Worst computers you owned

I work on so many computers that its hard to pin any one computer down.

I will tell you that the worst type of problems to diagnose unless you know what you are looking for, are bad capacitor problems. Thats when the caps on the motherboard blow causing these really weird intermittant problems like blue screens and just general unstablity but no matter what you do (compete wipe of the drive and reinstall windows) the problem will come back.

The same goes for problems with memory. They just act so weird but maybe not often.

The only computer I have ever had that has been a real bear is this old aopen (i hate aopen) ak73 pro motherboard based system that has had is caps replaced but it still acts flakey at times. When it powers up, it works fine, but it won't power up properly until its been warmed up.

I can't say I've ever owned a truly bad computer. My primary work computers have been:
- Atari 800XL
- Mac SE FDHD
- Powerbook 180
- Power Mac 7300/180
- iMac G4 800MHz Superdrive

I guess the worst computer I've ever owned would have to be some used Mac that's come into my possession in one way or another. Probably the worst was a IIvx. It was heavy, ugly, and slow. I wound up slicing its soldered-on 68882 FPU off the mobo and selling it on LEM Swap. I pulled the CD drive (caddy loading of course!), HD, floppy and (meager) RAM, donating the mobo to someone doing an art project, and trashing the case. I mounted the CD drive in an external case (its vintage makes it work well for installing A/UX); and I the HD, floppy and RAM are still in my parts boxes.

As for the worst Mac Apple ever made, I'd have to go with the IIvx again, because its architecture was crippled, and the Quadra 610 came out only four months later for the same price, with much better features and speed.

Matt

Well, the worst PC/Mac that I've owned would have to be an eMachines 333c tower that I have sitting around somewhere. I got it off of a relative that was upgrading a few years ago. I needed it to do some PC things with. The onboard video is shot somehow. Freezes up the machine even thinking of using it. I don't have a video card for it either at the moment.

I would have to say the worst macintosh, in my opinion, would have to be the PowerMac 8500. The computer is actually quite good and really relilable, but the case design is the epitome of "what were they thinking" bad design. Just to replace the battery on the motherboard, I had to take out the entire motherboard. That's just not right. There are probably worse macs but I haven't had any experience with them.

My Performa 460(LCIII+) is still running to this day. I don't think its much different from the LCIIIs. The HD in there must have come with a 30 year warranty.

Were all PCs. Had a Compaq 533 (K3 chip) and an eMachines 400 Celeron. The Compaq was barely useable and terribly slow. The eMachine tower was actually quite nice, until the power supply blew out and stunk up my office like a pair of bad socks.

I switched to an iMac DV 400 and never had a problem. My G4 450 tower *is* bothering me in Jag...won't shutdown...hangs for no reason...typing takes a few seconds to catch up...

Other than that, I love 'em.

On the other end of the spectrum: my absolute favorite computer was a Tandy 1000RL, and its Deskmate software. It did everything and I've yet to find 'appliance software' that matches Deskmate.

Pretty much a "no brainer" winner for question one. I've never owned a computer which was more inconsistant about working in a repeatable, predictable manner, nor one that was more hostile to tinkering or changes in configuration. Even the simple act of installing an OS on these stupid things is fraught with uncertainty, let alone things like installing a new hard disk.

And before anyone says anything, I've owned *two* of the farging things, so I do have a greater-then-one sample size to base my opinion of them on. Bleah.

As for question two, if we limit it to "New Age" Macs the tray-loading iMacs would be my definate pick. Followed closely by the first revs of the Titanium and 15" Aluminum Powerbooks, in that order. The Titaniums for being inexcusibly fragile, and the Aluminums for having *really* crappy quality control. (We recieved a shipment of ten of the Aluminums at the office the day after they were announced, and literally had a 60% out-of-the-box motherboard failure rate. Followed later by a 100% incidence of that "white spot" screen problem.)

--Peace

My worst computer.. has to be an old pokey Packard Bell 233mhz Pentium. That thing is still ticking with the same install of Windows 98 it's had since 1999, and it shows. I'm glad I don't own it anymore.
The worst mac has to be the Power Mac 5200. Horrible screen, horrible architecture, nightmarish reliability. I tried to use Bryce 2 on it a few years ago. That alone almost put me off of Bryce entirely (in retrospect, that wouldn't have been a bad thing.)

I actually have three worst computers.

