CrunchGear

5. The mysterious lack of a wirelessly-extended-desktop (to TV) solution.
4. Perhaps the most roundabout way to cook the most delicious substance in the world (bacon). (LINK: http://xe.bz/aho/24/image/0608152132_010.jpg) I’m lazy, but even I can find an easier way to grill up some bacon.
3. The cost per byte of SMS everywhere.
2. The lack of ubiquitous standard outlets in cars for charging. Why provide a “cigarette lighter” that only provides power? (I’m talking specifically about my ‘06 VW Passat which came with only a plastic plug labeled “5V” instead of the business part of a cigarette lighter). If it’s expressly for power, remove the need for a converter.
1. Windows ME

5 Apple Newton
4 Commodore vic 20
3 Windows Me
2 Betamax
1 HP Audrey

5. Windows Vista Basic
4. Windows Vista Premium
3. Windows Vista Business
2. Windows Vista Enterprise
1. Windows Vista Ultimate

If the contest rules were based on voting or merit, I would withdraw my submission based on that.

Well played. Well played, indeed.

1. I tripped over the cord of my brand new PDA while it was charging. The PDA came loose from the outlet, flew across the room, and landed in an open toilet. End of new PDA.

After that all my gadget disasters were minor by comparison.

2. This disaster happens with many gadgets, and non-gadgets, and to many people. I left my cell phone on the top of the car (or at least I think that is what happened.) I never saw it again, but a neighbor with a tendency toward grabbing the illegal advantage made several calls on this phone. I could see who was being called, but could do nothing about it. I had to cancel the account.

3.& 4. These are not my fault, but the fault of my vista computer. My PDA and my digital voice recorder will not sync with the computer. I have downloaded every possible patch or driver, but still they do not work and play well together. I still like my Vista computer anyway.

5. This fifth disaster is fairly major, but the responsibility of the manufacturer. We purchased a TomTom Go GPS a few years ago and used it on a trip to my sister’s house in another part of the state. First we practiced around town, and decided that the problems with the system were minor. The road we were on was named as the road we were crossing instead.

During our test run, the GPS kept urging us to turn left. Not only would that not have resulted in arrival at our destination, but it also would have resulted in a very wet ride, since the canal was the only “roadway” on the left. Since the car was not equipped with pontoons, we decided to just chalk that up as a minor glitch.

The Tom Tom got us to my sister’s home, and to the hotel in an area we had never before visited, so we were pleased - that is we were pleased until we started for home. Still wanting to play with our new gadget, we tried to set it up for a trip back. The GPS had many different suggestions for our route, none of which would have been beneficial (fortunately, we knew this part of the route). Finally, on the last leg of the journey, a straight northward shot up a major interstate, the GPS insisted the road (the major interstate) did not exist. Then it kept trying to get us to turn left across 4 lanes of traffic, through a corn field, and to some mysterious road only it could see.

Upon our return, my spouse attempted to get the unit to tell us how to get to the university. It directed us to the university by a circuitous route adding 50 miles to a 20 mile trip.

We took it back to the store. They did not believe us. They told us there would be a restocking fee. Apparently they have people buying GPS systems, using them on trips, then returning them to the store. My spouse cleverly took the unit out of the box, and asked the clerk to program a trip to the university. They took the unit back. They tested another as well with the same results. I spoke to a person I knew with the same unit, and he could not get an accurate route to the university either.

We got nowhere talking to the manufacturer. They were downright rude. No TomTom GPS units will ever be in my future.

Hope I can win, my husband would love this video.

1. Windows ME
2. Windows CE
3. Windows 98
4. Windows Vista
5. Windows Vista

1. Windows VISTA!
2. Iomega Zip Drive - The one with the click of death?
3. Coax Cable Connections tucked into the corner of a recess on the back of your TV
4. TimeWarner Cable’s customer service
5. Apple not licensing their computer tech

Tech FAIL Top 5: Video Games Edition

5. “ET” for the Atari 2600
4. Power Glove for NES
3. Virtual Boy
2. Sega DreamCast
1. PlayStation 3

5. LG chocolate - I really find this phone irritating.
4. Betamax
3. UMD
2. MiniDisc - After all those failures Sony finally got it right….
1. Windows Vista

1) Windows ME
2) Juke by Samsung. A music phone with no support for additional memory?
3) The no-brand Chinese FM transmitter/charger for my ipod that I bought from china that fell apart in the cigarette lighter and blow its fuse which isn’t carried at local retailers and my car’s fuse, luckily that one is common.
4) Another no-brand Chinese toy, a battery for my older than dirt U2 edition hand me down ipod that cant hold a charge 3 months after buying it.
5) Dialiup internet, Net zero, please go die so we can get broadband access everywhere instead of relying on ancient technology in rural areas.

5. The growing trend of “unlimited” not actually meaning unlimited.
4. A PC I built that was only about 3 weeks old that I sold on Ebay was damaged very significantly by UPS during shipping. Fortunately, they came through with the insurance, but it was packed very well, and yet the still managed to gouge a huge hole in the side of the box, causing the heat sink to fall off the CPU and cracking the plastic part of the case.
3. Windows Mobile (via an AT&T Tilt) - Sadly, I’m forced to use this as my work phone. I seriously don’t see how people use Windows Mobile based phones on a daily basis.
2. DC inverter mishap - my cheap $20 inverter started smoking and emitting that horrible burnt electronics smell while riding down the road one day (and with nothing plugged in!). Fortunately, the car didn’t burst into flames. :-)
1. Broken iPhone screen - after about 3 months of owning my iPhone (obained on launch day) it fell out of my shirt pocket when I bent down to pick up the box of my new HDTV. A happy ending followed though–Apple replaced it at no charge.

