The Worst PCs in America

Nineteen machines you're really glad you don't own.

Posted by  | Monday, October 19, 2009

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Worst PC

Some PCs are born crummy. Some achieve crumminess. And some have crumminess thrust upon them. Those are my conclusions after judging our Worst PC in America contest, in which we asked you to tell us about really rotten personal computers–with the lure of a snazzy HP Envy 13 laptop to be awarded to the most outstandingly awful entry. Herewith, some highlights lowlights, including both once-decent machines that have fallen upon hard times and some systems that were kind of terrible and/or just plain odd from the get go.

Thanks to everyone who entered!



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Slides: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

10 Comments For This Post

  1. Mike Says:

    Look on the left side, towards the bottom. There is a sort of beige piece with a broken fragment of a CD on top of it. That looks suspiciously like a Mac floppy drive from the 90s, unless Packard Bell also used that exact same floppy sled design, and I doubt it.

  2. Relyt Says:

    You said 19 machines – but it’s actually only 18, since two of the pictures were of my computer (I’m Tyler H!). Good (or should I say bad?) stuff though!

  3. Cody Pahr Says:

    @Mike
    Yeah… that was a mac floppy drive holder… We filmed another thing that day called electronic baseball and I had a few old mac zip drives laying around…

  4. John Dodge Says:

    Let’s be fair…The Trash 80 was a trailblazer if you go back nearly 30 years. The control key had to be pressed just right in concert with another key for certain commands to work.

    It was the second computer I used after the Apple II. Or maybe, I used the Apple II first….can’t recall exactly. But I used them to send page copy to the company producing proofs for printing. It was magic in 1982-83.

    I used a Teleram portable newspaper terminal (svelte at 30 pounds) in 1977, but it was not a personal computer.And who can forget Atex? I can.

  5. Amanda Says:

    The last one is great, so Office Space-esque!

  6. Gerald Says:

    If one can afford a PS3, and choose to stay with a 13″ CRT, and not buy a cheapo 20+” LCD… Sorry, that’s a lifestyle choice…

  7. Kevin Says:

    I’m honored to make the slideshow LOL!

    I was going ti fire up the Dell Optiplex GX1 with this contest on the screen but didn’t want to wait the 5 minutes it takes to make it to the Internet ;). Once online it does OK until about every 6th or 7th click. Then it has to “think” about what it’s going to do next. Which isn’t always what it should do…

  8. lil'guin Says:

    lol, and he wrote a comprehensive review of it here:
    http://benford.bluhelix.com/touch-screen-computing-is-the-future/

  9. BadBender Says:

    Very useless article – though mildly entertaining. The title sucks – makes it sound like a Consumer Reports review kind of thing. Should be titled “The Most F’d Up PC’s Not In The Landfill”.

  10. ali Says:

    i address postel barkat ali pb 65A ouled derredj msila algeria 28100

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