1) Tandy 1000EX. Proprietary as hell. Basic PC/PCjr clone for $200 at the time. Initially it came with one expansion slot and 256KB RAM. To get additional slots, you needed an expansion/memory card with 128KB. ($150). To upgrade to 640k cost $150 for the extra 256KB. Hard drives were horribly expensive for such small capacities at the time.

2) Commodore 128D. While in the end it was an OK computer, the floppy drive was flaky when I bought it. After being in the repair shop for three months (under warranty), it worked worse after I got it back. I had to send it in again and pay $150 for another floppy drive at another repair shop. After that it worked.

3) Coleco ADAM. BASIC as similar to Apple's, but different enough to make it really hard to find programs that would work on it. Used high speed cassettes for data storage. The tapes were pretty fast, but if you left the tape in the drive at startup, there was a good chance it would be damaged due to a magnetic surge. Power supply for the entire computer was in the printer (a daisy wheel).

Worst Mac (from personal experience): 9500/8500 series. Good computers, but a real pain to actually work in. Thank goodness for the 8600/9600 series. There may be worse Macs, but I haven't used them yet.

My worst computer: Dell Dimension 2400. Dell make ____ty, cheap computers, and it shows- on taking it out of the box and experiencing Dell quality for the first time, I knew something would go wrong. It did. Yuck.

Worst Mac built: Performa 5260. Worse than the 5200, because of the completely unacceptably small and round(like a beach ball) screen.

... was the worst computer I've ever owned. It was given to me by a friend, and it was the most cantankerous piece of crud ever to be called a computer. It had a hard drive, but would only spin up about half the time when you switched it on. Usually a good whack to the side would get it to start (percussive maintenance.) Actually, that one was the most frustrating because I owned it before I knew much of anything about hardware; if I had one with that problem today I'd probably just leave it running all the time.

The best computer I've ever had is the Titanium PowerBook I'm typing on right now. It's a 500MHz model, and I've used it daily -- at home and at work -- since it was purchased for me (by my employer) in 2000. It has been almost completely trouble free, taking each OS upgrade in stride. I use it as the guinea pig for software upgrades for the other computers in the department I manage. The only part that's been replaced on it is the hard drive. The original 20GB unit started whining & burning battery life pretty badly. But that was replaced under warranty, and I still use that drive in a little firewire enclosure, having replaced it with a 60GB 5400RPM IBM DeskStar a couple years back. Another thing is that lately the wireless connection will spontaneously cut out; haven't determined if it's the AirPort card or my wireless router.

Sad thing is I may have to give up my TiBook soon, as I'm contemplating a job change. Sigh. I think I can get the new employer to buy a new PowerBook, but I don't know if the replacement will be as trouble-free as this one.

A TiBook can be the best or worst computer a person has ever owned... it just depends on whether or not it falls apart.

I gave Apple 2 chacnes on TiTurdniums. Both of them were road apples.

I prefer not to call a computer "bad" just because MY model has had troubles.

1.) a.+b.) I keep on thinking... should I notice the C=64 with a bug in almost every BASIC Command? Or the PC for its A-20 gate? Or a PowerBook with a PPC-68k Busbridge?

2.) Apple PowerBook 190. Wondering why noone else came up with this? Bad bad screen, good CPU those days with bad I/O in a badly engineered undurable enclosure. Not to speak of the various recall issues and the vapor PPC upgrade :-)

(I also liked the LC Series, personally owned a LC1 as my first mac and later collected a II board and an entire LCIII with Formac "overdrive" :-D. No honestly I think the LC1 is about the most stable and illtaking mac I have ever seen...)

The PowerMac 5200 is the worst computer I have ever owned and it is the worst Mac ever made. It was slow, it had motherboard faults (even though my didn't have any), and worst of all: a 56k modem is faster than the serial ports.
The last thing is by far the worst, and makes the 5200 completely useless for internet purposes (It could have been an ok mail/usenet/light surfing machine).

Other bad things include the screen, noise, slow harddrive, instability (esp. regarding the volume and brightness buttons on the front).

While I've never owned one of these machines, I have provided support for four of them, and found them to be quite decent machines. Granted, of the four only two still live in their original forms, the other two having experienced analog board failure in the last couple of years. Even those two live on in other hacked forms, pulling mail & file serving duty in headless ATX-powered boxes. Two are still in service, but slated to be replaced within a month (by Dells! Arrgghh!) We've got a lot of mileage out of those little puppies with very little downtime or hassle.

