What was the worst computer you ever bought and why?

[Keatah]

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

I think I had an Acer Aspire 11 or something like that.  I believe in the picture above is the 14.  I remember there was a sticker on it saying

"comes with 1 terabyte of storage" which was like 32 gb internal flash ram, and rest was cloud based storage.

 

I hate cloud based storage.

You and everybody else.. Totally amazing how advertising can fuck'n lie straight to your face. Comes with means together. Clouds storage is not in the box and not together.

 

Feel sorry for those that fall for all the bullshit generated on Madison Avenue. Just as bad as 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes and not 1,073,741,824 bytes. Do they still need to pull that trick in today's day and age? If it knocks $0.04 off of a drive you damned fuck'n straight they do.

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

So in essence you have this criminally small amount of local storage which can barely hold an operating system, this had windows 8 I believe, and little else for other programs.  As a computer hobbyist this just doesn't fly, nor do I think this computer should have ever been sold.  Seriously.   I believe it was false advertising at its best.

Believe? It IS false advertising.

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

So this computer relies on the fact that you ALWAYS have a good internet connection, loading programs off the internet.  Now days internet speeds are faster with fiber connections, but this was about ten years ago and internet was barely that at home, and if you were traveling, good luck.

Fuck'n internet. So fullashit and I hate it!!! Blaaaahhhh!!!

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

So over time friends have bought computers like this, and they get them, happy with them for like two days, and then realize what I limited P.O.S. these computers were.  I've had to deal with them when my wife asked for help with it, and I tried to find a good high speed read and write SD card to boost the storage by 128 gb.   Kinda worked.

For many many years now I do not work on sub-standard hardware. Just is not worth my time. Makes me look bad. Provides a frustrating experience for both me (the expert technician) and the user trying to do something.. So just no.

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

My Dad got one from my sister trying to help his grandson.   He opened it up, found where flash memory was supposed to or could have been added, and was looking into how to add more flash memory.  Last I heard about that because I think they just bought another laptop.

Good for them.

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

These things eventually plague the computer hobbyist because again, they are insufficient for a modern computer and our non-computer hobbyist friends come to us for help. Most just throw Linux on them, which is the best thing to do for any computer with limited hardware because the Linux overhead is generally smaller.

I would never lay the curse of Linux on anyone for anything other than an embedded style system or dedicated device.

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

I was going to write about how computers at work have gone to a more virtual and cloud based format, but that is a more workable solution with computers have have a bit more beef to them.  This is a rant post, so, let the rants continue!!

I'm all for that!

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

I have plenty more computers that I wanted to like but couldn't.  What did I like about these computers?  They were tiny and thin.  That was nice.

I have experienced several other dislikable computers. But I'm gonna keep my mouth shut out fear of reprisals and fodder for those that try to be internet bullies! Woot!

 

20 hours ago, doctorclu said:

Also I realize that me hating cloud based storage this now applies to me (just laughs)

Cloud storage is ok for enterprise and business. For the home user it is just a nightmare trying to keep track of everything, whatnot with the constantly changing terms of service, user interfaces, and more. Cloud service to the home user is nothing more than a way to get $$$ from your wallet. A subscription! Fuck'em'all!!

[Keatah]

10 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

my worst Computer?   Packard Bell 

Why?  It was a Packard Bell.

Ahh bullshit on that.. My old fart had a Packard Bell 286/12, and compared to the computers sold in toystores and department stores, it was pretty good. Solid construction. IBM compatible. Crisp text. Could play any of the period games that were rated for a 286 without issue. Solid product overall.

 

People like to hate on Packard Bell because of conservative specs and the name. Just something to hate for no good reason. But conservative and pedestrian specs are thoroughly mainstream and really do avoid the instability of something more cutting edge. And definitely no lanboi overclockerzing shit either!

 

Quote

Bought it in 1995.  From Radio Shack.  Paid too much for it.  (I didn't really know anything about computers but was ready to learn)  And the Radio Shack owner kept some/most the bundled software to sell separately, as I later found out that he did quite frequently.

What an ass. The store owner stripped the machine of bundled software? I'dve landed his tootsie in a small claims court because I was bored - not giving me the pack-ins to play with.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Keatah

[Keatah]

8 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

Bruh.  WordPerfect 4, which I used up until I got my AA in 2000, was superior to anything I ever used on an Apple.  And I used to swap Turbo Pascal and COBOL programs between my Amiga and the school computers effortlessly.  What the heck were you doing??

