WORST COMPUTER YOU'VE EVER OWNED/HAD TO USE

[microsoft windows]

Tell us about the worst computer you owned or had to use on a regular basis!

I'd say the worst ones I had to work with would have been the Apple Emac's after they started getting old. They were slower than dirt with their dinky G4 processors running Mac OS X 10.5 on 1GB of ram. And half of 'em had really bad screen burn too from the MAC OS 9.2 days (OS9 didn't have screen savers for the login screen). And then the keyboards....they came with the worst feeling rubber dome keyboards imagineable.

[oscillik]

these goddamn things

[microsoft windows]

HEY, I STILL USE ONE OF THOSE!

[IvanIvanovich]

OMG it's a TIME machine!
Of all time, I have no idea really. I don't remember things in that way. Currently, it's my back up server which is a LaCie with a crappy Via CPU and only 1GB ram and gen1 sata. It's so painfully slow compared to everything else I have, whenever I have to do something over RDP it really tries my patience.

[oscillik]

OMG it's a TIME machine!
Of all time, I have no idea really. I don't remember things in that way. Currently, it's my back up server which is a LaCie with a crappy Via CPU and only 1GB ram and gen1 sata. It's so painfully slow compared to everything else I have, whenever I have to do something over RDP it really tries my patience.

Oh wow, a Via CPU ouch

Have you tried VNC as an alternative to RDP? It might be a little easier on the system maybe?

[IvanIvanovich]

RDP isn't problem, it's just as slow if using with a monitor and keyboard attached. Slow PC is slow. Nothing will help it barring new motherboard, CPU, etc... but it's a slim 1u rack case and only ones I know will fit for sure are too expensive for me right now.

[baldgye]

A friend of mine had a machine like a Time running Windows ME, **** that ****.

[oscillik]

RDP isn't problem, it's just as slow if using with a monitor and keyboard attached. Slow PC is slow. Nothing will help it barring new motherboard, CPU, etc... but it's a slim 1u rack case and only ones I know will fit for sure are too expensive for me right now.

I replaced a Via based machine with an Intel Atom one about 2 years ago, much much better. Can actually handle Windows 8 on there, whereas the Via machine was struggling with Windows XP.

Have you tried installing an nLited version of Windows on there, to cut down on the guff you don't need? I found an nLite install of Windows XP on my Via machine really did help.

[Computer-Lab in Basement]

Can't quite recall the exact computer, but all I know was it has Windows 98 on it...

[JPG]

Can't quite recall the exact computer, but all I know was it has Windows 98 on it...

Man, whatever the computer, the worst thing I ever tried was Windows ME. I am a Windows guy, but man, ME was some utter ****!

[Computer-Lab in Basement]

Can't quite recall the exact computer, but all I know was it has Windows 98 on it...

Man, whatever the computer, the worst thing I ever tried was Windows ME. I am a Windows guy, but man, ME was some utter ****!

That too...

[RabRhee]

I had to program using these terminals for about 5 years. It was a minor nightmare, not just because it would fail a lot, or that it used cassettes, or that it had a membrane keyboard, but also because it was heavy and I had to cart it everywhere. About one time in five we had to take the lid off, take all the expansion cards out, and then put them back just to keep them working. The non-membrane proper keyboard was a $1000 optional extra.



Towards the end of their life, we had two. One without a tape drive (also about $1000 extra), and one with a tape drive but a broken screen. So I would have to code with the first one, then swap to the second, and use the memorised sequence of commands to save it to tape. Ah, such joys when they replaced them with a PC version and I got an IBM PC-XT portable to use instead.

[Thimplum]

macbook pro 2009

[noisyturtle]

My POS Asus 'gaming' laptop that had an extremely short warranty and apparently needs to be sitting on a block of ice, with 60mph winds blowing on it, on the moon, in February to be able to stay on for more than 10mins at a time.

[davkol]

My mum's work desktop. It was something like a pre-Tualatin Celeron with 394MiB RAM, lousy HDD, awfully dirty logitech keyboard and an incorrectly positioned CRT screen (way too high). The university's IT department somehow didn't care, so I ended up reinstalling supplied MS Windows 98 every few months. That was horrible... Fortunately, its hardware was at least bearable once I removed that Microsoft's piece of **** in favor of Debian.