It just occurred to me that these machines work in a church office, and are prayed over regularly. Do you suppose there is a connection between that & their work record?

1) The worst PC I ever owned was in fact the only one I ever owned. I used it from Mid 2000 to Mid 2004. The bad thing on it, well, was the operating system ;-)
The worst Mac I ever owned....is my current Power Mac G4 FW800. It's my second Mac, my first one was a Cube, which I didn't have very long because it was too slow and unflexible in upgrading. So, whats so bad with it? Its speed is okay. Its not fast, but you can work with it. But the noise!! Before I bought it second hand, I read that Apple had changed the fans and made it much quieter than the previous generation, so I didn't worry about it. The G4 stands on my desktop right next to me and I can only stand the noise by listening to music all the time. Oh, and I have built up a sonic isolating wall of DVDs around it

2) The worst Mac ever made...thats easy: The Power Mac G4 generations "MDD" and "FW800". And I totally dislike the new iMac G5. Its white plastic-look is ugly (not comparible to the iMac G4!) and it has heavy thermal problems negatively affecting the performance, lifespan and noise generation.
But I must admit that I only know the post-legacy Macs from 1999 (G3 BW) and later.

The first was an IBM PC jr. (long gone) Proprietary,
non-reliable, limited options, closed architecture,
no memory capacity. The only good thing about it was
that infra-red wireless keyboard link. But even that
was limited.

The other was an old Packard Bell 486 computer that
was proprietary and had limited memory expansion re-
sources. Their ( PB's ) expansion cards were costly
as all get-out! PC was SLOOOOW! (this is also long
gone)

I have owned and do own litteral dozens of computers. Current count would be over 50 and fast approaching 100 in-possesion. Of my embarasingly huge collection my long gone Packard Bell Statesman 486SLC laptop and it's replacement of an IBM 720 (MCA/ESDI based *laptop*) are in a good tie for worst. The PB was a horribly built proprietary design (ok, ok, it was an early-mid 90's laptop, but still) with compromises all over the place. 1 Type II slot, "j-stick" mouse, RAM upgrades under the way too easy to pop-off hinge cover, max 8MB? RAM, horrible NiCD battery life(and I bought the machine new), super sucky passive matrix grey scale screen. The worst was the BIOS password protection. When entering the password it would give the error of a bad password on the first incorrect character you typed. All you had to do to get the correct password was type a, if wrong try b, etc. until you got the first letter, then do the same for the second, pa, pb, pc, pd, blahblahblah until it let you in. It took less than 1 minute to brute (barely) forse the BIOS password. I've hated PB ever since.

The IBM 720 and it's brother the 720c, were low quality MCA architecture laptops of the same vintage. I made the mistake of taking that PB to a shop and trading it in for a "better" IBM. Pieces started falling off of it, bad pixels on the screen, too proprietary to run Linux at the time. Even the PB ran the copy of Slackware 3.2 that I installed off of floppies (It was circa 1995/96 and my PCMCIA CD-ROM/sound card setup wouldn't work) just fine on 4MB RAM. If I was willing to spend the extra $50 I coulda had a nice 701 DX4...

Apple-wise might be something like a 5260. 640x480? Ack! Might as well keep using my LC 580CD, and wait for my 5500...

It had good KBD and LCD and was very good for those years in Bulgaria (1997), but it had one discussting defect - when you turn it on and start working on it, when on adapter, it was just turning off after 10-20 minutes. It was terrible. Altought it was a 486 66Mhz I was pretty much happier with my Compaq Contura 3/25 (386 / 25 Mhz) which I bought after the BudgetNote(I even could say that it was the best laptop I ever owned).

I think that that machine is one of the slowest Apples ever. I almost passed out when I put a 5500/225 board in mine. The LC II is boring, but it can't help that.

The worst machine I have ever owned has to be the Pavilion. Celeron 533, 256MB RAM, 70GB HD. It would freeze up for no reason whatsoever, and half the time not recognize it had drives installed.

The guts from that machine found their way to my Kayak, which is much better, and I'm glad to be rid of that bloody nuisance.

Cheers

The Czar

my worst computer had to be an old compaq 5300 laptop. it was THE ABSOLUTE worst one i have ever had in my possetion. first off it wouldnt even run win me, second its cd and floppy drives wouldnt work, i even paid to get new ones. and third the hd was sooooo small i think it was like 50 mb?. and you couldnt upgrade the drive because i think on win 98 there was a 3gb limit.