I didn't know what I was doing at all. Games and everything else were in short supply. And that pissed me off to no end. Was only interested in Applesoft BASIC and x86. I tolerated enough 6502 to do some tricks on Apple II. I was not about to go filling my head with yet more languages. And I hated swapping disks to high heaven.

 

I wanted to use TextCraft but it didn't work out. Buggy IIRC. Not sure if I ever tried any of the bigger expensive packages. Same with terminal software. Always seemed to need to manually reformat my papers after transferring them via 2 modems connected together with a 9v battery and resistor/capacitor (poor mans POTS simulator).

 

And I discovered that using a lesser capable tool skillfully gave better results than using a more sophisticated tool incorrectly. I had no time to lose and had to keep churning out papers and stuff.

 

Anyhow, it was what it was.

[Keatah]

8 hours ago, doctorclu said:

Wanted to comment and say I got a good laugh out this because, even though I enjoy a local Amiga group and even through I do enjoy many innovations of the Amiga, I've always found it to be a odd mesh of command line and GUI.   And while I used Windows and DOS side by side for years, in the Windows world you could basically do everything from the GUI side.  The Amiga on the other hand you could shuffle things around, but if you wanted to do more, you had to know the text commands.

 

In short, the GUI as nice as it was just felt tacked on.

I got somewhat used to the two co-existing side-by-side. Both felt integrated enough. And I would switch back and forth smoothly. The GUI seemed incomplete somehow. Simple. But not really tacked on.

 

I really went apeshit over MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1's seemingly endless array of buttons and stuff. I was growing up and joining a professional world with it! The stack of manuals 10" high. A computer heavy & monitor enough that it almost took two people to move. Real imposing. Impressive. Powerful!

[Goochman]

Worst computer I ever got was a store bought IBM PII.  I usually kept my PC's for 4 years and they were custom designed for the most part.  At year 4 I was in a Best Buy and they had this PII IBM for like $400 which was a great price and I was looking to upgrade to a PII based computer.

 

After getting everything setup it wasnt much faster than the PC I was hoping to replace it with - supporting components and expandability matter was the lesson learned.  After 9 months I repurposed the IBM into a Word Processing computer for my parents and invested in another custom built machine.

[Razzie.P]

7 hours ago, Keatah said:

Ahh bullshit on that.. My old fart had a Packard Bell 286/12, and compared to the computers sold in toystores and department stores, it was pretty good. Solid construction. IBM compatible. Crisp text. Could play any of the period games that were rated for a 286 without issue. Solid product overall.

 

I’m almost tempted to say “ahh bullshit” to the notion that a quality Packard Bell existed once upon a time.  ?

 

7 hours ago, Keatah said:

People like to hate on Packard Bell because of conservative specs and the name. Just something to hate for no good reason. But conservative and pedestrian specs are thoroughly mainstream and really do avoid the instability of something more cutting edge. And definitely no lanboi overclockerzing shit either!

 

 

I didn’t know people like to hate on them, but I’m not surprised by that.  For me, it’s definitely not for the reasons you mentioned, but for the fact that my experience with 100% of the ones I’ve owned had one specific common ground – they were all crap compared to everything else I’ve owned.

They taught me one valuable skill, though – how to troubleshoot and repair.  During late 90’s, I became the go-to guy in my area whenever someone had computer issues.  Friends, family, and friends of family – all needed me to come see why their PC was acting like crap.   Usually, their problematic systems were Packard Bells too.  Those things were REALLY popular in my impoverished area thanks to a lot of liberal "buy now, pay later, regardless of your bad credit" programs.

 

I kind of have a similar “mine was solid, so y’all wrong” experience, though, with Sony Vaio.   I keep hearing about what crap those machines were, but of all the pre-built machines I’ve bought, my absolute best 2 have been Sony Vaio systems.  

 

7 hours ago, Keatah said:

What an ass. The store owner stripped the machine of bundled software? I'dve landed his tootsie in a small claims court because I was bored - not giving me the pack-ins to play with.

Yeah, pretty much.  He didn’t uninstall it from the machine, though.  So if you’re playing around with your new system and see “whatever encyclopedia program” that was installed, you can click on it, but when it asks for the CD, you’re out of luck because he shrinkwrapped that and it’s now on the store shelf for sale on the cheap.  

