunno, my parents' old Pontiac Grand Prix forced you to remove the tire, brake calliper, wheel well/firewall to remove the alternator which was located right on top of the engine block. Turns out Pontiac used some ridiculously long bracket that extended the entire depth of the engine compartment to secure the alternator, pretty much for the sole purpose of hindering people from fixing it themselves.

Also, their old Pontiac Bonneville had the battery located under the back seat with a positive terminal lead run to the engine compartment. In order to change the battery you had to take out the freaking seat!

Yup, my 2004 Bonneville has the battery under the back seat. From what I have been able to find out it's a special battery, too. Something about the vent is different, so no easy replacement when it goes bad.

 

[sactoking]

IIRC, they only run a positive lead to the engine compartment as well. With no negative lead you can't jump off of the Bonneville's battery.

 

[chowderhead]

N-Gage cell phone and gaming unit from Nokia for $299. Wanna play a game? Remove the plastic cover, REMOVE THE BATTERY and then insert the game cartridge. How do you control
the game? Who knows! How to do talk into the phone - sideways!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nokia_N-Gage_wikittää.jpg

This thing has got to be a tax write off for Nokia.

 

[AstroManLuca]

So many gadgets...

Like the early iPhone that had a recessed headphone jack, preventing you from using any headphones other than the ones that shipped with the phone.

Or any number of "music phones," feature phones with MP3 capabilities that often don't even have a 3.5mm jack. Many have a 2.5mm that requires an adapter. And while we're at it, a lot of those phones had locked-down software that made it difficult to even get music onto them, and that didn't even matter since many shipped with tiny memory cards that also couldn't be accessed unless you pull the battery. There are still many smartphones that require you to pull the battery to get at the memory card.

Also requiring an adapter for headphones was the GameBoy Advance SP, which combined the headphone port and charging port into a single clusterfuck port, ensuring you couldn't use headphones and charge it at the same time. Unless you bought a third-party accessory that split the headphone and charging functions (first-party Nintendo accessories only let you do one or the other, not both).

Speaking of Game Boys, how about the original GameBoy Advance, whose screen was basically impossible to see unless you had absolutely perfect light hitting it.

 

[Drako]

Nothing more retarded than the Chrysler Sebring, to change a burnt headlight bulb you have to remove the entire left (or right) side exterior fender, plus some engine parts.

LOL, what year Sebring are you talking about? My mother has a 2001 Sebring, and I've replaced the bulbs for her. You just have to remove two bolts from the back, and push the headlight assembly out toward the front. No fender or engine part removal required .

 

[feralkid]

I dunno, my parents' old Pontiac Grand Prix forced you to remove the tire, brake calliper, wheel well/firewall to remove the alternator which was located right on top of the engine block. Turns out Pontiac used some ridiculously long bracket that extended the entire depth of the engine compartment to secure the alternator, pretty much for the sole purpose of hindering people from fixing it themselves.

Also, their old Pontiac Bonneville had the battery located under the back seat with a positive terminal lead run to the engine compartment. In order to change the battery you had to take out the freaking seat!

MGB's are like that, fortunately there is no back seat.

 

[Locut0s]

Nothing more retarded than the Chrysler Sebring, to change a burnt headlight bulb you have to remove the entire left (or right) side exterior fender, plus some engine parts.

Wow yeah that really is fail!

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

My all time favorite was the 1980 Olds S/W 'Kojac.' It came from the factory with a nasty camber issue that could bald a set of tires in 5000 miles and it had a hidden spare tire jack assembly that was put together first and then the rest of the car was built around it. Once you took it out, it never went back in.

 

[CZroe]

So many gadgets...

Like the early iPhone that had a recessed headphone jack, preventing you from using any headphones other than the ones that shipped with the phone.

Or any number of "music phones," feature phones with MP3 capabilities that often don't even have a 3.5mm jack. Many have a 2.5mm that requires an adapter. And while we're at it, a lot of those phones had locked-down software that made it difficult to even get music onto them, and that didn't even matter since many shipped with tiny memory cards that also couldn't be accessed unless you pull the battery. There are still many smartphones that require you to pull the battery to get at the memory card.

