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Maes

Most useless technologies/products?

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Some stuff I've happened to own/use but that proved nothing more than a curiosity:

  1. APS film cameras. I got my first one in 1999, fascinated by the "facilities" it offered (permanent film cartridge, "Panoramic" and "Extended" picture formats etc. ) until I fell flat on my face seeing how films were much more expensive and harder to find than standard 35mm, a photographers showed me how the "panoramic" formats were achieved just by trimming the film, and in general how the quality sucked. Stopped using that only months since I got it.
  2. Double layer DVD-/+R: while every recorder supports them, I've never used one in my life. I remember them being awfully expensive, like Eur 10 a piece and as of recently, 2 to 3 Eur a piece. Can't help but compare it to the 0.20-0.30 cent a piece price of regular DVD-/+R, for what amounts to less than double the capacity, so once again you can't e.g. backup a full factory printed DVD-9 movie, and compatibility is flaky. Plus, with Blu-ray around the corner, there's no reason to keep whipping this dead horse.
  3. Pictbridge functionality on printers: I've tried using it once or twice, 99% of the time you need more control than what the camera's menus can give you.
  4. TV tuner cards: at least analog ones, seldom proved useful for actually watching broadcast TV, since they had trouble tuning on many stations with typical household antennas, and the picture quality couldn't compare with even a cheapo 14" color TV. Plus, the software one uses often limits functionality such as being able to use the remote contol, the tunable channel range, the availability of Teletext etc. I've found myself using them way more as video grabbers, rather than watching TV on my PC. Even if I didn't have a TV, I'd rather spend some money on a TV which can be used for other purposes, rather than a dedicated and relatively expensive piece of hardware that sucks CPU power and needs a PC to operate).
There are probably others, but that would be too much for one post. What are yours?

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Maes said:
Some stuff I've happened to own/use but that proved nothing more than a curiosity:

I've had experience with all of these:

APS film cameras.

A friend of mine had one but he was never happy with the quality of the photos. From what I remember the film was more expensive, too.

Double layer DVD-/+R

I bought a 10-pack on sale a few years ago for around $15 (Canadian). I think I've used two: one for a backup of a damaged-but-still-readable movie disc without needing to use DVDShrink, and the other a DVD-Audio that was larger than a single-layer disc. For data it's cheaper to just split something across two single-layer discs.

Pictbridge functionality on printers

I've used this a couple of times when someone wanted a printed copy of a recently-taken photo. The computer was off and from what I remember the SD card was fairly full so it was faster to just use Pictbridge than to scan through all the images on the card. I'm not even sure if my newer printer supports Pictbridge at all.

TV tuner cards

I bought an ATI All-In-Wonder card in 2002. So it has a video capture unit (with TV tuner) in addition to a Radeon 8500 and a firewire port. The novelty of the TV tuner wore off pretty fast when I realized I'd rather watch TV while sitting on the couch than from my computer chair. The capture card itself wasn't the greatest, but more than enough for reading old VHS tapes. The main problem was that if I wanted to upgrade one component I had to upgrade them all, which explains why didn't replace it until recently...

There are probably others, but that would be too much for one post. What are yours?

There's the already-mentioned DVD-Audio discs. I don't even own a standalone player for them (and probably never will), but I like music in surround and some is only available in that format (I use DVDAudioExplorer to rip them, in case anyone's wondering).

And my CD Walkman, circa 2004. It was incredibly useful until I got an MP3 player, but the one feature I never used was its ability to play ATRAC3 files.

I'm sure there's more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head right now...

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Some other features of products I never used:

  1. FM radios on MP3 players and cell phones. Having an FM radio, especially on a high-capacity MP3 player, is rather pointless because one will normally have all and any music he'd like to listen to on the player. I hardly used that with cassette walkmans, let alone when I can carry the equivalent of dozens of cassettes in something not larger than a cigar. Even in the (unlikely) case that someone needs a radio to regularly listen to news or a show, the menus for using them are clumsy compared to a simple analog tuner or auto-scan digital radio, and usually reception is far worse. On cell phones it's doubly pointless since you also need to have the headphones plugged in.
  2. Cable Select jumper on IDE devices: I recall countless times where this caused trouble and didn't work as intended. I thus always appropriately set my IDE devices as Master/Slave and never trust the random whims of the CS jumper.
  3. A pair of RCA-shaped "digital outputs" on an old hi-fi Philips audio player I have. The manual says it's for "expansion and future applications such as CD-i" but I never found any contemporary or future appliance that would work with those. They could be digital outputs as we mean them today, but by the description of it they sound like a useless feature.