If it happened to “today me,” I’d handle it much, much differently.  But back then I was straight out of high school, and I don’t think I was equipped to take that kind of action.  Or maybe just too lazy, I dunno.  I did get all of my software and then some, by befriending a couple employees, but lots of others got screwed by that place
 

[carlsson]

My current, modern laptop is branded Packard Bell. It is a low-end model but mostly does what I expect from it. I know there are better, more expensive brands but so far it has lasted me a fair number of years of light use.

 

As for worst computer, I can't think of one. There were a lot of machines going in and out of my ownership around 2008-2012. Some of those I enjoyed more than others. Those I powered on the least number of times before trading away were TRS-80 CoCo 2 (absolutely terrible keyboard and 120V/NTSC which both are issues for me), Atari 1040STM (might've used it more if I owned a floppy drive) and Sinclair QL (missing one or two keys, but more importantly was very unimpressive, seemed like a ZX Spectrum with a different CPU).

[Gamemoose]

I used to sell Packard Bell machines back at Sears in the early 90’s. My send PC/Compatible was a Legend 115 I think- 486 SX/25 with 4MB of RAM and a 120 MB hard drive. The thing ran everything I threw at it. Installed a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 card and CD drive….man it sounded great.  However later models started having compatibility issues with the integrated sound/modem card, at least what I ran into with customers. Or the card failing.

 

Worst computer for me was a Timex Sinclair. Like others mentioned-hated the keyboard and it was slow.

[Razzie.P]

10 hours ago, carlsson said:

My current, modern laptop is branded Packard Bell. 

 

Wow... I had no idea they were still around.  Haven't seen the name in years, so I figured they over n' done. 

 

[Keatah]

I bet it's in name only. Can't imagine the same philosophy that produced quality machines in the late 80's and early 90's is still around. Very few tech companies' are capable of that.

[Frozone212]

11 hours ago, Gamemoose said:

I used to sell Packard Bell machines back at Sears in the early 90’s. My send PC/Compatible was a Legend 115 I think- 486 SX/25 with 4MB of RAM and a 120 MB hard drive. The thing ran everything I threw at it. Installed a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 card and CD drive….man it sounded great.  However later models started having compatibility issues with the integrated sound/modem card, at least what I ran into with customers. Or the card failing.

 

Worst computer for me was a Timex Sinclair. Like others mentioned-hated the keyboard and it was slow.

"Now Timex puts the power of the computer in reach of more people then ever before

Introducing the Timex Sinclair 1000, Part of a new generation of computers designed to be easier to use 

and to own. At $99.95

Power to learn at the speed of light

Power to organize with unfailing accuracy

The Timex Sinclair 1000, the power is within your reach"

 

I emulated the 1000, it's slow as dog crap. Power? If I need power, I'll use an Atari 800 or C64.

What were they smoking when they made that ad? 

 

It runs on tapes, is cheaper then a dollar store and uses a horrid keyboard. The teen in the picture is typing away with a stupid grin on his face. I can spot BS from a mile away, just like in this Plus 4 ad:

 

My comment at 42 seconds in:

0:42 I read the scene almost immediately. A non working joystick (the game is clearly being played independent of her movements) and her "thank god this is almost over" look sealed it. not the best way to advertise guys

Commodore Plus 4 Commercial - YouTube

hundreds of packages? *Cough BULLSHIT cough*

[JamesS]

https://money.cnn.com/1998/10/07/technology/packardbell/

 

The lawsuit against Packard Bell that they settled didn't help their name much.

 

[Krebizfan]

I avoided most of the fabled lemons so the worst one I had was a PS/2 Model 60. Sturdy case with foldout legs for stability but everything else was poor. Barely faster than the IBM AT with the occasional software incompatibility but much more expensive. 

 

I tend to exclude the TS-1000 and similar systems from the problem field since a decent keyboard cost more than the entire TS-1000. Towards the end of the TS-1000 life, one could save money by buying the complete TS-1000 box instead of buying either an audio or video cable. Throw away the computer and keep the quality cables. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Krebizfan

[carlsson]

2 hours ago, Razzie.P said:

Wow... I had no idea they were still around.  Haven't seen the name in years, so I figured they over n' done.

