Most UNsatisfying HW purchase ??

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Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
Raptor w/o question.

Cost me $220 and I could have got a 80 mb samsung for $65. Did'nt notice any difference in speed and anands benchmarks show it for the most part. (little late anand)

Then it was so loud compared to samsungs I had to buy a $80 silent enclosure for it. What a serious waste!

$300 vs. $65
 

mysticfm

Member
Jun 21, 2004
137
0
0
Originally posted by: cRazYdood
Originally posted by: 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.

I later found out it was a rebadged Yamaha, so yeah they probably were just that bad back in the day.

Okay, I'm blushing as I type this, but my 1st burner (purchased in early 1998) was a Playwrite 4000 4X CD-R (external SCSI), which was a re-marked Yamaha CDR-400.

The blushing is because this was my one and only burner until TWO WEEKS AGO. (eep!) Worse, it *never* successfully burned at 4X, only at 2X ... and for the last couple of years it had only just *barely* worked ... e.g., I usually had to cold boot the computer several times before it would even SEE the silly burner, much less actually make readable burns with it.

As you can imagine, I am thrilled beyond any description by my new Pioneer DVR-107.
 

RaNDoMMAI

Senior member
Dec 30, 2003
771
0
0
Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor
Other than that...I guess maybe the Cooler Master Aero 7+ and TT Silent Boost which I thought should have been quieter.


so agreed on the theraltake silent boost, i dont understand how it has a pefect rating on newegg. people must not live in quiet places i guess.

~RaNDoM
 

50

Platinum Member
May 7, 2003
2,717
0
0
All of my computers except for the current one...

1. Packard Bell 100mhz: This thing sucked so bad, I couldn't do anything on it or use anything because it almost always crashed for some reason or another.
2. Compaq 200mhz: it wasn't as bad as the packard bell and very reliable but after I installed Windows ME on it, it just fell apart.
3. Compaq 500mhz: This was my dad's comp (still currently is until he upgrades in a few months), it is the worst machine ever. My compaq 200mhz was better than it concerning stability. Anything you installed on this comp usually caused a reformat. It has about 3 programs on it right now (my dad only uses MSN, Word Perfect, and one other program I can't remember right now).
 

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
1
0
alienbabeltech.com
NE 1 else?

a lot of interesting threads got "lost" with the forum "issues" yesterday.

N E 1 like HP cameras?

Now my 1.3MP HP camera had to be one of the WORST cameras ever "designed" . .. 4 aa batteries might last 15 minutes.


:roll:
 

jose

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 1999
2,076
0
0
Silverstone TJ03 "Nimitz" Case , cost over $250 and it too loud w/ it's 80mm fans. Nice to work in, very spacious but loud. It cools well but again Loud.

I repaced it w/ a Coolermaster Stacker Case, it is a lot better in both cooling & noise . Cost me $150 but worth every penny.

Regards,
Jose
 

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
Originally posted by: jose
Silverstone TJ03 "Nimitz" Case , cost over $250 and it too loud w/ it's 80mm fans. Nice to work in, very spacious but loud. It cools well but again Loud.

I repaced it w/ a Coolermaster Stacker Case, it is a lot better in both cooling & noise . Cost me $150 but worth every penny.

Regards,
Jose

Wanna sell it?

EDIT: You sound as bad as me about noise.. Once you discover the water and pabst fans you'll hate yourself for not doing it sooner.
 

resinboy

Golden Member
Feb 2, 2000
1,555
0
0
one big one I see missing.......... ZIP DRIVES! Great for fast data access, till they all started crapping out by the thousands
 

ivan2

Diamond Member
Mar 6, 2000
5,808
0
0
www.heatware.com
refurb MSI GeForce 4600 from compgeeks, DOA, exchanged it, die again in 2 monthes, this time they wont do it, and I couldn't find any support info for MSI product ANYWHERE on the manual or the website.
 

MDE

Lifer
Jul 17, 2003
13,199
1
81
Originally posted by: Whizzy
Voodoo Banshee card... hot as hell and unstable drivers... what a piece of junk...
Heh, I have a friend that still has a PII 400 and a Voodoo Banshee and it works pretty well.
 

PCHPlayer

Golden Member
Oct 9, 2001
1,053
0
0
ECS K7S5A. Random blue screens. Tried all kinds of memory/power supplies. Was never stable. Thank goodness it was just for my kids computer. They now have my old Epox 8KHA+ and it is stable as a rock.
Thinking about trying the ECS as a Linux box.
 

Davegod

Platinum Member
Nov 26, 2001
2,874
0
76
about every keyboard I've had (maybe 4?) since I broke the previous superb one that lasted like half a dozen years or something - very much like ye olde IBM clicky's but not quite so heavy and much easier on the fingers.
 
Mar 11, 2004
23,182
5,646
146
The combo of P4 2.4B and MSI PT880 board.