5. Newton
4. N-Gage
3. Windows ME
2. Betamax
1. Zune

You said to send them to you but left no email… and also said to leave them in a comment…

5. Took apart my PSP, and when I put it back together it sparked and the screen went dead. I must have left a wire exposed somewhere… oops.
4. Tryed to install Windows SP2, and I accidentally erased all of my previous data. Everything. Lots of pictures and music just gone.
3. Sat on my old flip phone with it open inside my pocket and it cracked in two pieces. No more flip phone!
2. Old iPod went absolutely hay-wire and stopped playing music. In place of music it would play EXTREMELY loud static-y screeches that nearly killed my hearing.
1. My Blackberry spontaneously started typing in the letters ‘Q’ and ‘E’ whenever I scroll to the left, despite the fact that I’m not typing anything. Its very annoying, and the buttons often ’stick’ and think that I’m holding down the Q and E buttons, and it leaves the phone useless until I can unstick it. RIM sucks.

5 - Alchemy
4 - Phrenology
3 - Cold Fusion
2 - Perpetual Motion
1 - Religion

1. Laser Disc
2. iPhone
3. Betamax
4. Microsoft Bob
5. Iomega Jaz Drive (if you think a zip is bad, you’ve never had a Jaz)

5. PS2 that doesn’t like to read some discs anymore.
4. A cell phone that can’t erase text messages without crashing. Thanks Verizon for your crappy OS.
3. CD drive going boom in the middle of the night. Something inside exploded.
2. MacBook system alarm going off for 10 seconds for no reason. Logs give no noticeable details.
1. A self-built Vista computer that turned off one day and didn’t turn back on. Bulging capacitors.

5) 20GB HD full of X rated material
4) not backing my Firefox bookmarks before a clean install of XP
3) breaking my spacebar on my IBM Thinkpad A31.
2) Upgrading to XP SP3. ‘nough said.
1) recently having an 8GB Pico-c flash drive die on me.

My first gen MacBook Pro freaked out and sent to much power to my iPod 30GB over USB. The iPod was screwed and just kept restarting. The laptop started to having some more issues so I made sure to backup my data on an external hard drive. I called Apple and they thought I was just someone that wanted a free iPod and didn’t believe me. They wanted me to try the USB port again. I plugged in the hard drive that I just backed up my data on (not thinking right) and it screwed the hard drive by sending to much power to it. That power surge not only screwed the external hard drive but now the computer wouldn’t boot up right. I target disc mode but it wouldn’t see the hard drive.

So I lost a 30GB iPod, external hard drive, a MacBook Pro and the most important thing was all my files.

Apple was really nice about it (after the hard drive died) and replaced pretty much every part in the MacBook Pro, they exchanged my iPod for a new one and gave me $200 store credit for a new external hard drive.

I was the idiot for plugging the external hard drive with my data into the MacBook Pro.

That is my 1-5. I hope that never happens again. I never could trust the MacBook Pro again so I now have a new 2.5GHz MacBook Pro and 2 external hard drives, and a home server.

1. Apple’s refund for Lisa owners with 20+ year old original receipt.
2. The Palm VII and it’s nearly impossible ability to wirelessly sync email.
3. ClearWire (I’m actually a user because it was cheaper than going with
cable, I hate myself for this choice).
4. The Movie Hackers
5. Virus hoax emails

WAIT I forgot one!

The Blink tag in HTML. IE doesn’t support this tag anymore, firefox still does. Biggest.Tech.Disaster.Ever.

1. My Twitter Addiction VS. Twitter’s Downtime
2. Windows ME & Vista
3. Installing linux on 3rd generation iPod
4. Sony Rootkit
5. Macromedia ColdFusion

Ok I can play this game the 5 major tech disasters that I can personally shed some light on also happen to be the biggest tech blunders my School District has made.

#1. Hiring me
#2. Spending 120k dollars on a wireless system by XIRRUS that doesnt work with our AD setup.
#3. Dropping our HP contract for a new contract with DELL.
#4. Rolling out windows Vista district wide when it was only a few weeks old.
#5. Investing well over 500,000 in new computers and laptops that have not been opened or used for almost 8 months due to a lame azz IT Director.

1) Windows Vista Ultimate
2) Windows ME
3) Windows 98 FE
4) My 15 year old Mac refusing to recognize its new 8 MB of RAM
5) Oregon Trail refusing to run on Mac in (4)

1. Windows Vista
2. N-Gage
3. Atari Jaguar
4. Betamax
5. Internet Forums

1) Atari not buying Nintendo when it had the chance
2) Sony’s minidisc and mind-blowingly bad software to go with it
3) Sony’s failure to use and inform anyone of their rootkit altering software on their cd’s
4) Diebold electronic voting machines. Funny how they can make ATM’s but not a voting machine with a paper trail.
5) RFID inclusion in passports–great, now everyone knows me *dons tinfoil boxers*

5: CueCat
4: Windows ME
3: Netscape part 1 - letting MS IE catch up and beat you
2: Netscape part 2 - bloatware versions that were created to try to battle IE
1: OS/2 - letting Win 3.1 beat you

5)Windows CE
4)Motorola V3
3)Compaq Ipaq
2)Windows ME
1)Windows Vista

5. IPhone Clones
4. HD DVD
3. MB Air
2. OSX Updates bricking systems
1. Forcing Safari via mandatory update

1. iphone keyboard
2. Acrobat - can you get any more bloated
3. PBR
4. Charter Cable
5. HD DVD

there seems to be MS hating going around
lets change it up a bit.

1. Apple
2. iPhone
3. Safari
4. iPod
5. HD-DVD