Psion wavefinder
Supposedly a digital radio tuner, but because it used your PCs CPU for most of the digital processing, the interal electronics could be much cheaper. Despite this it still retailed for £349 (about $500). I bought one on reduction for £99.
First problem: Virtually no reception - despite being smack in the middle of a good coverage area
2nd: Front end software - awfully slow stuff written in java. It insisted on displaying only flashy graphics in a huge non-resizeable window rather than displaying sensible text. No timer recording facility (honestly, what were they thinking). CPU utilisation so high that the audio could not even be saved as MP3 in realtime even on a Pentium III.
3rd: Inadequate power supply - it would drain so much power from your USB port, that a powered hub was the only way to get a stable connection. Of course, it needed a wall-wart adaptor as well which was so undersized, that it would 'brown out' whenver the decorative flashing LEDs on the tuner reached a certain stage in the sequence - during a brownout, you would lose reception.
4th: Bad USB behaviour - no idea what is wrong with it but will occasionally kill the hub that it is connected to and everything on it. Sometimes if you're lucky the hub will reconnect and mouse and keyboard redetect. Not compatible with VIA chipsets, or many USB 2.0 chipsets.
5th: Broadcast quality (not really psion's fault) - when I got it origianlly most radio stations were broadcast at 192 kbps - now there are so many unlistenable 'niche' stations that most stations are 128 or 80 kbps (some even 64 kbps).
Most of the problems were solvable, with time.
1) I moved house, now I live less than 1 mile from the transmitter, and found that recetion was perfect.
2) Some nice people have made some freeware software available - which has negligable CPU usage, improved GUI, sophisticated timer functions and advanced real-time transcoding features.
3) There have been several methods of fixing this - the first to be published was the Dremel method, and involved introducing the offending LEDs to the friendly Mr. Dremel. The next was the realisation that it was the wall-wart and recommended buying a more powerful 3rd party one. Finally, someone very clever 'cracked' the drivers and disabled the LEDs via software.
4) Solutions include disabling 'USB 2.0' functionality in the BIOS, or using a 3rd party USB host adaptor.