In hindsight, what was the worst hardware purchase you have ever made?

[DrMrLordX]

Hercules Stingray 128/3D video card.

Anytime you guys wanna say that Hercules makes good cards, or that 3dfx used to make good chipsets . . . remember the Voodoo Rush and despair. To think, I could have gotten a Millenium 2 8 meg + standard Voodoo instead. What was I thinking?

 

[Phooey]

I bought a SCSI scanner right before USB started to catch on. I could have gotten a USB printer/scanner combo for the same price as I paid for the scanner 3 months later. Doh!

 

[Sunner]

The Pioneer DVD reader I bought many many years ago.
Back then, there were hardly any DVD's to watch, and now that I finally have a bunch, it died on me :roll:

 

[maxavier]

Originally posted by: Rubicante
PC hardware? everything i've bought has been worth buying...
but if anyone wants my MB Quart Premium series 6.5" car speakers (components), you're welcome to 'em. worst speakers i've ever bought, and they cost more than any other speakers i've ever bought.

What is the model number? I'll be glad to take these "horrible" speakers off your hands.

The answer is always: external zip drive.

 

[jspeicher]

Like others, I too only buy mid-range and tend to stay away from new stuff or top of the line. It works well, buying solid performance hardware for half the price of new stuff that I don't need anyway.

I do regret buying an NEC 15" LCD last summer. It works well, but I wish I would have just invested in dual 17" LCDs.

 

[bluemax]

Way back when, before IDE CD-ROM drives, I paid HUGE money for a SoundBlaster 16 SCSI-2 and a SCSI 2x CD-ROM drive.

BIG waste of money.... huge. Good drive though... worked very well.

 

[ptw]

Definitely my worst purchase was one of those old, TRAVAN external tape drives made by Iomega. I bought it to back-up my MASSIVE 420 MB (hey--it was big at the time!) hard drive. Unfortunately, the drive was slow (can you say "all night"?) and could not complete a backup without generating some kind of an error. Even worse, it would never have the same number of errors even when I tried to back up the exact same set of data over again!

So not only was it a waste of money, it was a phenomenal waste of my time trying to get it to work.

 

[ProviaFan]

A Cyrix processor... quickly replaced with an AMD K6-2.

An HP scanner, which I still use, but which is slow and nothing short of "freaking terrible" in the image quality department (should have bought an Epson).

 

[nycdude]

First computer which was a Dell with a 300mhz cpu for like $3K and change. :Q :Q

Now that I could build my own, I'll never go there again.

 

[Radev]

I also stick to midrange components and almost never felt sorry for buying something. I also had that whining Creative Labs CD-ROM (a few people already mentioned about it). It was so loud that i couldn't even watch movies normally when it was reading. That was really annoying, but on the other hand it was a pretty good reader. I had a stupid Cyrix @133MHz in 1998, but that was all i could afford then, so i can't be sorry. I think this is the right place to mention that SAMSUNG are total crap. I have never been pleased by one of their products. Absolute lack of QC in their factories. Please tell me that it's normal to produce tv's, computer components, refrigirators, cookers, microwaves and cell phones and i WILL kill myself. I wonder why they haven't started making cars, though. Samsung care only about quantity, not quality, unfortunately. Don't buy! I had a Samsung 2.1GB HD, which died after a year only. It had countless bad sectors. And, believe me, i keep my pc very away from vibrations. It simply wasn't my fault, but the warranty was only 1 year so... i lost a few days separating it to numerous partitions in order to isolate the bad sectors in the unused capacity. I had to cut more than 500MB to isolate everything. Fortunately i found someone stupid enough to bay it later.
Maybe I should mention my Albatron GeForceFX5200, 128-bit, 128MB as a "not really good" purchase, because i took it 6 months ago for $70. I should have waited a little longer and saved my money. Now I'm going for a GeForce 6800nu.

 

[ProviaFan]

While everyone keeps mentioning Creative Labs CD-ROMs, I got one also, a long time ago (in computer terms). The CD reading part has continued to work well ever since, but about a year ago it started having trouble keeping the tray ejected. Yes, that sounds strange, but what happens is this: I push the eject button, the tray comes out and immediately shuts back up again. I have to grab ahold of the tray with one hand to hold it while loading a CD with the other.

 

[footbal07]

mine would probibly be my xbox, which i think i have finally found a use for as a cheap htpc in my room (neighbor gave me a 36in tv so i needed a way to stream my movies and all to it), a envision 17in crt, and this old epson 640 printer

 

[50]

All D-Link products
All Compaq products
Windows ME (not exactly hardware but it still sucks)

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: footbal07
mine would probibly be my xbox, which i think i have finally found a use for as a cheap htpc in my room (neighbor gave me a 36in tv so i needed a way to stream my movies and all to it), a envision 17in crt, and this old epson 640 printer

Really? You know you can mod that badboy 7 ways to sunday right? I :heart: my modded sexbox.

Soyo K8USA due to price of $183, the the POS Ali SATA controller that wouldn't detect a Raptor, and lack of pci/AGP lock. *Comic book guy* worst hardware purchase ever! I sent it back to da egg which waved the restock and let me have a full refund. :beer: for Newegg :thumbsdown: for Soyo and Ali.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: CraigRT
>>>EPoX mainboard... only board I've ever personally had fail in a system in my own PC.

>>>any product by Linksys...all junk. 2/3 products I've purchased from Linksys were defective.

>>>GEIL memory... oh my lord! the source of all instabilities I was having with my PC.. would not even run @ stock speeds with stability... WORTHLESS!

>>>LG GSA-4040B DVD-RW drive... never wrote the media at claimed speeds.. never once after burning about 10 discs got it to write at 4x. tried everything and no go.. RMA'd in exchange for a Plextor. Plextor working great as of now.

>>>GlobalWin FOP38 heatsink with the stupid Delta SCREAMER 7k RPM fan.. drove me nuts.. eventually bought a 5k RPM 6cm fan for it and much better, but boy was I mad when I fired it up for the first time and heard that thing!!!

>>>Maxtor hard drives..(I hate them all) the only one still working out of any I've ever owned is the DiamondMax +60 20GB in my oldest PC, which has already been RMA'd once.

Hmm.... lets see.... 60mm fan +7000 RPM's = really loud, this surpirsied you why?

How many Maxtor HD's have you owned? I must have installed 20-30 of them by now and I've only had one fail on me.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Chaintech znf3-150. So many problems and all my messages were ignored by Chaintech. Well my friend got the rma'd board and it seems to be working ok, but I haven't made many bad purchases so that gets the worst flag.

 

[yourdeardaniel]

thermaltake spark 7 p4 hsf
what a piece of crap, mounting clip broke off and i try to contact thermaltake, they didn't even bother to respond, that's why i'm staying away from their products.:evil:

 

[bjc112]

Lite on 12x DVD burner(s)

Blah,

Granted i got my money back, and got a 16x NEC, shipping costs and time add up..



Extremely happy with my purchases as of late.