[PCWorld]

Post your comments for The 10 Worst PCs of All Time here

[gundark]

P-B computers came it at Number One?! They definitely earned that spot. Oh, the bad old days.Yes, they were pretty terrible, but owning a P-B made me learn WAY more about fixing and building computers than all my other friends learned with their other, more reliable brands. I was learning how to re-configure my BIOS and resolve IRQ issues while they were busy playing games.Tearing apart a P-B also let you know what component mfg's to avoid in the future. "You need a new modem? Don't buy 'X' brand, that's the junk in my P-B."It became more of a learning tool than anything else.Not that I'd want to own one now, or anything...

[beaulanger]

My first computer, a Packard Smell 386SX, with a whopping 256K of RAM. Had something like a 40MB hard drive which was almost all MS-DOS. It was one huge piece of crap. I would agree that all P-Bs were the worst. I built my own from then on but just bought a HP Pavilion a1700n. The DVD burner broke and ate up my backup DVD my first day and #4 memory bank was dead. My replacement HP is about as bad. I figure it will be trashed after the one year warranty is up.

[puterdood]

I both agree & disagree...Packard Bell is absolutely the WORST computer ever made - all models. I have had the extreme misfortune of having to work on a lot of them as part of my profession. It boils down to at some point you just have to give up - the computer wins the battle, it is simply irreparable. I once called tech support and actually spoke to a real human being. Imagine that! After telling him the problem, he simply chuckled and asked for my shipping address. He never offered one bit of tech support, he simply said he was sending out a new computer and to throw the old one in the garbage. The "new" one was not much better, by the way.I disagree with the Vic-20 being on the list. It introduced a lot of people to computers and programming. I thoroughly enjoyed mine and occasionally plug it in and see if it still works. It is a joke by today's standards but in the early to mid 80s, it was great. It was even "futuristic" to have a real computer in your house

[lknighten]

Whoever came up with this list obviously never had a Compaq Presario 4112. Not only the worst PC ever made, but Compaq has the worst tech support of all time.

[sayeds33]

im from the uk and i hae bought 3 pb machines in my time, one in 1998, one in 2004 and one in 2006.the one i got in 1998 was a 350mhz p2 with dvd ROM drive and 8 gig HDD. and i tell you, it wasnt that bad at all, infact i was sort of shocked to see pb at no1. it was also my first computer too. its gonna be 10 years old next year, and i still use it today for everything it works great even after 9 years of use and ABUSE!! i was so chuffed that i bought another in 2004 becasue the harddrive went bust because of lightning strike whilst i was on holiday and a laptop for my sis last year. i must say that their designs are great though, it was the shape of the mouse pad that made me go for the laptop! they are also doing really well over here.thats funny though, because i absoloutely hate dell, i would never ever touch one myself theyre just so crumby.

[themagain]

I can't believe Mattel actually attempted to make a pc! Or was it even a pc?

[adrian]

Anyone remember the Triumph Adler home computer, c. 1984? I recall a centre page ad in a computing magazine but aren't sure if it ever sold at all.For the unitiated I believe TA made sewing machines at the time!

[JulianMilenbach]

Dan, You got a few things right but one significant factual error about the New Internet Computer. I agree that it was painfully slow using dialup although it may have been the only Internet appliance that worked with both free and paid ISPs. And I agree that it was a victim of bad timing, many years ahead of today's online web apps. But your inference that the NIC only used dial-up and lacked broadband support is incorrect. The NIC had a built-in RJ-45 (Ethernet) port and worked extremely well when connected to DSL, cable modems, and Local Area Networks.Regards, Julian Milenbach PC World Test Center Director (1994 - 2000) VP of Engineering, The New Internet Computer Company (2000 - 2002)

[PcworldJim]

They can talk all the smack they want about the VIC 20, I still freakin love the audio-cassette-as-storage peripheral. Brilliant.

[DJRickdiculous]

Boy, that takes me back. During college, I worked at Sears and Silo (yes, I'm that old) and had the pleasure of being surrounded by failing Packard Bells, IBM PS/1 systems, and worst of all, the Laser 128 (Apple IIc compatible boat anchor). Don't forget the steaming piles of computing Amstrad released in the early 90s, as well as the flurry of Mac Performas unleashed upon the unsuspecting public. God will punish us......

