Oh man, I’ve had some pretty bad tech in my time. I’m pretty cheap, so I tend to buy the bare minimum. I won’t count tech that I’ve immediately sent back it was so bad though.
Probably the worst I’ve had was a Lenovo Idea Pad. I used Think Pads at work, so had good experience with Lenovo and thought it couldn’t be that much worse. I had so many problems with it. Aside from really sluggish performance that barely worked for my uses, the hinge cracked pretty quickly after I got it, so I had to be very careful opening and closing it. The keyboard was really squishy and didn’t always recognize keystrokes. I was doing online school at the time, and that was all it was really used for, but, typing up papers was a real challenge.
For phones, probably my Lumia 610. I liked Windows Phone as an OS, it was quick and efficient, and had a previous Windows Phone that was starting to die when I “upgraded” to the Lumia. The Lumia was no where near as good. Part of the problem was right after I got it, app developers realized that Windows Phone just wasn’t going to catch on, and started dropping support. I didn’t use a lot of apps, but a few crucial ones got dropped after having the phone for only a year. It’s sad that MS doesn’t know how to market or support their best ideas. Windows Phone really was a good OS for its time, but like a lot of their better products, MS didn’t want to invest enough into it to make it work.
I don’t know that I really have had a bad tablet. The worst of the lot was probably my HP Omni 10. It was fine, no active stylus was the biggest gripe against it. I had won it though in a giveaway, so I wasn’t going to complain all that much. It wasn’t the fastest, but it was fine for browsing, videos, etc. I bought. a cheap bluetooth keyboard for it with a case and did quite a bit with it, but it also had lots of bugs and the camera stopped working, then something else stopped working. I contacted HP, and sent it in for repairs. They contacted me back and said there was an inherent problem with the hardware in the Omni’s and it couldn’t be repaired and gave me a “refund” on the device I’d won. I couldn’t really complain too much about that either, and used the money to get the HTC Flyer I believe, which was great while I had it.
Oh, and speaking of other not great things that I got for free. We don’t have any TVs, but we use a projector. We’d had one for over 4 years and it was getting some burn in on the bulb. They’re as expensive to replace as getting a new projector sometimes, so I picked up a new projector on Amazon during Cyber Monday. It said it had a “zoom” feature, which is important to us because of layout of our rooms, we need to be able to put the projector in a spot and zoom in and out. It didn’t, and also came obviously used/damaged with a really loud fan. The focus and keystone made a grinding sound trying to adjust it, and barely adjusted I sent it back and wrote a poor review. The company contacted me and sent me a free “newest model” replacement, even though Amazon had already refunded me. The replacement wasn’t much better than the damaged one. The fan is still loud, there is still no zoom on the newer model, and the keystone is average at best. The only saving grace for it is it’s actually pretty bright and the audio over bluetooth is loud enough to mostly ignore the fan noise. The problem is, it doesn’t work in any of the rooms we wanted it to because of the lack of zoom. So we bought yet another projector with a digital keystone and zoom that works much better. We found a use for the free projector in our bedroom to project on the wall opposite our bed for watching occasional movies in bed, but it’s a pain because we have to set it up in the middle of the floor to get it to the right size to fit the wall and have the right angle. And honestly, I’d rather use the other projector we bought. We don’t have it mounted, so we can move it around, and it can sit wherever we want it to and it would be fine. But we’re just trying to find a use for this one cause it was free, and so far no one else we know has need of it.
