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

[xSauronx]

External Iomega Zip100, parallel port version and eventually 5 more disks for it

 

[Ben]

Digital Doc

I thought it would be cool to have my fans turn off and on based on temperature.

Well, after about 1 day of my fans turning off and on constantly, I took the Digital Doc back out!

Even people that came over to my house were annoyed by it. After about 5 minutes, they'd say "what the hell's wrong with your computer".

 

[dummjock]

Mine would have to be my GREAT plextor 8x4x32 CD-RW EIDE drive... Its was supposed to burn subchannel data... it was supposed to read at 32X (like 10x) and it was supposed to write RW's (unformated the RW they gave me) and finally the CD tray was supposed to open and close (wouldnt close all the way when I first put it in, had to use elbow greese to adjust it)... all in all I am very happy for there 2-year warranty... its getting so called "fixed" as we speak (I think they are using the micro-sledgehammer tool)

 

[Jonny]

My Hollywood plus card never did me any good.

 

[Dexion]

LOL

Syquest SparQ 1G Removable External drive.. slow as hell transfer between the PC and the drive, made screaching noises, worked for 6 months.. died from spin of death a day after Syquest filed for chapter 11. If I wanted to fix my drive, would cost me $100 to fix. Costed me $250 for a brand new(looking) useless drive.

2nd most regretable is the Matrox G200 card, at that time it was the first AGP card. Thought it was fast as heck! Completely useless now, can play Quake at 640x480x32bit 28fps, jaggies heaven!

 

[Windogg]

Swiftnets Peltier and Heatsink. Damn thing cost an arm, leg, and testicle. Customer service really sucked. They never responded to any of my emails and it took them 6 weeks to get it to me. The thing didn't give me any more performance that a $40 Alpha at the time could have given. It was one loud mofo and heated up the case like no temorrow. I sealed it like they said but condensation still formed and nearly fried my CPU.

The only good thing about the episode is that I upgraded to a great Sparkle power supply.

Windogg

 

[Pocatello]

I bought a Matrox Mistake in 97, a tv tuner that I rarely used (still prefer real TV).

 

[Muerto]

Another good name for the Mystique!

 

[AU Tiger]

Scanner - hardly ever use it, but it's there if I need it.
Numerous games (some never installed)
486 Vesa Local Bus Motherboard and STB Powergraph 64 VLB graphics card when PCI was new.

 

[Remedy]

External zip drive with 2 extra disk, what a waste, Fook you IOMEGA you Blow goats for selling a zip disk for 12 bucks when i can buy a Blank CDR for about 75cents, and i bought a ATi Radeon and a 3dfx V3 3000 pci at the sametime, i am selling the v3 now and i never even opened it.

 

[Yzzim]

Back about 6 years ago I was gonna be the cool kid on the block and get an Aura Interactor where you could "Feel the punch, kick and gun fire" in the game by wearing this so-called "virtual reality" thingy.
Well, turns out it was just a big speaker with backpack straps that had the bass turned way up and everything sounded like sh!t. So, instead of being the cool kid I was a moron wearing a speaker.

 

[LXi]

Kenwood TrueX 52x. Yea, its the best CD-ROM drive back then, under one condition, its only the best when it is capable of reading the CDs, and more than 70% of the time it would not read. Well, lived in my drive bay for around a week, now eating dust under my bed.

 

[Dulanic]

LXi try flashing it. I find mine now reads almost all CDs fine. Never had major problems with mine but it works flawlessly now. Oh I forgot to meantion I bought a Storm Scanner.... they went out of buisness so I cant even get a new one Mine fried 6 power supplys for it so far.

 

[Bignate603]

MY FREAKIN CASE. Black plastic, looks cool but gets NO AIRFLOW. Case temp is freakin 30c when it's 22c outside!

 

[MWink]

Anything with the name Intel on it (except my P133). I had such a HORRIBLE experience with my 3 Celerons. I should have kept my K6-2 (eventually I did go back to the K6-2).

 

[Zoltarc]

The very first 3DBlaster.

The S3 ViGRE was faster

 

[LXi]

Dulanic

Already flashed to the newest, forgot the version number. Better but still unacceptable.

 

[Pretender]

The answer which wins:































My packard bell, P133, 8 MB RAM. I thought it was great, top of the line, and great value. A week later, the 166 was out, for slightly less then the 133 had just costed.

 

[Cknyc]

2x cd-rom for my 386 back when they first came out.

I think thats all..

 

[Soccerman]

my biggest mistake??

hmm..

tough one.. well, I never really made a BIG mistake (yet), becuase I follow the industry about a year after everyone else (so I can see what's good and what isn't after the dust settles).

the biggest mistake, was PROBABLY either my MS Optical (it's a good mouse, no questions there, but it cost quite a bit), and this 3com 56k hardware PCI modem..

I was told it's full duplex, but it's NOT! *(%#* I can't even replace it, so I have to wait to sell it, or buy broadband (if/when it comes out here).

otherwise, all my decisions were great, met with varying degrees of speed increases on the computer.

 

[VisionsUCI]

RexPro... $200 for something that seemed functional, until palm pilots hit it big
Crosspad... good idea, but not very useful, now gathering dust in my closet
ohh... back in the day i bought a computer with fast/wide scsi. it was a p90 when pentiums had just come out, and cost me $3k. stupid stupid stupid... it had a 4x cd rom, which had a caddy and i thought was the coolest thing, though...

 

[nateholtrop]

my mx300 bought it thinking cool this card is awesome...aureal goes bankrupt I see in the news.UGH i wanted to hurt someone soooo bad it wasnt even funny.:|

GRRR still mad over that i cant get any new drivers for it either grrr


Nate

 

[StickHead]

Tyan Trinity 400 for a gaming system and a what I thought was a cd holder thing, it's for stupid damn zip disks':|

 

[Zucchini]

Dexion,

Hehe, i went through the same thing 1GB sparq was a good idea on paper, and before your drive breaks its kinda neat. I went through 5+ drives, i just kept returning the stupid things. Last replacement was sent months after they went bankrupt. Ofcourse that drive failed too. I thought it might have lasted longer if i never popped the disk out..left the 1st disk in and never took it out. Broke anyways of course.

I think the same bums make the 2.2GB orb now.

 

[Henry Kuo]

how about i bought the cc820 in jan before an yi820 review was out?