Not sure if it counts as technology but it was a Ford Focus.
A Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite.
Their own lower-end APUs are sooo slow (even worse than Samsung) and the bloated stock ROM doesn't help. The tablet was borderline unusable without limiting background applications (which for some reason reset every time you reebooted the thing), and it's not like it ever got any updates.
An iBook. I had the GPU replaced twice under warranty. I sold it after the second time. Never again.
Manual lawnmower.
The surface RT and windows ME e-machine computer were both a close second.
I think the Thinkpad X130e with the AMD E-240 CPU. That processor, really, was the bad part. Every little single thing you wanted to do was absolutely CPU-bound, even when it was contemporary and new (c. 2011-2012). The amount of time I wasted waiting for the fully hammered CPU to do literally anything was too much.
I bought the laptop used because I figured a tiny Linux laptop would be great. And other aspects of it were fine, such as the display, keyboard, trackpad, build quality, etc. But that stupid CPU totally killed the device. Such a regret.
HP Printer
Depends on when it was produced.
My 1998 HP 4050DTN is still going strong, an absolutely bulletproof beast of a machine. My HP 5000DTN wide-format printer is much the same.
Of course, this was years before the DRM enshittification path that HP started down, so there is that.
Their home/home office stuff is absolutely trash. That much is true.
Much of their small business stuff is on the verge of being ok. Just, expensive for what it is.
Meanwhile at work we have hp enterprise printers that are twelve years old and still working flawlessly.
HP anything, absolute trash
Depends on when it was produced.
My 1998 HP 4050DTN is still going strong, an absolutely bulletproof beast of a machine. Plus, I can get extra-stuffed cartridges for it that can do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage. Even after two degrees and a quarter century I am only on my third cartridge.
My HP 5000DTN wide-format printer is much the same.
Of course, this was years before the DRM enshittification path that HP started down, so there is that.
Any device produced by the Transsion company, a company which exists only to scam ppl out of their hard earned money and create e-waste. They're the owners of the Infinix, Tecno and Itel mobile lineups
if you want a 2gb ram device produced this year that can get so hot and burn the flesh off your palm, get one of these devices, they're so prevalent in Africa, India and other developing countries
the marketing budget for each lineup outweighs the RnD budget for the three collectively
Anything with fucking Bluetooth. Even in 2024 getting it to connect consistently requires some kind of arcane magic
Anything that accesses Expedia.com
For society? A smartphone
HTC Droid Incredible.
It kept telling me its storage was full when it was nowhere close, and then because it only allowed over the air factory resets, it couldn't even erase and reformat itself. It was the top rated Android phone at the time and it's why I've never gone back.
Any and all dishwashers and refrigerators I've ever owned. Fuck planned obscelence.
I had to buy a Clicker for college in a day when any number of phone apps, or even the Smart board, would have done exactly the same thing. I think it cost about $150 and the only thing it did -- THE ONLY THING IT DID -- was serve as an expensive and drastically crippled version of Kahoot. Abject waste of money for all parties involved.
PackageKit
Tablets. I've owned 2 so far, plus fucked around with a third, fancier one that was borrowed from someone else (in case you care: a very old Samsung one, a Xiaomi model from the late 2010s, and a new-ish Apple iPad for the borrowed one).
They suck as smartphone replacements because they are too big.
They lack button inputs, so they suck as gaming devices or as computer replacements.
You can browse the web... But if you decide to type anything, the large size plus the touchscreen keyboard make for an awkward experience (in ways that it's not on a smaller phone)
They have lit screens, so they suck as eReaders.
They're sorta okay as like, personal screens for watching movies or whatever, but like, at that point just use a television??
They can make sorta good drawing tablets, the ones that are pen-compatible I mean... Because I mean, yeah. But the lack of a keyboard is a bummer with how I learned to draw with my other hand on Ctrl+Z, though that's more a muscle memory issue than anything.
In general, every tablet I used felt like a less-good verion of a dozen other devices, yanno?
I felt like this until I bought a legit tablet, not some sub $100 tablet. it's night and day. and it's not even super high end, just not cheap
Same. I used to make fun of them as they're 'too big' for mobile stuff but too small for computer stuff, but after getting a killer deal on a Tab S7+, it's super useful for casual games, watching youtube/plex, drawing, and web browsing. It's also great to use in the kitchen while cooking or doing other stuff
See, I thought it might have been my tablets being cheap things.
But messing around with that borrowed iPad (possibly a Pro, the person who lent me it was filthy rich and likes premium stuff) made me go "... This is like, a high quality laptop but worse in every way?"
The screen was drop-dead gorgeous, and it was clearly a powerful (if locked down, cuz Apple) device -- but it felt like everything I tried to do on the device was in some major way a compromise to accomodate for a less-than-ideal form factor.
A Xiaomi smartwatch. I never found any good use for its "smart" features and I had to charge the fucking thing all the time. So I ended up dropping it after a year in favor of a regular digital watch.
Anything that relies on mini/micro USB for charging. With enough repeated use, they eventually cause an early failure of the device.
I went from a cheap mp3 player that I could just plug in to my computer and drag in music to an iPod which forced me to download the iTunes bloatware create an account and then took 100x longer to transfer music because of the pointless conversion each file had to undergo. This was my first and last experience with a personal Apple device. Ended up putting some old pop music onto it and giving it to my grandmother after 2 days. Uninstalled iTunes and went back to using my cheap mp3 player until I replaced it with a smartphone.
Coming in as a close second place, an all-in-one Sony Vaoi computer that cost a fortune and had shit performance. Took daily nags to Sony before they took it back and gave me a refund. I find that Sony's hit and miss though. My favourite smartphone (Xperia Play) was Sony, and I love my Sony Bluetooth earbuds. The Sony Smartwatch was shit.
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