Most UNsatisfying HW purchase ??

[apoppin]

The other thread "inspired" me.

What did you buy - thinking it would be a "good deal" and/or useful - that turned out to be the WORST HW purchase - EVER?

Mine was a SOYO TISU - that replaced my best HW purchase ever (a BX6-r.2). It turned out to be defective right out of the Box (for e.g. the video card needed to be jiggled in the AGP slot to make it work) and Soyo "tech support" so stupid, i gave up and broke it into a million pieces.



What was yours?

 

[Dman877]

TBred A 2200+. POS wasn't stable at stock speed unless I water cooled the sucker. Thank god it was almost free .

EDIT: Also had a string of 3 MSI KT266A boards that were all DOA.

 

[Yolner]

My new p2 266 laptop i got for $20. They would have to pay me $50 just to keep this ancient piece of crap.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Originally posted by: Yolner
My new p2 266 laptop i got for $20. They would have to pay me $50 just to keep this ancient piece of crap.

eBay! People still spend money on POS laptops like that.

 

[Dman877]

Originally posted by: Yolner
My new p2 266 laptop i got for $20. They would have to pay me $50 just to keep this ancient piece of crap.

20$ for a solitaire/freecell rig? Not bad at all .

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

I'm very good about purchases. But, I'd say my most unsatisfying was a 19" Envision monitor from an Office Depot deal. For almost two years I could never get the geometry right and it would change in games and be bowed on the sides. Other than that...I guess maybe the Cooler Master Aero 7+ and TT Silent Boost which I thought should have been quieter.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Yolner
My new p2 266 laptop i got for $20. They would have to pay me $50 just to keep this ancient piece of crap.

it actually booted up?

My Dell (go to hell) 4100 Inspr0n was another piece of crap . . . it FELL APART in a year (HD/2 batteries/DVD-ROM/hinges/ports/internal connectors) and Dell gave me the worst time but eventually "fixed" it . . . it then continued to deteroriate . . . finally VISA stepped in with their extended warranty and FIXED it and i SOLD it the same day it was repaired . . . (phew!)

i actually did "get my $$s worth" but it was really touch and go . . . i would NEVER recommed a Dell based on my notebook's experience.

edit: hehe, i typed Inspr0n . . . "freudian slip"?

?!?

:roll:

 

[LED]

LOL...Dragon Modem...56K but wouldn't hit past 18.2K :roll:

 

[mechBgon]

Diamond FireGL 1000Pro
Asus A7V333-RAID :|
Philips Omniwriter 2.2.6 burner ($600 back in the day, and died twice)

 

[ScrapSilicon]

IBM harddrive

 

[jamesey]

I was so excited when I bought a Radeon 9800 AIW, but I had the one modern motherboard that absolutely would not work with it because of power requirements (abit KX333-Raid.) I'm an AIW whore and it was a bummer. I had to return it, but I'll buy one again someday. I just have to upgrade

 

[PhoenixOrion]

My very first build when I didn't know much about power supplies. Bought the cheapest power supply I saw and it crapped out on me.

I remember that I had to do a fairly expensive troubleshooting not knowing what was wrong with the system.

 

[CraigRT]

Anything made by Linksys.
Epox motherboard (4PEA+)
Maxtor hard drives in general... all junk.
that's all I can think of right now.

 

[Alkaline5]

GEIL 512MB PC3200 CL2. It couldn't even do PC2700 reliably.

 

[mikecel79]

hmmmmm...

Can't recall any really bad purchases I made. maybe I have just been lucky...

edit: No I take that back. The Kodak DX3660 digicam I picke dup for $99 (when it was orignally selling for $250). They were subsituting it for some other POS camera they had. It took the blurriest pictures I've ever seen unless it was in direct sunlight. Thought it was just my camera but every other one did it. Sold the POS for $150 on Ebay.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Diamond FireGL 1000Pro
Asus A7V333-RAID :|
Philips Omniwriter 2.2.6 burner ($600 back in the day, and died twice)

My A7V333-raid was (and is) the most stable and easy to update board I have had. It won;t OC at att, but stability counts a lot. My new Thunder may get there now that I have the right bios on it (stayed up last night for the first time ever running 2 instances of F@H)

And my worst purchase was probably the Geil PC3200 that won;t run at rated timings tied with the only crappy ASUS board I ever had (used ALI chipset, forget the model number)

 

[Sideswipe001]

I got a Kenwood TrueX 72x CD ROM a few years ago. Worked great - when it worked. It couldn't read half the CDs you put into it (especially anything burned). Then I started getting "Improper removal of hardware" messages from Windows 2000 randomly... then it died within 3 months. RMAed it, and the replacement died within 1 month. RMAed THAT one and sold it. Still makes me sad; I liked how quick the thing read. If they could only have worked out the bugs....