Seriously, MS Windows was (and still is) a crime against humanity. It should be banned and that bastard Gates ought to be deported to Haag.

[acantha]

every pc i've ever owned. except for the surface. its pretty ****ing cool.

[microsoft windows]

My mum's work desktop. It was something like a pre-Tualatin Celeron with 394MiB RAM, lousy HDD, awfully dirty logitech keyboard and an incorrectly positioned CRT screen (way too high). The university's IT department somehow didn't care, so I ended up reinstalling supplied MS Windows 98 every few months. That was horrible... Fortunately, its hardware was at least bearable once I removed that Microsoft's piece of **** in favor of Debian.

Seriously, MS Windows was (and still is) a crime against humanity. It should be banned and that bastard Gates ought to be deported to Haag.

YOU ARE WRONG. WINDOWS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO MANKIND. WINDOWS 98 IS EVEN BETTER. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM, WINDOWS 98 IS THE SOLUTION.

[badcop]

My first computer i purchased when i was 12 or 13.  it was one of these jammies

Pentium 3
128 gb of ram
onboard video but it played diablo II and thats all i cared about
the CD drive worked half the time
i was always getting viruses from me downloading pr0nz @ 56k lol
and the best part about it was windows me!

i was too ignorant to know the difference back then.  i used that thing from about 8th grade to about senior year in highschool. :shame:

[microsoft windows]

OOH, WINDOWS ME. NOW THAT'S ALWAYS AN ADVENTURE!

I ALWAYS RAN 2000 OR XP ON MY PENTIUM III'S.

[belac]

Toshiba laptop with Vista. It was purchased about a week after Vista launched. And that's how I became a fan of Macs.

[badcop]

Toshiba laptop with Vista. It was purchased about a week after Vista launched. And that's how I became a fan of Macs.

I liked vista. I think i was about the only one.

[rowdy]

Haha this thread.  In "other geeky stuff" too )

Are we talking about the worst hardware?  Or the worst operating system (again)?

[belac]

Good question. If strictly hardware, then I would say any economy class Lenovo. When I worked in the hardware division of an I.T. department, part of my job was setting up the new pc's. Over the course of a year, Lenovo laptops had a 20% doa rate.

[Leslieann]

Not that I personally owned one, but I worked on enough of them and odds are you have seen them.


Dell Dimension 4600

These were some of the first machines after Dell was bought out by investors. Of the ones I saw, half of them came with bad memory or drives right out of the factory. This was also the height of the self destructing capacitors, so the motherboards were frying left and right. It's so bad, that PC World has it listed as one of the worst PC's of all time. Dell marketed these to everyone at a discount, and they were at Dell's peak in terms of brand name so they sold a TON of them. Amazingly, I ran into one just the other day. In fact, it's still in my garage waiting to be disposed of.

[demik]

was my gaming computer during my cs:source days/

got so bad all the boxes/doors wouldn't render due to onboard gpu

[microsoft windows]

ONE OF MY COWORKERS HAS THAT EXACT SAME PC SITTING UNDER HIS DESK. HE'S GOT WINDOWS 95 ON IT.

[microsoft windows]

Toshiba laptop with Vista. It was purchased about a week after Vista launched. And that's how I became a fan of Macs.

SO THAT WAY YOU COULD BE A FAN OF THE ONLY THING THAT WAS WORSE THAN WINDOWS VISTA?

[Thimplum]

Actually, iPad.S

[demik]

My first computer i purchased when i was 12 or 13.  it was one of these jammies

Show Image

Pentium 3
128 gb of ram
onboard video but it played diablo II and thats all i cared about
the CD drive worked half the time
i was always getting viruses from me downloading pr0nz @ 56k lol
and the best part about it was windows me!

i was too ignorant to know the difference back then.  i used that thing from about 8th grade to about senior year in highschool. :shame:

128gb of ram?!

[belac]

Toshiba laptop with Vista. It was purchased about a week after Vista launched. And that's how I became a fan of Macs.

SO THAT WAY YOU COULD BE A FAN OF THE ONLY THING THAT WAS WORSE THAN WINDOWS VISTA?

Zing!

[tipo33]

Toshiba laptop with Vista. It was purchased about a week after Vista launched. And that's how I became a fan of Macs.

SO THAT WAY YOU COULD BE A FAN OF THE ONLY THING THAT WAS WORSE THAN WINDOWS VISTA?

