The 10 Worst PCs of All Time

In 1999 eMachines zoomed from nowhere to become one of the top five PC vendors in the country, thanks in large part to its knack for selling full-fledged systems for peanuts ($399 sans monitor). Better yet, you could get the eTower 366c for "free" if you signed a three-year contract with a dial-up ISP (cost of the contract: $720 to $790). But consumers who thought they had snagged a great deal often got less than they bargained for--noisy fans, faulty power supplies, bad modems, and tech support that was missing in action.

Among other problems, some users reported their eTowers would simply turn themselves on in the middle of the night. Quality rebounded after the company changed ownership in 2001, and the company continued to improve after merging with Gateway in 2004. But when they first appeared, eMachines were simply eGregious.

#7. Commodore VIC 20 (1981)

Computers of a certain age tend to be beloved even when they may not deserve it. Case in point: The Commodore VIC 20. Yes, we know--it was the first personal computer to sell more than a million units, and the first PC that Linux originator Linus Torvalds ever used. And, of course, all PCs back then were comically underpowered and horsey-looking compared with today's machines.

But the VIC 20 was a special case. It offered only 3.5KB of usable memory; most machines back then offered at least 16KB. It displayed only 22 characters of text per line (or less than half the length of the line you're reading right now), and its graphics were chunky and cheesy-looking even by 1981 standards. Worse, its TV commercials featured William Shatner as a spokesman way before Shatner became cool in an ironic sort of way.

Shortly thereafter, the VIC 20 boldly went off the shelves, succeeded by the more powerful (and more deserving of being beloved) Commodore 64.

#6. Texas Instruments TI-99/4 (1979)

Texas Instruments' foray into the home computer market didn't last long, and the TI-99/4 offers a few clues as to why. At a time when all other home machines connected to your television, the 99/4 worked only with its own display--which was in fact a bulky 13-inch Zenith TV. Its keyboard came with Chiclet-sized keys more appropriate to one of TI's hand calculators, and like your computer-illiterate mother-in-law, the machine could type only in SCREAMING CAPITAL LETTERS.

Two years later the company released the TI-99/4A, which featured more powerful processors, a better keyboard, the ability to plug in your own monitor, uppercase and lowercase letters, and a price tag less than half the TI-99/4's $1150. But it wasn't enough. TI exited the home PC biz a few years later, focusing exclusively on laptops.

#5. IBM PS/1 (1990-1994)

The PS/1 was IBM's second stab at creating a consumer PC for the masses, following the disastrous PCjr (#13 on our list of the all-time worst products), but it wasn't much of an improvement.

Among other brilliant moves, the original PS/1 featured a power supply inside the monitor, which made swapping out displays impossible, and it couldn't accept standard ISA cards, preventing upgrades. (Later models were more compatible.)