What tech did you buy into, and wish you hadn't?

[PlanetScribbles]

I'll start with my parallel port Iomega Zip Drive. The biggest waste of £100 ever, it was obsolete the moment I walked it into my front door.
The price of the disks was outrageous too. I mean, £15 for 250mb? Vs 50p for 800mb on a CD-R?
This, you have to remember, was before I discovered internet shopping. Actually I don't even think it really existed at that time lol

 

[Safira]

8 track and Betta.

Actually I have a stack of old albums that someone gave me. Old, old blues and jazz records,(I think) I never listened to them because I wasn't allowed to use my mothers turn table and to this day still don't have one. So somehow that should fit in here, although I never bought any.

Now I'm regretting my regular DVD collection because of blueray and now it will probably be 3D. If I'm tempted by the 3D fad it'll all go streaming anyway. AGH.

 

[Ben Harker]

good thread, good thread.

I would say Apple gear, but the ratio to how much i've spent on it / how well it's served me has been quite good hehe

hmm.... i bought a 250gb external USB drive for around £250 a few years back, was immensely peeved when the price dropped by HALF within a month!

 

[caffeinated]

I'll start with my parallel port Iomega Zip Drive. The biggest waste of £100 ever, it was obsolete the moment I walked it into my front door.

I had the same experience with a Zip Drive. And I went all-in on the blank 100MB disks, too! If I recall correctly, the blanks ran about $20 each, and by the time I "donated" my Zip Drive to an in-law, I had managed to accumulate more than 50 of the damned things!

i bought a 250gb external USB drive for around £250 a few years back, was immensely peeved when the price dropped by HALF within a month!

Similarly, in the late `90s, before USB was ubiquitous, I paid just shy of $500 for a scanner and an add-in SCSI card to hook it up to. Within three months, virtually nobody was making SCSI scanners any more, and new USB scanners could be had for about $150.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

HD-DVD add on for my Xbox 360. I did get it cheap, but before the format was officially obsolete. I suppose I should have seen the writing on the wall

 

[nomadman]

Minidisc players. They seemed so much better than CD's because the stayed in their case and therefor would not get scratched, and they are re-recordable. Plus the audio quality is better than mp3's. At the time (2002) it was much less time consuming to have a few of MD's than to have to wait on the USB transfer of mp3's when you wanted to change your music.

I still have 2 Minidisc players but they they only come out when I am feeling nostalgic. I use my Windows Phone 7 (LG Quantum) as my personal music player now. Looking forward to the Mango update!

 

[xg4bx]

the last tech i bought into was smartphones (overrated) and ebooks (awesome). had blu-ray, found it overrated. never owned an mp3 player. don't see the point of tablets.

i've pretty much taken a "who gives a crap" stance when anything new comes along anymore.

 

[Sedateme]

I took over a management position 2 years ago. Attached to the computer on the desk? A zip drive. I took pictures and showed my friends. One of them suggested I take to on the Antique Roadshow and see how much it is *really* worth.

But seriously, I think the office I work in thought they would be great, bought them YEARS ago, and nobody ever used them. The disks are still brand new.

 

[PlanetScribbles]

The only thing that stopped me from buying into mini-disc was that nowhere seemed to sell them at a reasonable price. So I dodged that lemon.
Sony love their proprietary media don't they? UMD going the same way, if not already obsolete.

 

[snarkypaws]

I'm afraid I fell hard for mini-discs as well. Still have the player, ejector display cases, and a ton of discs...sigh.