Acording to this statement, I do believe microsoft windows has admitted that linux is better than a windows release.

[badcop]

My first computer i purchased when i was 12 or 13.  it was one of these jammies

Show Image

Pentium 3
128 gb of ram
onboard video but it played diablo II and thats all i cared about
the CD drive worked half the time
i was always getting viruses from me downloading pr0nz @ 56k lol
and the best part about it was windows me!

i was too ignorant to know the difference back then.  i used that thing from about 8th grade to about senior year in highschool. :shame:

128gb of ram?!

128 MB!!  that was typo lol

[microsoft windows]

Toshiba laptop with Vista. It was purchased about a week after Vista launched. And that's how I became a fan of Macs.

SO THAT WAY YOU COULD BE A FAN OF THE ONLY THING THAT WAS WORSE THAN WINDOWS VISTA?

Acording to this statement, I do believe microsoft windows has admitted that linux is better than a windows release.

I DON'T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS WITH LINUX.

IT'S NOT LIKE THERE'S LINUX COMPANIES OUT THERE WHO SELL GENERIC PC'S AT A RIDICULOUS PREMIUM JUST BECAUSE THEY RUN SOME CRAPPY OS.

AND IT'S NOT LIKE THERE'S LINUX FANS OUT THERE WHO KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS BESIDES THEIR THOUGHT THAT THEIRS IS SO MUCH BETTER.

AND IT'S NOT LIKE THERE'S A LINUX COMPANY THAT MAKES HORRENDOUS QUALITY KEYBOARDS AND MICE FROM A WHITE PLASTIC THAT MAGICALLY ATTRACTS DUST AND DIRT, AND HAVE TO CONSTANTLY BE CLEANED OFF TO LOOK EVEN REMOTELY PRESENTABLE IN AN IT SETTING.

I DON'T HAVE MUCH AGAINST LINUX AT ALL. I DO PREFER WINDOWS THOUGH. I EVEN RUN LINUX ON A FEW MACINES AT WORK THAT ARE USED AS SERVERS FOR MY REIMAGING SOFTWARE. BUT NO MACS!

[dante]

microcenter brand pc + windows me

[Findecanor]

...  a membrane keyboard ...

These days, that kind of keyboard is called a "Touch Cover". 

[IPT]

My personal worst experience was my HP zd7000 laptop. Someone at HP thought it was a good idea to stick a Prescott p4 into a laptop form factor. Added to it the buggy nvidia 5700go chipset with severe overheat probs = sending in my laptop to HP for repair 5 times within owning it for 10 months.  They did replace the laptop after the 5th time because nvidia stopped production on the 5700go motherboards so they upgraded me to a zd8000 that had some ati chipset. But it still used a Prescott p4 so that was in and out of repair for 4 times within 8 months of owning it. Last one they gave me was a dv9000 laptop that had one of the Intel core2duo centrinos in it. I promptly sold that laptop on eBay after I got it lol

[Altis]

Pretty much every netbook (ee or whatever it was called) has been the worst experience for me.

Otherwise, I don't think I've had a computer that I really didn't like.  They just keep getting better, although this one is just shy of 6 years old, it still runs quite well, even gaming (yay Q6600).

[Leslieann]

(yay Q6600).

That's a workhorse processor.
Gamers, overclockers, offices... It was a good, cost efficient processor that worked great for everyone, still does in many cases.

[Elrick]

(yay Q6600).

That's a workhorse processor.
Gamers, overclockers, offices... It was a good, cost efficient processor that worked great for everyone, still does in many cases.

Yep I still have one running downstairs in the basement as a storage server.  Brilliant little bastard, that Intel made by mistake.

[TheSoulhunter]

Software wise: Probably my WindowsMe machine back then, had to reinstall the OS every 2 months
Hardware wise: My AthlonXP box back then, 3 mainboards, 2 PSUs, 2 HDDs and 1 GFX died in it...

[Altis]

(yay Q6600).

That's a workhorse processor.
Gamers, overclockers, offices... It was a good, cost efficient processor that worked great for everyone, still does in many cases.

Yep I still have one running downstairs in the basement as a storage server.  Brilliant little bastard, that Intel made by mistake.

That's what makes it hard to upgrade away from it.  A strong 6 years and it still does everything reasonably well.

