Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[ercineker]

Philips AS111 docking bluetooth speaker/night stand... you would think that it would be magneticly shielded cause you will dock your phone right on top of it right? nope not shielded im listening to cell phone interference when i sock my phone on it and the app that you supposedly have to use it with so the clock on the speaker works is pure crap...

 

oh and th phone i bought in 2010 the Nokia 5800 its a real brick and the touch screen was terrible...

[newbie]

The Wii

I had it for almost two years and I was just bored with it because of how not advanced it was (at the time I was selling it, it was only good for Animal Crossing, as far as I'm concerned)

[Uberskills]

my turtle beaches only thing they were good for at the end of their life was a mic and headphones now i sitting here using the crappy mic on my laptop only when i need to skype call someone not letting me have game sound if i want to talk to them and then i use my apple ear buds which the wound quality is poor but what do you expect.

[Scia]

ASUS G73JW / G73JH. We had 2x JH and 1x JW, all the same problems:

• Overheating
• BSOD is the GPU driver was updated from AMD / Nvidia, rather than the ASUS support page, that never updated the driver.
• All 3 Batteries died after precisely 6 months
• Service made it worse. They came back without a working keyboard backlight, half inserted keyboards, non functional touchpad and the JW came back without the USB 3 it had initially.
• Very poor performance
• Very very bad keyboard  [didn't register about 25% of the keystrokes]
• Same for the touchpad and it's buttons, absolutely useless

Avoid ASUS "gaming" laptops like the plague!

[Dr. Strangelove]

A MSI 790FX-GD70 mainboard?

 

I'm not really sure, because end of 2009 I build a rig with: 

 

AMD PII X4 965

MSI 790FX-GD70

two XFX HD4870 1Gb in Xfire

850W Silverstone Decathlon PSU

 

After 1 month of fun -> bam! the rig went dead while gaming. Mobo and CPU gone.

Replaced the CPU, RMAed the Mobo and after 2 month -> bam! the rig went dead while gaming. Mobo and CPU gone. 

 

I never found out what was the cause. Sometimes some components just can't do with each other. And the guys with 15 years of experience in the MSI-forums had no idea either.

I bought a Formula IV and a 5870 sold the two 4870 and the rig is still running strong. But that was a expensive experience.

 

My next build was Intel / Nvidia. (the amazing Sandybridge i7 2700K, that even a chimpanzee can overclock like no tomorrow)

[silberdrachi]

Its a tossup between the Logitech G35 Headset and the HP DV9000z laptop.

 

I think id have to say the headset because it was like wearing two bricks strapped to my head, the mic was horrible, and the function buttons on the headset were just completely useless. The thing seriously gave me a full blown migrane with auras if i wore it for more than an hour. Actually ended up trading it in for the Razer Megaladon, sound quality isnt amazing but GOD DAMN are they light, other than the fact they push in on my glasses a bit too much (but everything does) i love them.

 

Laptop is still kicking, its about 6 years old at this point or some such, just about everything is ready to fail. HDD has problems with faults, graphics chip runs like a tiny volcano, cpu chokes on flash, the batteries are still in near perfect condition but even brand new they only got about an hour and a half on full charge, and its only got wireless G. I had bought it because i had the HP DV7000z and that completely failed and when they said they couldnt fix it they gave me store credit to buy a new one. Dont think ill ever buy a HP again. Just bought a new laptop this year, lenovo y500 (added a msata 256gb ssd to it) and love it, other than minor touchpad problems. Now the old HP sits permently under my TV to work as a semi-media-streamer off my NAS.

[ROReasy]

for me its the HP pavilion dv 7.

my first Laptop ever so expensive and broke after 6 months.

i sent it in for Fixing and that about 5 times. i couldnt use in total for 2 and half months.

 

also Avermedia live gamer portable.  (bought it bevor Linus recommended it ^^)

170 € for something that took me a few days to figure out and and some People from the avermedia Forum to get to work.

it was recommended by many gamer an looked pretty easy to use.

the Video isnt recorded full Screen, i can either Play with Audio (no Audio on the Video though) or the other way round.

 

i asked alot of People on the Forum getting  it to work. with Stereo mix and so on. i use a wireless USB Headset that seemed to be the Problem.

maybe some of you guys know what to do?

[Nick Paviour]

My blackberry playbook, waist of money, no app support, even though got it for less than half price, still was a waist of my money. Never again

[smeggie]

1st: My smartphone HTC desire X, it's a great phone and all but i just don't use it that much compared to other people. 

2nd: Buying a prebuilt system in local IT shop where I redid the cablemanagement and changed some specs :D

I was just not confident enough to build it on my own, but I did build a gaming rig for my brother one year later, it wasn't my money i was playing with ;D

[iamnotslick]

1.Samsung galaxy ace. Worst phone EVER. Pathetic battery life, Pathetic build nd TERRIBLE performance.

2. HP G62 laptop.Replaced the battery around 4 times and still it dosent last for more than 45s, hinges broken, webcam not working , mic not working , overheats like crazy

3 Skullcandy hesh 2.0 kevin durrant headphones. Decent sound for 50$ BUT broke in about 6 months

4 Gigabyte Luxo m1004 case . It was the only case in my budget for 50$ in my country and cable management was SO PATHETIC.