[BrianCox]

I must disagree with the Comodore Vic 20 on that list, sure it suffered from low memory and clumpy graphics, but it WAS 1981 and there was no competition in the price range. More importantly, when the C-64 came out, most retailers deeply slashed the price of the vic making it the first computer of many kids whose parents were not willing to shell out big bucks for something as strange as a "home computer". Thats why i got my first computer, and am a digital professional today. Thanks Comodore Vic 20!

[udayp]

I loved that Adam guy. Maybe I got lucky, but I never had any zapped media and the only problem I had with the printer involved changing the ribbon. Adam played console games, came with a decent basic interpreter and a programming guide that taught me quite a bit. The word processor was even decent and the printouts with that daisywheel looked better than the dot-matrix printers of the time. It took a long time before computer makers gave us that much bang for the buck in a single package.

[Macuser588]

why not just all PC's in general? they all break down in about a month in my experience no matter how much protection you use and how careful you are they are all having problems in about a month

[happymellon]

VIC 20 shouldn't be there... MEGAPC!!! Half Megadrive, half PC. Completely rubbish!

[happymellon]

The VIC 20 shouldn't be there, Segas MEGAPC. Although these days people are probably making them, or at least something close for a NESPC.

[Fuj003]

God the bad old days! - Mattel Barbie reminded me also of another ill fated machine they built, the Mattel Aquarius... I happened to buy one (It 1982/32 I think) hated the ZX Spectrum 16k, rubber keys and mass following - It was kinda fun and because of lack of anything it taught me much and led me to programming :) -- Its so funny looking back - trying to save my first program and thinking that I just needed to click save on the 'tape recorder!' for a minute or two (without save command) and it'd be done! - wow what I know now.No surprised to see Packard Bell (or subset HP) - I hate them... I'd rather die before not having a computer, but I'd never own a PB or HP. I had a Pavilion for a month before I sold it out of frustration - something about not being about to install and expect correct behaviour with XP on a 2000 chip set! What a lot of $h... It just didn't work because it was so poorly designed.Dell i'm surprised - its all I own, all I ever will. In all my year I NEVER had any problems.

[jkent95]

It's funny that the Dimension 4600 makes this list. I remember my exasperation after I had the computer for about 13 months (just out of warranty) and the power supply failed. Sure enough Dell tried to tell me the mother board was shot. Lucky for me I did not believe them. I bought a new power supply, installed it and it's worked perfectally ever since. Over the years I've upgraded the RAM, hard drive, DVD burner and video card. It's still a reliable and fast machine. In that sense I don''t feel it deserves to be on this list. The fact that Dell never acknowledged a problem is the real disappointment here. The support message boards were flooded with complaints about the 4600 power supplies back then. How could they ignore that. I still think they owe me 70 bucks.

[pcmagreader]

I must live right. My second and third computers were Packard Bells and I had no trouble with either of them. The first PB was a 1666CD, purchased at Walmart, running Windows 3.11 at a blistering 66MHz. I updated it to Windows 95, put in more memory and an overdrive chip so it operated at 132MHz. I cleaned it up and donated it to an Indian Reservation quite a few years ago with the Windows 95 software. It was working fine so I wasn't giving them a computer that had to be thrown away. The second PB is a C-115 which runs at 120MHz. My husband used it daily until the end of 2003 when I convinced him he needed a newer computer. I installed Windows 98 on it in 2004 and I still use it because my scanner software works perfectly on it. Since it has a slow dialup modem, it never goes online so I don't need all the antivirus/firewall/trojan detectors on it. It doesn't need anything to slow it down further. I did put in a video card so it would not use the computer's RAM. I also installed more RAM in this computer. I can put in a music CD and listen to it with no problem.Now my first computer was an IBM. No, not the PS/1 but a PS/2 with a model number behind it. Boy I can sure pick the losers can't I. That gave me nothing but trouble. The hard drive dies three times. The first time it cost $400 to have a tiny hard drive installed. The other two times, the drive died while under the one year warranty. The design was bad. The computer and monitor were all in one unit. The horizontal went on the monitor so all I got was a thin band. IBM used very specific "screws". I tried the local vo-tech school and people who worked for IBM to see if I could purchase a tool to get to the computer. It couldn't be done. This computer was donated to a local junior high which had a student who salvaged parts from computers and created working computers. At that point I decided I would never purchase another IBM computer.

[Roverkid]

What about the Apple Lisa, which came out after the Apple III and cost around $10,000? I understand that they had such a bad reputation that Apple buried about 2,700 unsold Lisas at a landfill in Logan, Utah and got a tax write-off on the unsold inventory!