The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products

[syscom3]

Some of these are right on! You have to click on the link to see them all. Its funny and will give you a chuckle.

PC World - The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products

The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products
Obtrusive behavior, irritating habits, constant nagging--crummy products have bugged you for years. Here are the ones you say have bothered you most.

Dan Tynan, PC World
Monday, April 16, 2007 01:00 AM PDT

Some things are annoying by their very nature--spam, your in-laws, comedian Gilbert Gottfried. But when the annoyances stem from stuff you've paid for or products you rely on to get things done, that really takes the cake.

Unlike PC World's 25 Worst Products of All Time, irksome products aren't necessarily bad, buggy, or dangerous. But they all have one or two traits that make you want to wrap them in 200 pounds of steel cable and toss them off the side of a boat. From stupid features and rude behavior to brain-dead design and poor corporate policies, these 20 products have truly annoyed us over the years, and some continue to do so.

This list hardly covers every annoying tech product ever made. But where did this list of 20 come from? You picked the worst ones by voting in our Annoyances Poll, and you'll see your Top 10 most annoying products flagged with icons. Just for fun, we've added 10 more products that didn't get enough votes from you in our poll but that we found particularly irksome.

It's still possible, though, that a product not listed here or in our reader survey really got under your skin, so please post a comment below. If nothing else, you might feel a little better.

AOL CDs (1993 to 2006)

As our #1 worst product of all time, America Online gave all of us plenty to be irked about over many, many years.
AOL CD

But the carpet bombing of free AOL discs was possibly the most annoying (and environmentally irresponsible) marketing campaign ever waged.

Estimates put the number of discs shipped between July 1993 and July 2006 at over 1 billion; we feel like we received that many ourselves.

 

[Gnomey]

Would certainly agree with AOL being the worst, we received countless disks from them over the years (most of which turned into frisbee's of some kind of were just thrown at things to watch them disintegrate...

 

[Matt308]

CDs don't disentegrate to well. The last one I broke in my office on purpose was an utter mess of aluminum flakes EVERYWHERE.

I had forgotten about the AOL disc blitz. Ah...goodtimes.

 

[comiso90]

For me, Norton and McAfee are the worst. They prey on the ignorant and strengthen themselves by instilling fear. There is no need for a virus program to take over your computer to that degree. They are more than just passively annoying, they create mayhem.

 

[Negative Creep]

I'd have to go for wireless broadband. Every one I've used is useless; quite what is wrong with a cable I don't know. I have come close to putting my foot through the screen on several occasions, as I lose connection for no reason, it refuses to re connect requiring a restart. Or of course windows in general, refusing to open files, telling me they are in use when I try and move them, freezing and so on. Updates are another one, every time I start something it will keep going on about an essential update, which makes no difference to the program's running