[ha1o2surfer]

I had just purchased a Mac Book Pro 15 inch, non retina.. Had it for about 10 hours and wanted to return it already and switch back to my W110ER. It looks great, and is a high quality machine but there were a few issues. My Plextor SSD has a bug that locks it up for a few seconds when an OS initiates an HIPM-DIPM command. In Windows, I could disable this no problem, in Mac..forget about it. 1st Strike. 2nd Strike was the fact that I can't connect 2 external monitors to it (I knew this going in but more on why these issues stack up later to lead to my final decision). 3rd strike was the nasty back light bleed of the LCD plus the slow MS. Dragging a window around would produce this glitchy blurr, it was so annoying and happened in Windows too. Last thing that really burst my bubble was the cooling performance of the Mac Book Pros. Running any sort of app that used even 30-40 percent CPU would cause the temp to spike to 160-170 degrees right off the bat, then the fans kicked in and helped a little but still would cause the temp to rise above 200F if the CPU was fully pegged Which would cause throttling. Add any GPU to that mix and you are asking for a burnt table and a hot mac which you could cook an egg on. Another thing, the power adapter was only 85 watts, do the math... that is not powerful enough to supply both the GPU+CPU under full load so the battery would have to kick in. If the battery was low it would throttle instantly! </rant>

[Flynn]

I ordered a Galaxy S4 and the damn thing came with a locked bootloader :(

[Canoas]

My most disappointing tech purchase would probably have to go to the Antech Kuhler H20 620 closed-loop water cooler. I had just built my first rig a few months before, and didn't know much about computer hardware. I wanted to overclock my AMD Phenom II X6 1100t (also another bad purchase, but I partially had known that) and I saw a couple reviews on YouTube, thought it would be a good cooler, and bought it. 

 

It turned out to be crap. I've heard mixed opinions about Antec's Kuhler line since, but the unit I got was horrible (I avoid CLC now anyway). I think with the 1100t running at stock, it maxed with prime95 at like 80 C, or something like that. I returned it almost right away, and it put a damper on my excitement to finally be able to overclock.

 

Really? I bought one and it kept my i5 3570k (stock clock) at 65ºC (and two of the cores remained at 62ºC) with intel burn test and at about 61-62ºC with prime 95. The room temperature was over 32ºC, maybe even 35ºC, so I can't say it's bad at all. I was honestly surprised with the temps.

When I took it off to change the stock fan since it was always at max speed which was incredibly noisy I noticed some liquid though.. So if in about two weeks or so when I check it again the liquid is still there then I'll have to RMA.

[Lord Pantaloons]

iPad, was given to me but after an hour I all could think was "Is this it? is this all it does?" (crap games and internet)

[mozoa]

Probably my previous phone, LG optimus gt540

It was black magic when I got the thing, but it sure is a piece of crap now.

now I have a alcatel ot-995 and I still love the thing.

[magic]

Razer Abysuss Mirror mouse.. paid £30 for it and it's nothing against my old RAT3.. it's been relegated to the guest PC now :( 

[KnightSirius]

LOL I'd have to say the worst purchase I ever made was on an Xbox 360 Kinect ! -.- Piece of crap, Only used it a couple of times as the only games that use it are kid games. *sigh* There was 150+$ Wasted, Oh and now they want you to buy a new one, or get the new one with the next gen Xbox ! (Which I would never buy but that just makes it even worse !)

 

Worst I've ever seen is my friend spending around 1000$ on an HP Laptop which was and is an absolute piece of $#*% and I even offered to build him one for the same amount that would have been 1000x better !

[grayperview]

Back in 1994 i bought half a meg (512k) upgrade for my Amiga 600, probably the worst £50 i've ever spend.

[Pirrelli]

A LG BL40!! Well it had awesome features but the battery sucked at the end of it's life time the battery only last 5 minutes and it was slow as h**l, probably because of all the features and and crappy hardware! it's like butting a scooter engine in a car and letting five overweight driving it..

[Tama]

An Android Tablet

I spent 400$ on a Toshiba thrive 2 years ago, let me tell you the thing was the biggest piece of shit ever, random freezes while doing basic activities, the alarm clock app would crash and not wake me up, the battery life is 4 hours at max, Also when outputting video with hdmi it wouldn't play sound, and there was no way to change the default sound device to hdmi.   Even after upgrading to Ice cream sandwich it was awful,  I would have been so much better off putting that money towards upgrading my computer.

[Art Vandelay]

Zowie AM.

 

It was perfect in just about every possible way, except that it can't track above ~3m/s.

[vanwazltoff]

RAT5 from mad catz. I did a review in this forum a few days ago...

i got a RAT5 when they first came out, after that they went down hill with reliability problems 

[vanwazltoff]

Playstation Vita at launch, it was so useless and games just werent fun at least that my opinion, kept it for 2 months then traded it for a 40" 720p TV, used the hell out of that TV though  :D

 

The original EEEpad transformer, there were almost no tablet apps so everything was an up-scaled phone app back then

 

Any pair of headphones that cost over $100 that wasnt made by Grado, seems like everything besides my Grado SR80is broke or got lost by my brother within a month, plus they all sounded terrible compared to my Grados

 

a Zalman heatsink, I only had good temps for a month then it has given me problems ever since no matter what thermal paste, i think the mounting surface might be warped, why did everyone have to be out of hyper 212s at the same time!

 

Samsung Exhibit II phone, that phone was a POS, actually any phone made my Samsung that isnt a GalaxySX, excluding the S1 were all just crap

 

the Wii, the most bought and least used console ever haha

[Lolbroccoli]

My blackberry playbook, waist of money, no app support, even though got it for less than half price, still was a waist of my money. Never again

Same here, bought the thing for like $200. Poor app support but my mom likes it

[helping]

um, the HTC EVO 3D

Please dont get that phone

What's up with yours? I love mine.

 

HTC phones seem like they've been built like a tank. Mines taken multiple falls over a year and my old Incredible took more falls than I can count and a few throws across a room.

 

I don't have much disappointments since I research everything I buy online as if it were a lifestyle choice, but twice receiving DOA 600$ Pioneer receivers was disheartening. Like above said, a Razer Abyssus was probably runner up.