Also requiring an adapter for headphones was the GameBoy Advance SP, which combined the headphone port and charging port into a single clusterfuck port, ensuring you couldn't use headphones and charge it at the same time. Unless you bought a third-party accessory that split the headphone and charging functions (first-party Nintendo accessories only let you do one or the other, not both).

Speaking of Game Boys, how about the original GameBoy Advance, whose screen was basically impossible to see unless you had absolutely perfect light hitting it.

GBC and GB had the same screen visibility issue.

 

[CZroe]

Yugo AND the Yugo Sport

/thread

Nope. Reliant Robin.

 

[Sheep]

Somebody mentioned this in one of the hardware forums and was dead-on: USB plugs.

 

[QueBert]

Somebody mentioned this in one of the hardware forums and was dead-on: USB plugs.

 

[StrangerGuy]

So many gadgets...

Like the early iPhone that had a recessed headphone jack, preventing you from using any headphones other than the ones that shipped with the phone.

Or any number of "music phones," feature phones with MP3 capabilities that often don't even have a 3.5mm jack. Many have a 2.5mm that requires an adapter. And while we're at it, a lot of those phones had locked-down software that made it difficult to even get music onto them, and that didn't even matter since many shipped with tiny memory cards that also couldn't be accessed unless you pull the battery. There are still many smartphones that require you to pull the battery to get at the memory card.

Also requiring an adapter for headphones was the GameBoy Advance SP, which combined the headphone port and charging port into a single clusterfuck port, ensuring you couldn't use headphones and charge it at the same time. Unless you bought a third-party accessory that split the headphone and charging functions (first-party Nintendo accessories only let you do one or the other, not both).

Speaking of Game Boys, how about the original GameBoy Advance, whose screen was basically impossible to see unless you had absolutely perfect light hitting it.

It was all a ploy to lock-in people to buy their overpriced, shitty sound quality earphone accessories. Between that and iPhone, Nokia & co had all the time in the world to make a decent music phone with a 3.5mm jack but didn't (Really, was is THAT hard?). So Apple came in and all of them got throughly pwned in one single stroke.

 

[Ichinisan]

It was all a ploy to lock-in people to buy their overpriced, shitty sound quality earphone accessories. Between that and iPhone, Nokia & co had all the time in the world to make a decent music phone with a 3.5mm jack but didn't (Really, was is THAT hard?). So Apple came in and all of them got throughly pwned in one single stroke.

Nintendo didn't make "shitty headphones." Nintendo only made the adapter. It probably was an experiment to see if selling the adapters would increase profit. Almost no one mail-ordered them from Nintendo and just ended up getting a third party adapter anyway. When the DS came out, it had both a headphone jack and a dual-purpose jack.

You may have seen some shitty BD&A headphones with that proprietary plug and assumed that Nintendo made them. For decades, I've wondered how Nintendo allows BD&A to get away with selling "official" junk. Their shit doesn't count.

You say Apple pwnd with a single stroke? Try TWO strokes. The first iPhone 3.5mm jack was FAIL and has already been mentioned in this thread.

 

[HAL9000]

Shake Weight

/thread

Ha, that's the wanking machine from southpark isnt it? Lol I looked it up after, can't believe its a real thing!!!

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

So I've just come across one of the stupidest design decisions I've seen in a long while.

A customer just returned an LCD that he bought for wall mounting. It was an LG 20in monitor with Vesa mount holes. However the neck of the the monitor stand was attached to the monitor and was NOT removable. At first I thought we just didn't know how to remove it but a quick Google showed that it was permanently attached... Who the fuck designs a monitor with a Vesa mount that has a retarded stand sticking out of the bottom that is not removable!?

Let's hear some of your stupid product design stories.

Angle grinder will fix that very swiftly, of course, if it's plastic a manual saw or long cutters might do the trick just fine.

But most likely, it will fit just fine in the VESA mount either by removing the stand in a way you don't know or by just leaving it in there.

 

[grrl]

Putting a car's horn button on the indicator stalk.

 

[PottedMeat]

Putting a car's horn button on the indicator stalk.

wow what company thought that would be a good idea? so what did they move to the center of the steering wheel?