Perhaps that's why over at Newegg, people are still giving it positive reviews, 4 years after its discontinuation.  It would be like losing a good friend for no reason!

[Leslieann]

That's what makes it hard to upgrade away from it.  A strong 6 years and it still does everything reasonably well.

Perhaps that's why over at Newegg, people are still giving it positive reviews, 4 years after its discontinuation.  It would be like losing a good friend for no reason!

The whole Core2Quad line was really good.
They got retired early due to the cost of DDR2 more than anything else.

I have a Q6600 sitting as a spare, and I have a Q9550 that runs as an Android build server that I loan out to developers. The Q9550 is a beast, keeping up with older I5's. If you want to bump up your Q6600, look for a Q9550 or Q9650, they are gems and a direct swap. They command decent prices, but it's cheaper than switching to an I5, new board and memory. Just don't plan on more than 8 gigs of ram, too costly. Instead, get an SSD.

[Pacifist]

I've had to use a 10 pound 8 year old dell laptop for the time up to last year.

It had 33 GB in the hard drive, with 30 of it used for program files.

It had 0.5 or 1 GB of RAM (I can't remember which one, but no more than 1 GB)

Powered by some really old pentium laptop processor.

[Turkishrambo]

This is a canon computer that came in the other day at our shop



4mb ram

400 MB hdd

50 mhz processor

the comp had a BS with it too! I tried buying it off her for 60$ LOL but she liked it too much apparently

[Altis]

That's what makes it hard to upgrade away from it.  A strong 6 years and it still does everything reasonably well.

Perhaps that's why over at Newegg, people are still giving it positive reviews, 4 years after its discontinuation.  It would be like losing a good friend for no reason!

The whole Core2Quad line was really good.
They got retired early due to the cost of DDR2 more than anything else.

I have a Q6600 sitting as a spare, and I have a Q9550 that runs as an Android build server that I loan out to developers. The Q9550 is a beast, keeping up with older I5's. If you want to bump up your Q6600, look for a Q9550 or Q9650, they are gems and a direct swap. They command decent prices, but it's cheaper than switching to an I5, new board and memory. Just don't plan on more than 8 gigs of ram, too costly. Instead, get an SSD.

Nice, glad to hear they're still being used.  DDR2 RAM is one of the reasons I want to upgrade at all.  Ultimately, I could just get an SSD and keep it going for a while.  The alternative is to build another computer around the MB/CPU/RAM in another case, I have a spare case, PS, and video card, and upgrade to i5 4700 for less than $500.  Most likely what I'll do, so that I can keep the Q6600 running happily along its way.    Fresh Windows 7 installs do it wonders.

[dgreekstallion]

Show Image

was my gaming computer during my cs:source days/

got so bad all the boxes/doors wouldn't render due to onboard gpu

Oh God we also used to have one of these at my house. Terrible indeed.

[Hak Foo]

I think part of the problem wasn't just DDR2, it was bad chipset options.  I think you could get some P35/P45 boards with DDR3 slots, but I think some of the chipsets had weird limits like "8Gb DDR2, 4Gb DDR3 only".  I learned that one the hard way dealing with a stupid G41-based machine.

[RabRhee]

This is a canon computer that came in the other day at our shop

Show Image

4mb ram

400 MB hdd

50 mhz processor

the comp had a BS with it too! I tried buying it off her for 60$ LOL but she liked it too much apparently

I had a PC very similar to this one in about 1996, almost identical awful daughterboard layout. It was a Packard Bell, I got it from a guy who built a new PC, wanted to take the 4mb RAM out of this, and found it was soldered in. So I swapped the whole PC and case (no processor) for a 4mb RAM module. I ran a BBS system off it for about 4 years. no nice keyboard with it though :)

aah, nostalgia, its not as good as it used to be.

[funkymeeba]

Anything with a Celeron processor. NEVER AGAIN.

[Elrick]

The Q9550 is a beast, keeping up with older I5's. If you want to bump up your Q6600, look for a Q9550 or Q9650, they are gems and a direct swap.

Dear Girl/Boy,

I still have them in my house.  I have the Q9550S (low powered 65w) version being used as an internet machine and a spare Q9650 residing in an EVGA 790i motherboard and that baby is still sitting on 3.9 Ghz.

For me, these babies will never be thrown away not while I still have this gear, it needs to be used  .