Apparently in the late 1990's there were some turn of events (see above). Somehow NEC let go of the brand to Gateway (?) which was acquired by Acer who now owns the Packard Bell brand since 2008. Per Wikipedia, PB is marketed in Europe, Middle East and Africa while Acer sells Gateway in America and Asia. Thus not surprising if you haven't seen Packard Bell for a while if it isn't available in your region. Perhaps the brand is too tarnished in America to be re-introduced.

[zzip]

9 hours ago, Frozone212 said:

I emulated the 1000, it's slow as dog crap. Power? If I need power, I'll use an Atari 800 or C64.

What were they smoking when they made that ad? 

It was targeted at people who never owned a computer before, which was most people in 83.   So it was a lot more power then they had previously :)

 

On 12/15/2021 at 4:44 AM, Keatah said:

Feel sorry for those that fall for all the bullshit generated on Madison Avenue. Just as bad as 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes and not 1,073,741,824 bytes. Do they still need to pull that trick in today's day and age? If it knocks $0.04 off of a drive you damned fuck'n straight they do.

I don't think this was ever about saving costs,  most likely it only took one unscrupulous drive manufacturer to start advertising their capacity in base-10 rather than the proper base-2 in order to make it appear their drives gave you more storage for the same price,  then the rest start to do the same to keep their products competitive (it's much easier than educating the consumer)

[zzip]

On 12/15/2021 at 5:08 AM, Keatah said:

I didn't know what I was doing at all. Games and everything else were in short supply. And that pissed me off to no end. Was only interested in Applesoft BASIC and x86. I tolerated enough 6502 to do some tricks on Apple II. I was not about to go filling my head with yet more languages. And I hated swapping disks to high heaven.

 

On 12/15/2021 at 5:33 AM, Keatah said:

 

I really went apeshit over MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1's seemingly endless array of buttons and stuff. I was growing up and joining a professional world with it! The stack of manuals 10" high. A computer heavy & monitor enough that it almost took two people to move. Real imposing. Impressive. Powerful!

Different mindsets I suppose.    As a teen in the 80s,  there weren't many productivity apps that we needed.   Word Processing for school papers, but frankly every computer was capable of that.   Print Shop for printing out ugly banners and invites,  but that app supported many platforms.   Telecom?  Any computer with a modem could dial BBSes and Compuserve.   Learning to code-  unless you needed to learn a specific language/dialect, then pretty much any computer could be used to learn programming.

 

So I wasn't that impressed with a physically large computer (they were mostly air inside) or thick manuals,  Usually found them padded out and made it hard to get to the really important stuff.   Plus this was all so corporate and blah

 

What did impress me was multimedia..   no more "beep boop" sound and low-res pixelated graphics that only kinda looked like it was supposed to.  You were starting to see near photo quality graphics, digitized sound, even video.   This made Amiga "god tier" for people like me-  if you didn't have one you were jealous of those who did, even if you didn't want to admit it.  PCs were just... boring.    Many of us didn't jump ship to PC until it was clear that PC multimedia capabilities had caught up and surpassed what we had in the early 90s.

[+x=usr(1536)]

Mattel Aquarius.

 

This was the machine that my parents obtained for me by sitting through a timeshare presentation.  Its purpose was to keep me off of the Apple ][+ my mother was then using for work, which it failed miserably at.

 

My overwhelming memories of it are how much I hated the keyboard, the couple of games that it came with were crap, and it wasn't able to save to or read from any cassette drive I threw at it.  The Mini-Expander was a joke: despite allowing a RAM bump to 16K and adding a couple of phoned-in Intellivision-alike controllers, all that it really did was let the system remain crap but with more memory and a pair of mediocre controllers.

 

I might sound like an ungrateful brat for saying that, but when you go from an actual computer to one that was obsolete before it hit the shelves, it's difficult to not feel like you're being passed off on the second-string choice.

 

It was responsible for a used 800 coming my way, though, so it wasn't all bad.

[carlsson]

The Aquarius probably was a combination of Hong Kong tricking Mattel, and "didn't anticipate the war", meaning the major price war in the late spring, summer of 1983. By the time it was negotiated (I think the hardware design already existed), it may have made sense on a low-end market that I'm not really sure to which extent it existed in America, but by the time it got released the home computer market looked drastically different. I'd say June 1983 was a major turning point for the entire industry, except that some didn't realize it had shifted before it was too late.