My worst computer was a Original IBM PC a neighbor gave us when our Apple //e broke.

My favorite computer was my Apple //GS.

1) Worst PC was a generic Celeron 300mhz tower, apparently built by gibbons. I was given it free by a friend of my Mum's. It was absolutely horrible. The case was a awkward mini tower design, with sharp edges everywhere, it had a really shoddy motherboard, and was nearly unusably slow for no apparent reason. I think I kept the various IDE cables and the RAM, but the rest of it was trashed.

2) Worst Mac ever - the Performa 5200. I had one for a short while last year. The only thing that saved it was the TV card, but the machine itself never really ran right, even under OS 8.1, which is supposed to help these things work right. Finally it died, so I stripped it for parts and threw it away.

...it had to be the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a, beige model with peripheral expansion box. I've owned, literally, dozens of computers, but this one takes the cake. Just gave it away after futzing too long with it.
My favorite so far has been my trusty PB 540c (Excaliber). Still pretty original, has dead batteries now but serves as my main desktop. That has to be followed by my Tandy Model 102 (just Tandy), which I've used harder than any machine I've ever owned, and it-just-won't-die! Also, don't know if they count here, but I'm fond of my Palm IIIxe (Xerxes).
Worst Mac? They make bad Macs? Just based on personal experience, I'd say my Portable. It really needs to be worked over; it worked well for a while, but since the battery died, I've had to run it off of a PB150 power supply, and it's crankier than heck. But when it ran, it was sweet...

Rob

I'd say the worst machine I ever owned would be a PowerBook 1400c/166. That machine was quite possibly the flakiest Mac I've ever owned. After that machine, I took a one year breather before buying another mac. I built a pc and used it for a few months, then bought the dual usb iBook. While it was hit or miss, I can't really say anything too bad about it, as the bulk of the issues I had with it didn't relate to it's function as a computer. Creaky hinges were my biggest complaint with it.

As for the best machines I've ever owned, those would be the PowerBook 180, my current PowerBook G4 15", and that PC I'd built during that time between the 1400 and the iBook. While it was running windows 2k pro, it wasn't a bad machine. (athlon 750 on a ecs board)

- iantm

My best computer was my Rev.A iMac. It was bone-stock. But it never crashed and it was very quiet. My worst computer was my Duo 230. The screen died I don't know how many times. Ive been through about 20 batteries and over 10 HD's because they all kept on dying.

I picked up a PM6300 for $10 at Goodwill once a couple of years ago--don't know why--but it certainly lived up to it's reputation. It had a TV card, and that's about all it did well, and I could use the remote. Other than that, I used it for word processing, but anything else was pathetic. It even had a modem card and was horrendous trying to connect and get about online. Upgrading from OS7 to 8 seemed to just make things worse. At least, I sold the parts on eBay and got my money back.
It's sad to hear people knock the 8500--which I have now, greatly upgraded. It's such a stable, solid, and very quiet machine, but yes, it's a bit of a chore to get into when you need to access the motherboard. You basically have to take the whole thing apart. It might be the worse case design, although similar to the compact macs, but I find the whole 64XX,65XX series cases equally horrendous but in a different way--you can't get to the drives without damaging the case, and if you're not careful removing the motherboard, you might rip off, irreparably, the whole back plate.

Worst computers I have owned...

Macintosh Performa 5200 (and to think they made an "upgrade" for the 550/575 to a 5200? LOL!!!!!)

The Atari 65 XE (the XE line keyboards would self destruct after a while. *LOVE* the Atari 800 even still though...)

Amiga 3000 (talk about a computer that eats SCSI drives.. yesh!)

Atari Portfolio (Cute.. but static memory? Yuck!!)

GridPad 386 (Awesome how it had that fold out keyboard, but those damn flimsy side rails that were known for breaking...)

Hewlet Packard 133 mhz (Need I say anything else on this one?)

Pretty much anything made under the IBM PC architecture. (Except for the Digital HiNotes... those were small and cool...)

Doctor Clu
Fan of Atari stuff/Mac Stuff/Newton Stuff

Oh yeh... you'll love this. Bought my Performa 5200 for something like $15 at the First Saturday Sidewalk Sale in Dallas.

Took it home and quickly realized what a P.O.S. it was.

Offered it for trade. Got a bundle of stuff for it, one of which being a GameBoy Color, which I found emmensely more fun (and started my slight fandom in Gameboy, Gameboy Advanced, GameCube...)

