Let's list a few machines that deserve our hate in retro-history. #WorstRetroTechProductsOfAllTime
So, if you have ever wondered which products in Retro-Computer history totally sucked and deserve all our hate, you're in luck. Thanks to PC World and their research back in 2006, because we will be seeing what they have to show us today. We will give our honest opinions too, by the way.
Let's take it from the 10th and down:
Worst Retro-Computer Product #10: Ashton-Tate dBase IV
Yeah, back in 1988, Ashton-Tate was the #1 Database-selling company. Most of the database market was theirs. Until it wasn't. You see, dBase IV sucked. Slow and unresponsive, a buggy mess, and a 700$ price was an overkill. Ashton-Tate lost most of its market by that version. After two years, a patched version came out but it was too little, too late. The company merged, and the dBase database line got discontinued.
I guess that was a head-start. The products get worse after here.
Worst Retro-Computer Product #9: Pressplay & MusicNet
By the year 2002, the idea of digital music was not new. It was one of the top pirated products online. And as you know, companies hate pirates, so somebody had to make a legal way of distributing digital music. Say hello to Pressplay and MusicNet which were the first to distribute digital music with subscriptions. Guess what? Pressplay had too many bad quality songs and its burn-to-disc capabilities that promised 10 songs to burn per month should have clarified that "you can only burn 2 from each artist per month". MusicNet was better but its songs expired every 30-days from the day you downloaded them. They were both too sucky for people to stop getting illegal digital music. Thankfully, some years later, Apple had the solution to that called "iTunes".
Not bad, you say? Let's continue our list.
Worst Retro-Computer Product #8: Microsoft Internet Explorer V.6.0
Ok, we all know IE and how popular it used to be. Go figure why? Every Windows PC had it installed back in 2001. Why was the 6th one so bad? Well, it was the hacker's utopia. It was so badly protected that in 2004, the U.S. CERT warned all computer owners to switch browsers, if they were using IE 6.0. If you did not switch, went to some less-secure website, somehow clicked something you were not supposed to click, you could be infected with some keylogger or virus. Just like that. So, Microsoft started to patch like crazy their IE software.
We're all thankful that's over and we advise you to be careful online.
Worst Retro-Computer Product #7: Microsoft Bob
Yeah, it's time to cover that buddy. We will be covering him in detail but to say the least, this could be one of Microsoft's worst products ever made. It was tacky, cartoony, a little confusing, and expensive. Fine, we get the idea of making Windows 3.1 look like a house but why do that??? Oh well, maybe it had a purpose. We will discuss that on a different and more in-depth article for sure.
Let's leave Bob alone now, let's move on.
Worst Retro-Computer Product #6: Disney The Lion King CD-ROM
This is how Disney killed Xmas in 1994. The game relied on some untested graphics and video-card mechanisms which never were tested before the game was released. The result? When Compaq released a Presario which did have an untested with WinG (the graphics the game relied on) video-card, some parents went to put that CD for their kids to play. What happened is that those kids witnessed their first Blue Screen of Death. Gladly, Microsoft went to pick up WinG and its awful system to make into DirectX, a way better and still-used system, which also later made the Xbox.
Bad products make tech better at times. At others they don't. Let's get to the final (and worst) 5:
Worst Retro-Computer Product #5: Sony BGM Music CDs
This might be a little later than most of the Retro-Tech products mentioned before, it's from 2005. Still, not that new and still deserves to be mentioned. So, what's so bad about these CDs??? They were the hacker's best friends. Putting one of those thingies into your PC could set you up for a dangerous ride? Why? If you revisit our blog post on Copy Protection and DRM (link on related posts), you will find that DRM is pretty much a love and hate relationship. A lot of times it can cause system instability. In Sony's case, the disks had DRM that antispyware could not see past. If a genius hacker installed a keylogger inside the disk, your system would not be able to see it, and that would make your system vulnerable.
Yeah, thanks Sony.
Worst Retro-Computer Product #4: Microsoft Windows ME
You knew that was coming.
We made a whole blog post mashing and bashing on the Windows Millennium Edition and all its quirks. To recap? No DOS mode, useless "media" programs, a system restore that made your computer slow down too much, many tons of system problems, and a failed attempt at bridging the gap between Work and Home computing. Well, if that's not enough for you, visit the actual blog post (link on related posts).
Windows ME, Vista, and 8 together are the suckiest. Sadly, Vista and 8 won't be mentioned today but you should put them in the same spot.
Top Worst 3, we're closing down to the 1st place in the podium.
Worst Retro-Computer Product #3: Syncronys SoftRAM
So, what's that, you say? Windows 95 was a quite demanding piece of OS since most of its programs needed more than just one Megabyte of RAM. Imagine that such a Megabyte was worth 30-50$ and you had no cash for more? Welcome SoftRAM to the rescue. It presumably promised to "double that Megabyte of RAM" for just 30$ and a box of Software. If you thought this was a nice deal, you are probably not seeing that people try to scam you like that. 700,000 people wasted a precious 30 bucks for this piece of scam and what they got was certainly not doubled RAM. What it actually did is expand your Hard-disk cache. This was something any tech-savvy person could do in a minute. It did not improve that much and it certainly made false claims. After a few other useless pieces of utilities, Syncronys filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1999.
So, who's next for the Silver medal?
Worst Retro-Computer Product #2: RealNetworks RealPlayer
Let's start listing reasons why RealPlayer came out in the completely wrong time... A)In the late '90s there was no "standard" file formats. RealPlayer just could not always play media files because of that. B)It would install itself as your "Default" media player, even if you did not want that. C)It would play some weird games with your Windows Registry. D)It would pop up advertisements at random moments. E)It had maybe some issues with making users private online. Is that enough? Well, there is good news. It was a free alternative to Windows Media Player. It could have been a better one though.
Who's the "winner" now? Or would I rather say "loser".
Worst Retro-Computer Product #1: America Online
Back in 1989, having a program be awful, have inaccessible dial-up numbers, too much marketing, unwanted ads, billing practices that probably broke some law, awful customer service, and too much spam, was not new at all. Then, AOL came out. It was expensive and a lot more of the mentioned practices, it just drove away its users. On the other side, it became super popular. PC noobs just could not avoid the temptation of opening a PC mag and seeing a itty-bitty AOL disk fly out of it into the CD-ROM or Floppy Drive. 34 million was the number of peak users. I bet more than half of them just used the free hours... It does not end there. Once you started paying AOL, you could not escape that Alcatraz prison. It continued to bill you even if you requested to cancel your subscription. Whole states sued AOL for such reasons. In addition, in 1995, once the world opened its arms to the Internet, AOL didn't, locking its users to a limited amount of content. And again, as broadband became a thing in America, AOL again did not open up to it, remaining slow and leaving many customers to quit it. Now, America Online's computer service has become ashes, only to become some lame social media thing. If it is still alive even. Who knows at this point...
So, we closed down the list.
Conclusion
So, this is our list. We have the Top 10 Worst Retro-Tech programs ever made. Ranging from badly-made and virus-infested programs, to false-promises, to programs that were popular but yet flawed. We're glad they rest in pieces now. This is it for today. Hope you enjoyed the journey.
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