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Maes said:

Some stuff I've happened to own/use but that proved nothing more than a curiosity:

  1. Pictbridge functionality on printers: I've tried using it once or twice, 99% of the time you need more control than what the camera's menus can give you.
  2. TV tuner cards: at least analog ones, seldom proved useful for actually watching broadcast TV, since they had trouble tuning on many stations with typical household antennas, and the picture quality couldn't compare with even a cheapo 14" color TV. Plus, the software one uses often limits functionality such as being able to use the remote contol, the tunable channel range, the availability of Teletext etc. I've found myself using them way more as video grabbers, rather than watching TV on my PC. Even if I didn't have a TV, I'd rather spend some money on a TV which can be used for other purposes, rather than a dedicated and relatively expensive piece of hardware that sucks CPU power and needs a PC to operate).


I find pictbridge incredibly useful. Of course dropping into photoshop is sometimes necessary, but I love that I can simply drop the camera onto the printer and it prints out in minutes. My parents use it as its a nuisance to take cameras to shops for printing overnight.

I have an analog tuner in my PC (Hauppauge PVR150), the signal and picture quality are great. Much better than the TV I have. Though the software that comes with these cards are usually utter crap (which is why I use Media Center). I also ditched the remote it came with and used a Microsoft one. My advise is to stay away from the really cheap cards, don't use the bundled software and get a decent remote.

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eSATA and FireWire's new offerings against the almost released USB3 standard.

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Maes said:

A pair of RCA-shaped "digital outputs" on an old hi-fi Philips audio player I have. The manual says it's for "expansion and future applications such as CD-i" but I never found any contemporary or future appliance that would work with those. They could be digital outputs as we mean them today, but by the description of it they sound like a useless feature.


Good digital receivers have both optical and RCA digital inputs. I've got both on my JVC, with the optical hooked to the PS3, and the RCA hooked to the old CD deck.

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Of the stuff I've owned:

TurboGrafix-16 - Got it early last year because I love the shmups on it. I have yet to actually play the system since I can get those same shmups on the Wii's Virtual Console.

Blackberry Pearl - Biggest waste of time I've ever owned, constantly froze or dropped a call. Went back to a basic cell phone and was much happier.

eSATA - Have the port on the side of my laptop.

Bokken - Bought this for aikido, but I always forget it at home. At most it collects dust for me.

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Security bit sets for electric screwdrivers - most are too short to reach recessed screws.

Universal learning remotes - I have two that can only perform the most basic functions of the remotes they're meant to replace.

"Digital Ready" antennas - they don't seem to work any better than the analogue rubbish they're replacing. :D

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DJ_Haruko said:

Blackberry Pearl - Biggest waste of time I've ever owned, constantly froze or dropped a call. Went back to a basic cell phone and was much happier.



Lol!

I really don't get all the fuss about Blackberrys. Even for smartphones their operating system is rather shitty. There's a lot better phones out there - no matter what your needs are.


Oh, here's another one: DIVX - not the video codec but the (dismally failed) disc format that was supposed to compete against DVD. I can't imagine technology getting any more useless than this one...

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Play-It-Now, a recorder/playback device.



This sounded really cool as a kid, record audio directly from a headphone jack to listen to later.

Turned out the audio quality was horrid and you could only record about a half-hour's worth of music.

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The Pioneer Laseractive.

It was supposed to be the ultimate game console, but there were only, like, 7 or so games on the system, mostly being interactive-movie games and crap. It had two video game console modules, one for the TurboGrafx 16 and the other for the Sega Genesis. The system itself failed miserably because of its insane costs. Adjusting for inflation, The system itself cost $1,400. Each of the modules cost $883, easily 4 times as much as you would pay for the systems separately. Hell, even the cables cost $515. It was probably the biggest failure in system history, because almost nobody remembers it.

