[leafeney]

E-Machines T-6420 should be on the list as 10 worst. The mother boards are bad and Gateway refuses to take responsibility for the failure. The tech support seems to be well trained in giving long drawn out solutions that take so long that the warranty expires. Then they claim they are no longer obligated to repair it.

[sclarso]

The VIC 20 was all a person could ask for, cassette for storage, expandable memory cards, games to die for, TV output! So it was ahead of it time, it still works every time I pull it out of the rafters.

[TVGuy]

I gotta say, I looooved my eMachines eTower 366c. Sure, it was a low-end PC, but I had very few problems (expect for the minor glitches that plague all PCs). Sorry to hear this made the top ten list of duds. Maybe I was just lucky.

[kd4ao]

These PC's listed as well as the original Apple and TRS-80 are all valuable pieces of the evolution of Personal Computers. There is no such thing as 10 worst. The author must have been asleep in the 70s. 80s and 90s.

[illemj7]

I was surprised to see Dell Dimension 4600 on your 10 worst list since for several months it was a PC World best buy. I bought one in 2004. After the warranty expired I had to replace the DVD drive. Other than that no problems. But when I unpacked mine it was missing the AC power cord. I called for them to send me one and they sent a Power Supply instead. Does that tell you something?

[cdleo]

I agree with your list, but you have to evaluate this in the context of the time. I still remember my Coleco that could play games, wokd code, and process. The only thing was that you had to remember addresses in the HD where you saved data. Still considering the stage of the industry even these clunkers felt like hot sh.. at the time.

[NickDanger]

I know the struggle has been tremendous, but I was sure that in this kind of list, a spot would have been guaranteed to be reserved for the Tandy 1000RLX. With a whopping 256-color max display and a full-to-bursting on day 3 4oMB hard disk, the thing came with DOS 3 and choked on Windows 3. Add to that the super-high price (Memory Suppressed to protect my self-esteem) and the ultra-high interest for in-store financing, and you have the complete package.Chris Forzetting

[bonejob]

I know, I know! Back in late '94, all my more computer-savvy friends laughed and laughed when I bought my bleeding edge, top-o-the-line, Packard Bell 100 MHz Pentium with a gargantuan 1GB hard drive and an outrageous 32MB of RAM. They didn't laugh quite so loudly when I slapped in a then screaming Matrox Millenium video card and a Creative Labs Sound Blaster and hooked it up to a top-line Sony monitor that cost nearly as much as the computer, an external stereo amp and Cambridge Soundworks satellite/subwoofer setup. It looked and sounded quite excellent by the standards of the time and smoked through the best DOS games I could then throw at it.What's more, the damned thing NEVER broke. Oh, I had LOTS of trouble with Windows 3.11 and later Windows 95, and I learned way more than I ever wanted to about Windows "under the hood." But the hardware NEVER let me down. In fact, a non-computer-enthusiast friend of mine STILL uses the damned thing for his email and writing letters!Go figure.

[pember]

Gee, I bought a 4600 a few years ago (lJan 2004?) and, as I recall, a reputable PC magazine gave it high rankings -- well, by golly, it was you guys! (http://www.pcworld.c...,1201746,00.asp)So what's my experience been? It's still runs, I've never had a hardware problem or a blue screen of death. I do take care of it virus/spyware/registry-wise with everal tools but, otherwise, I've never had to open up the box or reintall XP. I of course get the usual XP lockups, especially my son hammering on it day an night. My only complaint is that I bought just before Dell brought out some new models, so the price came quickly down shortly after it arrived. Oh, well, I've gotten my money's worth and it's still ticking. I don't like the Dell all-in-one ink jet I got with it though, although it too is still working

[frankyp]

Are you sure the photo isn't of the commodore 64? I thought the vic 20 had a flat keyboatrd

[PCWsucks]

Is this guy over 21 ? The Coleco adam was so far ahead of it's time they are still around today. And there are still user groups for them. As well as people still writing software for them. I have 3 I don't use anymore. But I'll never throw them away. They were s advanced for the time it was unreal. And I never removed a tape before booting, and I never lost a tape either. But even if I would have, big deal, I had a copy of every tape I owned. I just made a new one... The Adam should be NO 1 on the best and most advanced for their time list, you gumer you

[Fritzr]

[quote name='frankyp']Are you sure the photo isn't of the commodore 64? I thought the vic 20 had a flat keyboatrdC-64 & VIC-20 used the same basic case & keyboard. C-16 shared the case with a different set of key assignments. They did differ in color. VIC-20 was white and later cream, C-64 was brown & C-16 was grey. Cutouts on the back for I/O ports were modified to fit the motherboards. Later the C-64C was a recased C-64 with a C-128 style case. All C-64 accessories worked with the other C series computers. The VIC-1540 (VIC-20 floppy disk) had problems with the C-64, but that could be worked around.

[Qwerty123]

[quote name='terp66']Most people only remember the Apple /// as a terrible system because of the heat problem, but the OS did things that not even Windows XP does. It could name a drive or disk (remember 5.25" disks?) and you could programitacally address the disk. For example, if you asked for file Backup0326myfile and you had a different disk, for example Backup0312myfile inserted, it will get the file. Still can't do that with Windows.> > > > DonWith a little creative programming and a Volume label you can do that on any Windows PC. Either way, those are hardly compelling reasons to consider the Apple III as better then it really was..