I noticed that the same Performa 5200 was up for sale on DFW for sale two weeks later...

IICR back in the day Quantum used to use A3000s to test SCSI drives. They were some of the top performers of the day.

1.
a. Worst computer - Compac Presario POS....... Was n't really even mine, it was an old girlfriends and it never worked right from day one. Typical of so many consumer "package" Peecees. Never had or seen a Mac with so many issues.

b. It was a POS... Don't even get me started on the Windoze 98....
nuf said......

2. The worst Mac ever Made is tough because they were all better than most of what was available. But amongst Macs the worst has to be a toss up between the beige and early iMac G3's. The beigie's are the most retarded bunch of computers if there ever was one. The early iMacs are included because of the crappy parts. ie: analog board failure that makes the still functioning Mac useless.

This is the main reason I don't have one even though I love the colors and design. I want one but won't have one till I can get one for like $10.00 and that day is getting closer.....

There's a lot of dissing of the performas and specifically the 5200's but my 5200 still works ! The main problems with the 5200 architecture can be solved with a simple logic board swap from a 54/55/64/6500.

I now have changed my iMac to the worst ever. I installed Panther and then it refused to boot no matter what hard drive you put in it. sad sad mac

Well the worst ive owned i would have to say is my powerbook g4 12'', never buying a Rev A again. It has gone through 3 batteries and has just never worked right. Best would have to be a 14'' wallstreet or my digital audio dual 533. I have to say the dual 533 is the nicest computer i have ever used. Ive also had 2 pm6100's theyre great little machines. Also i had a few others in the bad category. My imac dv+se 400 worked terribly when we got it up until last year when i upgraded to os X and 384 mb of ram.

the worst computer I used was a original IBM PC w/ a 10 Mb Hard Drive and 2 Full Hight 5.25 DD(360k) floppy drives. Running PC Dos 3.3

"I know much more than you think".

(sorry to bring up banned people)

It appears timmyishot's iMac is now dead as a result of him not even knowing to update the firmware... yet because of this, he labels it a piece of junk.

FIRMWARE UPDATES WILL SAVE THE WORLD SOME DAY.

And slot-loading iMacs are some of the best Macs ever built.

not when their PAV boards need replacing, its annoying to do

but they are very cool machines., when they are working properly

The slot loading and tray loading iMacs. In my family, we have a couple of iMacs, one is a rev. B bondi iMac, and the other a grape iMac DV. Both machines have performed without issue or complaint. They've both gone up and down the east coast. It seems that, like some of the dual usb iBooks, some people have nothing but luck while others have no luck at all. I've seen more than my fair share of failures as an Apple tech, but some machines seem to be sturdier than others.

-iantm

My first mac was a performa 6200 and lemme tell ya it was great till i realized my buddys pentium was kicking its butt. i ran that thing for years and just about every month i would have to take it apart and re-seat the ram and the mother board in the slots otherwise it would screw up all the time. it wouldnt boot os8 off the internal HD, but would boot from an external scsi drive. to this day ive never been able to explain that. i picked up a used performa 630, not even Power PC and it kept up with the 6200 in almost everything i did with it, which is really sad being half the processor speed and half the ram. i had gotten an external 56k modem, the thing never went as fast as it should have. down the road some more i got my hands on a quadra desktop which yet again kicked its butt in speed, this time 25 mhz not 33... the sad part is both of the 68k machines booted ALL the time OS8 without a problem... ive had a few imacs since then and my first one i found at the junk yard all beat up. turned it on, had bad software install, re installed os9 never once had a problem after that. the imac DV i had blew the video board and almost caught fire (YIKES) last but not least i have a G3 B&W 350 now with loads of crap on it including OS 10.3 and it works OK most of the time, cant say its been great. but its plenty fast. ive seen TONS of LC575's still in use today most work fine, yet again 68k. another hard working machine is the PM6100 with PPC 601 nice machines for their day. basicaly the 603e was a bad idea as far as performance goes, never should have gotten the name of PPC. 601 and 604 rules!

The 603e was an excellent processor- haven't you ever used a real PowerMac like a 5500/6500? They really fly for their age.

The 6200 was a flawed piece of crap, it wasn't the processor's fault.

And yep- 630s, 575s, Quadras are all much faster than 52/6200s running period applications. Strange, but true. None of them had the horrific motherboard architecture of the 62xx.