| Page 3 of 4 < > |
The 10 Worst PCs of All Time
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
In 1994 IBM abandoned the PS/1 and tried again to capture the consumer market by introducing the Aptiva line, but this too was largely a disaster. IBM gave up the whole Aptiva idea in 2000.
#4. Apple III (1980-1984)
Many iPod fans probably aren't old enough to remember a time when Steve Jobs did not walk on water. But the Apple III was a fiasco, thanks largely to Jobs' design demands.
According to most accounts, Jobs insisted that the machine be built without a cooling fan; instead, the system's aluminum case served as a heat sink. (A mistake Apple repeated with the Mac G4 Cube in 2000.) Worse, the Apple III crammed too many components into too small a case. As the system overheated, circuit boards warped and chips popped out of their sockets; users were supposed to pick up the machine and drop it to re-seat the chips. List prices between $4300 and $7400, depending on configuration, only added to the misery.
Apple was forced to replace the first 14,000 Apple IIIs it shipped, and it redesigned the system twice, but the machine never lost its reputation as a stinker.
#3. Coleco Adam (1983)
In 1983, toymaker Coleco introduced two revolutionary products: The Adam, a $600 home computer, and the Cabbage Patch Kids, a line of $40 dolls. It's a tossup as to which proved more obnoxious.
The Adam was marketed as the first home computer to come with everything you needed, including a tape drive and a letter-quality printer. The problem? Any media left in the drive would get zapped by a surge of electromagnetic energy when you turned the thing on, erasing all the data on it. And the Adam's power supply was inside the printer, so if the printer was defective (and many were), the computer wouldn't work.
The Cabbage Patch Kids eventually made it into orbit, hitching a ride on the space shuttle in 1985. The Adam never really made it off the ground.
#2. Mattel Barbie PC (1999-2000)
Back in the late 1990s, the "concept PC" was all the rage. Goodbye to boring beige boxes, hello to creative, colorful computers. But instead of being sleek and stylish, the Mattel Barbie PC was merely pink and putrid. (And her blue and yellow brother, the Hot Wheels PC, wasn't any better.)