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Including failed/rare technologies in this list, like CED disks and the 60s Scopitone/Cinebox "video jukeboxes" is interesting, but it would be more interesting if we stuck to features/products that achieved some market popularity, in one form or the other.

I'd include the whole FMV "video games" category in this one. They proved to be a burden for everyone: developers, distributors and "consumers", no matter in what era they made their first appearance.

First there were Laserdisc games, which added the incredible cost of the hardware to the well-known gameplay issues. Then they tried to recycle some of these games with the Sega CD, the Philips CD-i, the late 80s Action Max (VHS based!) and even with "multimedia PC's" and renaming them to "interactive movies" or "multimedia games". What next, OnLive will perhaps try to push some of those out of the window?

3D goggles and that whole "Virtual Reality" crap: no wonder if you haven't heard or seen any of those during the last 10 (or more) years. Most of the 90s goggles were awkward to use, worked only with a handful of games and the resolution/display technology sucked ass, not to mention that they hurt your eyes/head if used for too long. The last time I heard of a game that could work with those was in 1996-1997. Other "VR" accesories like full-body sensor suits, special chairs/enclosures etc. were even less successful.

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FM radios on MP3 players and cell phones.


I like having an fm tuner on my cellphone, I switched from a stupid pocket radio with manual tuning to it, I also dumped my mp3 player because my cellphone can play mp3s anyway.

Cable Select jumper on IDE devices: I recall countless times where this caused trouble and didn't work as intended. I thus always appropriately set my IDE devices as Master/Slave and never trust the random whims of the CS jumper.


I agree, I am lucky to own mostly SATA drives now, but dealing with old ide ones were a pain, especially the kinds that had lots of different jumper settings along with Master, Slave and Cable Select

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The LS-120 disk drive. At the time, I thought it was a boon for it to use 1.44 MB floppies as well as its own 120 MB floppies. I hadn't realized at the time Zip drives were far more widespread and damn near nobody used LS-120. Oh well, USB drives made removable disks obsolete.

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Hauppague (sp?) made a great ATV/DTV tuner with software. The tuner plugs into your USB port, and the softweare used your PC as the TV.
The picture quality was very good, although hardly ever got to full speed (29.97fps), usually about 18 to 24FPS, with some spikes getting near the 30. Reception was better than most TV's and receivers I have/had. Until I upgraded the software, that is. The original disc worked a lot better.
In Vista, though, it was a bit crash-happy. Changing channels was a gamble. Would freeze or crash a lot. When it worked, it was good. Used primarilly in power failures and for a quick shot.

I remember the Japaneese really did make a solar powered flashlight, which only worked in a bright enviornment. I can see this as a viable way to store a charge and use it later in a dark area.

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HWGuy said:

Oh well, USB drives made removable disks obsolete.


<tech rant>
It's more correct to say that they made them obsolete as a means of physically tranferring files between computers (but then again, the same could be said of the Internet and local networks, depending on the context).

They are (unfortunately) still necessary for certain tasks like upgrading optical drive and motherboard BIOSes, and even as a means for booting from a CD-ROM or USB drive, if the BIOS or drive won't work for whatever reason (Smart Boot Manager helped me in dozens of cases while I worked at the army's tech support). Also, they are the only means of providing Windows XP with 3rd party drivers during the installation phase.

There are alternatives such as bootable USB keys with DOS and a FAT formatting for BIOS upgrades (I have one of those too), but making them is far beyond the reach of a non-geek, while practically anybody can make a bootable floppy. Bootable CDs are even harder to make, while for windows installation one will have to create an ad-hoc installation with nLite. All of these steps are unnecessary if you just have a floppy drive :-p

IMHO, it's only appropriate to call something "obsolete" when it has no practical use left whatsoever, and in good or bad there are still a lot of them for the humble floppy. Only when BIOS upgrades will come only in the form of burnable CD-ROM images or something, will the floppy die completely (and then again, there might be the occasional CD-ROM drive that won't boot...) </tech rant>

