The Biggest High-Tech Flops Of 2008

[Guest]

2008 turned out to be a fairly eventful year. While some products stood out from the crowd and fulfilled the hopes they’d raised, there were also a lot of letdowns, too. From among the disappointments, the members of our editorial staff have picked 15.

The Biggest High-Tech Flops Of 2008 : Read more

 

[one-shot]

I looked forward for GTA IV on PC for a long time only to realize that I would be crazy to buy it. Now Piracy will be blamed because of a rushed ported console game that had poor sales because of the game's low quality. Worse sales on the PC side will result in the studios investing even less time into a game resulting in worse quality than before. Even though Piracy is to blame...obviously.

 

[cangelini]

I'd like to think that the few gems that come out on the PC first (and people actually buy) remind developers that it's still worthwhile. Wonder if TTWO rushed that one out to try affecting the buyout offer?

 

[twisted politiks]

im confused as to why they have a dell laptop with an exploded battery with the article flopping Sony's battery? XD

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]twisted politiks[/nom]im confused as to why they have a dell laptop with an exploded battery with the article flopping Sony's battery? XD[/citation]

Sony-made batteries were in Dell and Apple systems when the exploding battery saga began...

 

[jtnstnt]

You guys know what the internet is really for. No need to say just find it on picture 9.

 

[kingraven]

I don't know about France but here in Portugal there is at least 1 ISP that has already started to make some pilot tests with fiber optic cabling. I am one of the happy testers of a 60Mb download/ 16Mb upload connection . Fiber cable comes all the way to the house and in to a modem.

 

[arsenoxide]

[citation][nom]jtnstnt[/nom]You guys know what the internet is really for. No need to say just find it on picture 9.[/citation]

Haha, I just noticed that.
In regards to the Phenom X3, I agree that its 3 cores are underpowered in comparison to Intel's dual cores. It's pretty sad.

 

[randomizer]

The Aussie governmant wants to lay down a fibre network to 98% of the population over the next 5 years, but they can't even get a buyer for the network. Too bad it will likely be FTTN; it won't make a difference to speeds while the country is sitting on ancient, waterlogged last miles.

 

[ravenware]

Phenom x3 was useless. The majority of the Phenom line is considerably underpowered and out performed by its own predecessors. There was the 4x4 cluster fu** before it too.

 

[Guest]

100Mbit (12MByte/s) upload and download speeds
already enabled in a part of The Netherlands :]

HD movies in 12 mins :O

 

[safcmanfr]

umm, I live in France and 100mbps has already been up and running for a year and a half in the city near me. 30 euros a month, TV and telephone included.

I live in a village, 200 people, and I can get 4mbps, tv, and telephone for 40 euros a month.

Now the UK is a country that is way behind on broadband speeds, prices and connections (I am English)

 

[enewmen]

GTA4 runs fine for me - on Vista 64 no less with no lag. There was a strange problem with no dialog audio (can hear music), but that went away after some windows updates and reboots.

FarCry2 should have been included, just because I was not able to resume the game after completing 80% of the missions. The next mission was at the UFLL headquarters, but no people inside to give me a task. Another problem was DX10 seemed to skip frames no matter what driver version I installed. At least DX9 was silk smooth at MAX settings and didn't look worse than DX10.
Too bad, the game was enjoyable and immersive otherwize and the story had promise.

I also tried the Windows-7, but had to remove it just because I kept getting "not supported for this OS" errors when I try to install apps - even though I sure they will run if the OS will just let them install. Such as Daemon Tools.(older, more funky apps where able to run)

I notice no flops from Intel. What about the p45 chipset that uses more electricity and slower than the p35? The PCIe 2.0 makes up for it for me.

Maybe I told more than people want to read...

 

[Guest]

2009 Flop Predictions:

1)Tom's Games Site. ->No more content just lame flash games.
2)Best of Media's management. ->For sucking so hard they actually blow.

 

[Guest]

Meh - it would have been better to mention in the bits about vista that it was mainly killed by poor 3rd party driver support, OEMs shipping it with tons of bloatware, and negative public perception largely via Apple's ads.

There's no doubt that it was a flop, but it didn't really deserve to be

 

[nekatreven]

Is it me or does the phone on page 11 never name the product in the image? I had to look on the page before or after to get the product model/name from the text of the link to it's page.

 

[zodiacfml]

i never considered hd dvd a flop. it's just sony gave everything they got to avoid another betamax from happening again.
hd dvd's capacity is sufficient considering mpeg4 is getting popular and mature.

 

[Guest]

The title of each web page names the flop in question.

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]SubKID[/nom]2009 Flop Predictions:

1)Tom's Games Site. ->No more content just lame flash games.
2)Best of Media's management. ->For sucking so hard they actually blow.[/citation]

3)All of Toms' sites. ->Editors that couldn't passed 4th grade English.

 

[pollom]

hahaha in the screen shoot of yahoo search, looks like looking for porn hahahaha lol

 

[crockdaddy]

I know negative thoughts tend to get communicated more often than positive ones, but I wonder if the best of media management have a clue in regards to what would work or not work going forward with this site. The negative tone against this site has become in my view common place. If I was honest I am slowly but certainly starting to agree with it. I hate to admit that because I have been a loyal reader for over ten years now. I think my final straw was the reorganization of the TomsGames site ... the part of Toms which I was taking the most value from and entertainment was Second Take. With it gone my daily surfing of this site has dropped. I find this to be very frustrating.

 

[diablo-x]

Not only did I not buy GTA 4, I wouldn't even consider pirating it since it's 14GB, I think that's probably the future of anti-piracy for games, just make them MASSIVE!!!!

 

[chaohsiangchen]

Nvidia HybridPower rocks. Consider the case that you're running two GTX 260s. Even though the card consumes less power at idle, two cards at idle still consumes a lot, not to mention the heat inside your computer at idle. Most computers run at idle most of the time, and it is always good to consume less power and generating less heat. It is definitely not a flop.

 

[apache_lives]

Windows Vista? Come on just because thousands upon thousands of people live under rocks or run obsolite hardware doesnt mean the os is a failure - it craps on its predecessors, so why is it a failure? Owners of Vista 64, 4+gb of ram (come on its dirt cheap) and a Dual/Quad core or better will know what im talking about - i cant fault it!

And as for GTA IV - i repeat, it worked from day one with no hassles, has not crashed once (finnished the game weeks ago and still play it), performance aok with 2 year old card (architecture wise - 8800GT 512mb), the only issue perhaps is the sometimes cut up shadows but still it looks friggin sweet on medium graphics (limited on my system) etc - wtf issues about video quality and performance are you on about? What sort of gamer uses single core cpu's and 7 series nvidia cards?

Iphone - i own one but i hear no complaints about it? I cant MMS people? I cant bluetooth someone an image or anything? I cant store stuff on it? I cant use it for more then 2 days without draining the battery? I can make it crash listening to music and browsing the web? I get poor performance playing the games from the app store??? Not to say nokia is any better...

Half assed article.

 

[c0sm0420]

for enewmen...

right-click on the installer and choose Vista compatibility mode