What's the worst thing you ever bought for your computer, but you thought it was good at the time?

[Muerto]

Here's mine. In June of 1999, long before I discovered AnandTech, I went out to buy my very first computer. When I told them what video card I wanted, I said I wanted an ATI Expert128. I thought the Rage128 chipset rocked at the time but this isn't what I ended up getting! Read on.

The next day I got a phone call from the store where I went saying that there was going to be a delay in getting my video card. The person asked me if I would like a subsitute instead. I said alright, what kind of card is it? He said "A Number Nine Revolution IV." I said "How fast is it? Is it as fast as the Expert128?" He said "Well, it's a 16 MB AGP." And being the idiot I was at the time I said "Ok". And the salesperson was an idiot as well. :|

Very quickly after that I began to wonder if I had bought a crapy card. Most of my games were running a lot slower than I had thought they would. It didn't take me long to buy a Voodoo3. Well that's probably the worst purchase I've ever made. How about you guys?

 

[fkloster]

ohhhh, my 256mb of PC-800 Samsungs for $1009 in January 2000 (fkloster is really sad)

 

[Rigoletto]

My ATHLON 600 and board, probably. If only I'd bought a K6-2 with the money left over I could buy a Duron setup overclocking to 1GHz!!!!!!!!!
Still, maybe the Athlon will last to 2003, you never know.

 

[KingDeviant]

A Canopus TNT. I bought it because it had the voodoo passthrough cable and I wanted to play games in 32-bit color. I ended up continuing to use my Voodoo 2 for every game I owned. Definitely not worth the $299. The fact that there wen't too many games capable of displaying in 32-bit didn't help.

 

[Radboy]

Fragmaster (by Thrustmaster). What a worthless piece of sh*t.

 

[Odin30]

I will start with the matrox mystique-3ddecelerator
2-arctic silver
(didnt change temp at all over regular alpha paste)
3-ati xpert 98-bad bad card
4-extra games that come with gladiac for 10 bucks-messiah sucks

 

[Gatsby]

A winmodem for my dual box.
Thought I did not need it.. boy was I wrong.

Gatsby

 

[Pete]

Creative Encore dxr2 DVD decoder. The drive is decent, but the card blows such chunks it's not even funny. I mean, it looked so bad I really never used it. I stuck with PowerDVD with my 4MB Rendition Verite v2200 V-Raptor PCI and Cel266@400 .

I think $180 on my Microworks wasn't worth it, either. Nor $150 for my Monster 3D II. :| Of course, all this was over two years ago, but still--think of what I could get for that $ now!

 

[TomC25]

VooDoo Rush back in 98

huge ass card but slow as hell

 

[Vegito]

My CL TNT2 Ultra.. well not a waste but it's sitting new in a box and I don't feel like selling it to get a GeForce...

My Tape Drive... oh lord, should I have backed up by now?

My TV Card... I don't have cable in my house.... darn, yes no cable, though I was a supervisor for a cable company at one point (@ Home) .

My Slot 1 GORB.... Slot 1 is being phase out

My PPGA Heat sinks.... PPGA is being phase out

 

[Pete]

BTW, my Xpert 128, which I bought from Buy.com for $40, was probably the best deal on my PC. It's also the reason why I'm bitter about the Encore and M3D II .

 

[HigherGround]

1. Riva128 ( two weeks later i bought Voodoo 2, which lasted me for almost two years )
2. ATI TV Wonder ( this worthless POS crashed 50% of the time, recorded mpegs had huge grey line at the top and it didn't work in Win2K )
3. Atari ST 520 ( I returned it promptly and got me Amiga 500 )

 

[pm]

Switching to Ultra2 SCSI from a decent IDE setup. I'm not sure that this was a huge mistake, but I still spent a lot of money and wish that I hasn't.

This summer I bought one Tekram Ultra2 controller ($100), two Ultra2 10krpm 9.1GB Cheetahs ($125 ea.) and one Ultra2 7.2k 18.2GB Barracuda ($180). The Barracuda is nice, but the Cheetahs are hot, noisy and not as fast as I would have hoped. I don't have as much space as I might like (I like to mirror my drives... essentially RAID1) and it cost far more than what I would have liked, and future expansions are looking expensive too. Now my case temp is high, my computer runs fairly hot, the drives are so loud that I wake up at night when someone accesses the server. No, I really wish I had just stayed IDE.

This may not have been the dumbest mistake that I've made with a computer purchase, but it's definitely the most expensive.

 

[Sephiroth_IX]

Celeron 566

 

[beat mania]

Oh, definitely my tape drive. Or that b/w roller type scanner with its own special interface card.

 

[ERJ]

Pinnacle DC10+

Nuff said.

ERJ

 

[Celstar]

About 5 years back, I bought a mouse that you wrap around your finger. It's wireless so all you have to do is wave your finger around.

Imagine that scene there for a second. hahahaha!!!!

It didn't even work right... but I seemed cool at the time I bought it.

 

[kuk]

1.) Imation LS-120 Parallel drive. Slow, locks up computer, not compatible with ZIPs.
2.) Savage 4 ... 32MB doesn't mean ANYTHING !
3.) Kingston 10BaseT ISA NIC. Too expensive ... a cheapo for 1/4th the price would have done the same thing.
4.) AOC Scanner. Bad technical support ... well, no technical support.

And finally, the piece of crap I regret the most:
5.) My Compaq All-in-one, integrated design P100. No expansions, crappy monitor, crappy modem, crappy sound, useless remote control.




And here are the things I DON'T regret buying:
1.) My HP Deskjet 850C ... vey tough printer ... handles every job. The piece of computer equipment that lasted the most with me (and is still lasting) ... only in the past couple months there has been some probs, but nothing much.
2.) My Sidewinder Precision Pro joystick. It's value has actually gone UP. I bought it cheaper than it is today.
3.) My Plextor CD-RW ... ohhh, eveybody loves plextor.

 

[cavingjan]

3d mouse that you stuck on your finger. It was big enough for two buttons a then it had a little infrared overlay that went on the monitor to determine the position. Talking about giving your arm a workout.

 

[CalebTG]

lets see:

1) parallel ls-120 drive $150 new
2) 350 mb tape drive -- f**ked up my floppy drive, and was slow anyway
3) inwin 500a case -- hotter than hell, little room for hs/f, and case removal
4) 1 mb video ram for my wonderful S3 trio64 video card, didn't make a single difference

 

[NicColt]

Microtek ScanMaker EPP 300X600 Rez, discontinued for a reason.

Brought it home but only installed in a month later, it never worked
had to send it in to company, never got anything back, they lost
it all and never wanted to refund or exchange it. Burn in Hell Microtek.

Bought a Umax 1220P, best scanner I ever had.

 

[wj]

In 1994 I bought a CPU Fan Alarm, It was a good thing to have hook up on my 486DX2 overdrive. But after about Six Months or so the alarm went off and never shut up. I think I gave about $20.00 for that thing, still have it in my tool box. Just to make me think before buying stupid stuff.



wj

 

[cavingjan]

Celstar: I think you had the same POS that I had. Luckily a friend of mine actually bought it and only tried to pawn it off on me. I sent it back to him. I think its still in his basement.

 

[Dulanic]

Creative Dxr2 DVD kit. Like the guy before said the drive was decent. That is until a CD shatered inside it and now it wont even power up. And the card sucked big time. Also a Lucent Winmodem... it was 40% slower than my USR.

 

[Muerto]

Odin 30, "I will start with the matrox mystique-3ddecelerator"

LOL! That describes those things perfectally.