  • Anyway...regarding USB TV tuners = fail. They tend to cost a lot more than PCI ones, and somehow manage to be even worse CPU hogs (although I guess that depends on how good the USB chipset is). TV cards nowadays are pretty minimal to begin with (essentially a high speed DAC coupled to a video input or a tuner, that feed raw data to the computer's bus), USB ones basically use a slower/less direct bus than PCI.
  • Speaking of storage media and technoogies: packet writing on CD-R and CD-RW (and later on, DVD-R etc.) That was among the most useless shit ever invented: you got 530 MB of space on a 700 MB CD-R, could only really write files once and "delete" them by losing even more space, even on CD-RW (unless you used highly specific software) and you ended up with a horrible patchwork of a CD-R that could only be read on a handful of systems. Not really compatible enough to use a big floppy to exchange data, and each disk you used practically had a limited number of reuses, as soon as it was unable to accept any more packets or file "deletions". Now that's something really made obsolete by cheap flash storage, that beat packet-written CD-R/RW at their own game in every field.

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HWGuy said:
The LS-120 disk drive.

I can't remember if there was a good reason those never caught on or not. I know I considered it but bought a Zip drive because at least two of my friends already had one.

And there's another useless technology: the 250MB and 750MB Zip disks. They could only be read in the newer drives, and everyone else (including me) only had 100MB drives. And I don't think the 750MB ones came out until CD-RW drives were fairly ubiquitous.

I don't think the 100MB version should go on the list though; those things were incredibly useful for file transfer from about 1997 (when I got mine) to 1999 (when I got high speed Internet, and even a while after until I got a CD burner). And fortunately, mine never got the "click of death"...

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A pathetic attempt to make money, who would even THINK of wearing this in the public, for people who can't figure out how to get a bathrobe on backwards. Unless you don't mind looking like a cult member..

Only known as SNUGGIES...

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My mom bought some Shamwow's after seeing the commercial on T.V. and they are really lame. They don't absorb water that good and when you wring the water out, it turns pee colored

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SuperSlammer2 said:

My mom bought some Shamwow's after seeing the commercial on T.V. and they are really lame. They don't absorb water that good and when you wring the water out, it turns pee colored


I've seen a lot of bad reviews for that product, a more appropriate name would Scamwow. The one thing that I caught that made know that it was a crock of shit was the part where he pours soda on the rug and after going back from the seemingly ecstatic Vince, it shows the puddle completely gone. It sure has managed to fool a lot of people it seems though.

Also another pointless product is the wallet-light or whatever its called, by the time you use it, your pupils have already adjusted to the dim settings and you'd look like a nitwit popping it out a restaurant or similar area, the cell phone would make more sense to use a light.

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The Programme Delivery Control aka as "Video Programming System". which was supposed to allow for ad-free recordings by part of a VCR.

Dunno how popular it was elsewhere, but it was utterly useless in Greece and Italy, since not even major stations (especially private TV stations) implemented it. Thinking about it, they had no incentive: the technology had costs on their side, and it might even void their advertising contracts if they provided a means for skipping ads themselves.

Same thing for VCR plus codes, although I've seen those in action a few times. Leaving aside the folklore about how hard it is to program a VCR, I've seen very few VCRs actually supporting them and very few TV guides carrying codes for their shows. Which are made moot anyway because of ads.

fraggle said:

CueCat beats them all.


LOL WTF. A marginally useful product that self-pwned because of an anally retentive company policy...and that "users don't own the devices"...whoah...that was ahead of its time. Even more ahead than the discography and software industries!

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That whole CueCat and VHS thing reminded me of certain rare "interactive" Transformer action figures sold in the late 80s or early 90s. They had special sensors and would "react" to certain specially encoded visual pulses during some specially crafted TV-aired Transformers show or something...much like an Action Max, only in reverse. What this amounted to? Well...that you could watch Transformers on TV with your "interactive" Megatron or Optimus Prime and they would randomly blink and make noises when they "saw" their enemies on the TV...or something.

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Designed to be a cheap alternative to a car as a practical town runaround, the Sinclair C5 has to be one of the most useless pieces of tech ever created. An open topped battery and pedal powered vehicle that provided no space for passengers or shopping, left you open to the elements, ran out of battery power really quickly (even quicker in the cold), went slowly and which sat you so low down it meant that other road users couldn't see you and that you were placed at the same height as their exhaust pipes was never going to be a success. So, why did the genius who brought us the ZX81 and Spectrum computers think this was a good idea?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

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