 

[Shivatron]

Originally posted by: Sideswipe001
I got a Kenwood TrueX 72x CD ROM a few years ago. Worked great - when it worked. It couldn't read half the CDs you put into it (especially anything burned). Then I started getting "Improper removal of hardware" messages from Windows 2000 randomly... then it died within 3 months. RMAed it, and the replacement died within 1 month. RMAed THAT one and sold it. Still makes me sad; I liked how quick the thing read. If they could only have worked out the bugs....

The TrueX was an odd peice of hardware. Instead of upping the rotational speed of the CD to increase the data transfer rate, Kenwood decided to do something unusual -- they added more laser beams (seven in total). It was quite clever, but unfortunately, they never worked out all of the bugs as Sideswipe001 points out.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Diamond Monster 3d... it had like 4 megs onboard and used 4 megs of system memory.... I had a local computer store build my computer I asked about a tnt 2 or voodoo 3 and he was like "what?! those are expensive I'll give you a good one".... and I believed him : (

The chaintech znf3-150 I'm not liking had problems with it on multiple levels wishing I went asus. I RMA'd the chaintech but I don't know if that fixed my problems cause newegg shipped it to the wrong place >.< Now I have to wait till I get back to college to test it.

 

[TerryMathews]

Thirded on the Kenwood TrueX drive. Has to be the worst wide-spread HW sold to date (Back in the day, everyone was selling them and they were CRAP!)

 

[slpaulson]

Sparq Drive.
I think I RMAed that pos three times before I gave up.
It was nice when it worked, but it always died in about a month.

Next would probably be my old 4X Memorex Cd-RW. That thing would mess up a burn if you did ANYTHING to your computer as it was burning. I'd have to sit there and move the mouse just to make sure it didn't go to screensaver while it was burning a cd.

 

[manko]

Years ago, on the advice of a friend, I bought an expensive SCSI Plextor CD writer and SCSI card just for the drive because it would supposedly use less CPU and give better burns. It was so picky about media (even though I used high quality brands) and burned way more coasters than any IDE CD or DVD writer I've owned since (including a Plextor IDE). I spent forever troubleshooting, trying new cables, updating the firmware and software, but it never worked very well. I was afraid to move the mouse while writing a disc, for fear that I would cause the burn to fail. For a long time, I assumed all CD writers were just as bad, until I finally got a new one.

Anyway, looking back, I know there's no way I could've done worse with a cheaper IDE drive (and without the pricey Adaptec SCSI card).

 

[manko]

Originally posted by: cRazYdood
Next would probably be my old 4X Memorex Cd-RW. That thing would mess up a burn if you did ANYTHING to your computer as it was burning. I'd have to sit there and move the mouse just to make sure it didn't go to screensaver while it was burning a cd.

LOL! Maybe CD writers were just bad back in those days.

 

[styrafoam]

Belkin router.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Diamond FireGL 1000Pro
Asus A7V333-RAID :|
Philips Omniwriter 2.2.6 burner ($600 back in the day, and died twice)

My A7V333-raid was (and is) the most stable and easy to update board I have had. It won;t OC at att, but stability counts a lot. My new Thunder may get there now that I have the right bios on it (stayed up last night for the first time ever running 2 instances of F@H)

And my worst purchase was probably the Geil PC3200 that won;t run at rated timings tied with the only crappy ASUS board I ever had (used ALI chipset, forget the model number)

Drop a SCSI card into that A7V333-RAID. You won't get more than 50MB/sec through the PCI bus unless you disable the USB 2.0 controller. Even then it'll max at 72MB/sec, compared to over 120MB/sec on nForce/nForce2. THAT is just my FIRST gripe with the A7V333-R. I'd list more but I have to go to work now