[The Usotsuki]

The worst computer I spent money on was a pink RCA convertible tablet that ran 32-bit Windows 10.  The hardware was about terrible.

[Razzie.P]

11 hours ago, JamesS said:

https://money.cnn.com/1998/10/07/technology/packardbell/

 

The lawsuit against Packard Bell that they settled didn't help their name much.

 

 

10 hours ago, carlsson said:

Apparently in the late 1990's there were some turn of events (see above). Somehow NEC let go of the brand to Gateway (?) which was acquired by Acer who now owns the Packard Bell brand since 2008. Per Wikipedia, PB is marketed in Europe, Middle East and Africa while Acer sells Gateway in America and Asia. Thus not surprising if you haven't seen Packard Bell for a while if it isn't available in your region. Perhaps the brand is too tarnished in America to be re-introduced.

I didn’t know about the lawsuit, so that’s interesting.  I do remember multiple times where I’d be asked to help someone “fix” their computer and thinking the components didn’t look new, so figured they got ripped off since they were adamant that “we bought that brand new!”

 

From that link, though, this part is funny to me –

Also in 1995, Compaq sued Packard Bell for not disclosing that Packard Bell computers incorporated used parts. This practice was, in fact, widespread in the computer industry, including Compaq itself. However, unlike its rival companies, Packard Bell was judged not to have advertised the practice sufficiently in its warranties (Compaq, for instance, disclosed it in the warranty statement).

 

 

 

It states “including Compaq,” but then immediately states that Compaq did disclose it. 

 

 

This part made me giggle a bit, too.

NEC began withdrawing the Packard Bell name from the U.S. market, while keeping it in Europe, where the brand was untainted by allegations of sub-standard quality.

 

 

I imagine a board room meeting where some cigar chomping Mr Big is shouting “find me a place that don’t know we suck!”  ?
 

[carlsson]

I wonder if the models of Gateway and Packard Bell that Acer today manufactures and sells on respective markets, essentially are the same hardware but with different labels. Up till now I had no reason to investigate that, but somehow it would make sense if both brands are kept alive.

[gilsaluki]

On 12/14/2021 at 2:21 PM, Crazy Climber said:

My smartphone. Absolutely hate every one I've ever had.

That's why I still have a flip phone.  

[MrMaddog]

My worse was the first PC I built myself back in 2001 and that's because I really had no idea what I was doing.  It was an AMD Athlon barebones tower that I got from a computer show, simply because I liked the two-tone case...

 

Turned out I forgot to purchase a case fan and that sucker ran real hot!  So I bought a "fan bundle" from TigerDirect and, well over did it with fans all over the case.  I even lined the inside of the black case with white paper so it would reflect the heat to be blown out instead of absorbed in the walls.  But AMD's were notorious for running hot at the time and my PC kept shutting off to keep from over heating.  And of course it eventually wouldn't turn back on ever...

 

The one after that I had help from a friend of mine who knew how to build custom PC's and taught me how, and that AMD Athlon lasted me well throughout the rest of the 2000's till I replaced it with a 64-bit version running Windows 7.

 

 

[Razzie.P]

2 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Turned out I forgot to purchase a case fan and that sucker ran real hot!  So I bought a "fan bundle" from TigerDirect and, well over did it with fans all over the case.  I even lined the inside of the black case with white paper so it would reflect the heat to be blown out instead of absorbed in the walls.  But AMD's were notorious for running hot at the time and my PC kept shutting off to keep from over heating.  And of course it eventually wouldn't turn back on ever...

 

Pro Tip.   

 

 

[Frozone212]

My absolute worse was when we were still living on 641 park street Stockton

 

we had a real POS windows 98 or so. Dial up was a nightmare. To date, my mom still use an old POS laptop for files. It boggles my mind. It's an old windows xp or so. Mom did legal for a while so I guess she needed a rugged system.

 

Makes me wonder why most laptops don't come with 1TB standard hard drive instead of 5GB

 

this is where we lived on the bottom floor

https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=1279406d-3301-4def-9758-40a857fea9ac&cp=37.957975~-121.301723&lvl=19&dir=343.5418&pi=2.7021947&style=x&mo=z.0&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027

Edited December 17, 2021 by Frozone212
addition info