[Synergi]

This is funny. I was talking to my son on the phone and he said. Oh look here is an article about the top ten worse pc's of all time. Before he could even read off the list to me I told him if Packard Bell didn't make the list then It would loose all credibility with me. Needless to say I was happy they made number one. They completely deserved it and that is about the only number one rating PB has ever had. Congrats to them.I had the PB Legend 425. It was my very first PC bought on my very first best buy credit card. I was a single mom with two little ones back then.. and the PB was a floor model (Now i'm wondering if it was a store return go figure.)I discovered Prodigy and AOL and a lot of neat things on my PB. It opened me to the world of computers and online internet. It was super slow with its 4 megs of ram and 9600 modem but that was ok. However when it died on me not once but 3 times in 9 months and PB wouldn't do a thing to help.. Well my love of that PC died quickly.Just hearing the name Packard Hell sends me into a fit of spasms. Ahh now those were the old days..It seemed back in those days most of the people I knew online that were complaining about their PC's had PB's. It was so bad as soon as someone mentioned an issue people would say. I bet you got a PB don't you?I did own that emachine on the list. But hey needing a ISP anyway, that PC was pretty much free and it lasted long enough (3 years at least) until I got another one.I can't speak for the rest of the models. But Packard Bell does without a doubt deserve the number spot. There are still left over hate boards on the net going back to the 90's about this company.Thanks for the story. It brought back memories..

[rlegro]

The first PC I owned was a PCjr and I was very happy to have it. Why? Because lesser computers either cost more (CP/M-based computers were quite expensive then) or were far less powerful for more purposes or were not IBM compatible, which at the time was a necessity for me. The PCjr provided most of the functionality of a standard IBM PC of the era, cost as much as half that and was expandable. Plus, it offered 16 colors in a mostly green-screen, monochrome IBM world. The chiclet keyboard wasn't great, but it was easy to buy a plug-in keyboard every bit as good as that found on a PC-XT, and, anyway, for free IBM replaced the Chiclet board with another compact wireless keyboard that had standard IBM keys. I used it often and typed at up to 90 words per minute on it.I ran my PCjr into the ground but it lasted me almost a decade. Before I retired it, I had expanded it to 1 megabyte of RAM, a hard drive, an optical mouse, a voice synthesis module and other goodies. It was compact and durable. The proprietary cartrdige slots -- intended for games and applications like PCjr Paint -- were quickly hacked and third parties sold system firmware extensions on cart. I also bought an accelerator board to speed the machine up to 9 Mhz, double what a standard IBM PC then could attain.I made money using that computer and had fun usng it, too. Microsoft Flight Simulator looked good on it. I had a Touchdown Football game that included digitzed crowd noises, when anything more than a system beep was an audible novelty. I ran great software like PC-Write, Microsoft Windows, Multiplan, Nutshell database manager and other heavy duty apps. I bought GEOWorks and ran a multitasking, GUI interface. I added an Okimate 20 thermal transfer printer a few years later and was printing in color while Ronald Reagan was still president.My next computer after the PCjr was an Amiga 500, a wonderful machine that to this day is functional and reasonably powerful, as well as fun to use. I can attest that the transition was sensible and for me ideal, because I was very used to the PCjr's abiliity to handle a graphical interface and color and high end applications and, yes, even multitasking, albeit of a crude sort.By the way, I bought my PCjr at Sears a couple of months after it came out. For a sale price of $1,500 (which, for its time, was a very good deal), I got the PCjr with 256K of RAM (also big for its time), a software application suite, MS-BASIC, a couple of games, and a 13" RGB color monitor that doubled as a TV set. Not bad at all, considering that "real" IBMs cost $2500 and up at the time.

[JuanViejo]

The Tandy 2000 definitely should be included as one of the 10 worst. Radio Shack designed this computer to be a direct competitor to IBM's PC - actually more advanced than the PC was at the time. But Tandy Corporation decided to take the shortsighted position to not make it truly PC compatible, but force buyers to buy all their software from Radio Shack and RS Computer stores. That decision would haunt Tandy for years to come, and until they released the truly compatible, but feature poor, Tandy 1000. Tandy computers would always be looked at as non-compatible. They even converted their own popular TRS-80 software, Visicalc, FilePro, and word processors to IBM compatible programs, only to have them rejected by both old and new customers. Tandy, although a pioneer in the personal computer business, cut its own throat by insisting on requiring customers to pay IBM competitive prices for a less PC compatible product. In the early 1990s, Tandy sold out to AST, leaving the business.

[jcsmarin]

nice review... but I think that Acer should have placed somewhere among the top worst pc's of all time.

[Metalmorphasis]

I loved that old reliable! Packard Hell it was a great PC for its time(1993)With a 486sux and 4mb ram,170HD. It taught me all the basics to early day computing from how to install a piece of software to almost smashing it a few times putting up with hardware conflicts,interrupt requests,etc.However,it still boots up today on the original hard drive!Maybe one day I will donate it to Smithsonian!

[pat8722]

The defamation of packard bell is outrageous. They were around for ten years for a reason, because the customer was happy, and when it was time to upgrade, selected a packard bell again. They were easy to upgrade with off-the-shelf parts, unlike many of their competors, and were inexpensive. We owe a debt of gratitude to PB, they paved the way.

[homelights]

TOSHIBA 6000-series Laptop.One certain model was the one and only they outsourced for assembly and it sucked.Every replaceable component needed replacing - HD overheated, CD/DVD drive quit working, Video quit working. What a crapfest that one was...Toshiba had to be forced to admit the problem....