Worst overclocking setup, ever. I swear if I move it 1mhz past what its at it fails to boot. Also, the MSI Corecell utility sucks. It consistently failed when loading, which caused a reboot unless I end tasked it. I could load it manually after that, but it didn't OC well at all. Oh and BTW, I've had both DDR400 and DDR500 memory in it and it still won't OC at all. I will not miss it when I finally get all the components for my new setup (waiting for mobo and cpu to arrive and then to find a graphics card).
 

Agentbolt

Diamond Member
Jul 9, 2004
3,340
1
0
Man, the worst piece of hardware ever was the video card that came with my E-Monster 600. It was advertised as a Riva TNT 2, with 16 MB of video RAM, which wasn't a great card in 2000 but it wasn't horrible.

Then, when I couldn't run anything bigger than Starcraft on it, I ripped it out and saw it was a goddamn VANTA.

THEN, when I saw half the memory modules were empty, I realized it was a Vanta LT. I'm surprised that thing ran Adventure. :disgust:
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Thermaltake Chrome Orb. Friction-fitted, crappy fan, way too much pressure, and used the design to basically lie about temps via socket sensor. I shall never again doubt the holy trinity that is Alpha, Thermalright and Zalman.

AN35N-Ultra. The AGP card killer. Soon to be replaced by a DFI NFII Ultra-AL.
I've had other bad hardware, but the rest has been free .
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Originally posted by: weeber
Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon
Originally posted by: MichaelD
Iwill KK266 board; featured the first (and short lived!) version of the KT266 chipset. Shortly thereafter, it was replaced by the KT266A which we all knew and loved.


The KK266 was the FIRST mobo I convinced my then GF to buy so I could build a rig for her. It wouldn't stay powered up for squat; didn't matter what you swapped out. Major POS.

explains alot then..kk266 is kt133a mobo

I know of 2 that are still running fine

Well you can add another to that list. I just gave my brother my KK266 because it was much more stable than his Gigabyte board. I loved the KK266 when I had it, and yes it's the KT133A chipset.
I must agree there. My neighbor runs my dad's old KK266-R...still working great. I can't say that about any other KT133A board that I have so much as glanced at.
 

dwcal

Senior member
Jul 21, 2004
765
0
0
I had a few over the years:

Canon i450- I thought this was a deal for $50. It had some decent reviews and ink was cheap, but prints on photo paper were so bad. The color was crappy and it smeared so easily even after drying for days. Compared to that, the crappy $15 Lexmark Z35 I had before printed photos with good color with no smears. Finally the print head died one time after it ran out of black ink. The print head isn't built into the ink cartridge. It's a separate part that costs almost as much as a new printer. I tossed it after that.

Creative CT7160 DVD decoder- It worked, but it had buggy drivers. The most annoying part was that it wouldn't letterbox widescreen movies! It stretched the picture to the full height of the screen. That was so annoying. I hated that thing. Replaced it with a Hollywood+ that I shoulda bought to begin with. Should've tossed it years ago, but it still might be sitting in my closet.

Creative Nomad I- Yes the parallel port version. The drivers only worked in Win 9x, if you could call it work. Half the time file transfer would time out and I'd have to upload it again. Did I mention it transferred at a blazing 110K/s?
 

cjsketchy

Senior member
Jan 23, 2002
401
0
71
Radeon 8500. Gave me infinite loop problems for 6 months.
Sound Blaster Live! worst drivers EVAR.
Radeon 9700 Pro. Stuttered like mad in my system. Worked great for the guy I sold it to though.
Intellimouse Explorer 4.0 - scrollwheel was horrible for games and the tracking sucked.
Enermax 550 Watt PSU - This thing liked to turn itself off.
 

CrackRabbit

Lifer
Mar 30, 2001
16,641
58
91
Originally posted by: MichaelD
Iwill KK266 board; featured the first (and short lived!) version of the KT266 chipset. Shortly thereafter, it was replaced by the KT266A which we all knew and loved.


The KK266 was the FIRST mobo I convinced my then GF to buy so I could build a rig for her. It wouldn't stay powered up for squat; didn't matter what you swapped out. Major POS.

I second that, Bought a KK266 on the good reviews of it i found here. It was the most unstable POS mobo i have ever worked with. Took me 6 months and having to hack the bios code to make it stop crashing randomly.
The other was a creative 1x DVD rom drive and Decoder card, Spent 2 hours on the phone with creative tech support trying to get it fixed. Got it working watched 1 movie in uber-pixelation, and yanked it from my machine.
 

glugglug

Diamond Member
Jun 9, 2002
5,340
1
81
Memorex 4x DVD+Rs - 20% immediate coaster rate, if they burn successful they're still likely to go bad within days.
 

dudeman007

Diamond Member
Apr 6, 2004
3,243
0
0
Nothing really expensive, but these cold cathode lights I had. They screwed up system with the power, I dunno what was wrong with them. Then they just died. like poop
 
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