Top 5 Bad Tech Products

Don’t get me wrong, I love adding technology to things that don’t need it. I wouldn’t have made the LED fish lights otherwise :). But some of the commercial products that are coming out are making me roll my eyes. Here is my top 5 things that should not have been produced.

5) Knife with a USB drive. When I am looking to buy a pocket knife I want to know how long the blade is, how easy the scissors are to use and if it comes with a bottle opener. NOT how many Megabytes of capacity it has, data transfer speed and if a USB cable is included!!
4) Digital Pens. What is up with the digital pen? When I want to write a note I don’t want to care about system requirements, charged batteries, recognition accuracy! Sorry I couldn’t leave you a note because my pen had trouble syncing with my XP computer.
3) Internet Ready Appliances. The internet fridges seem to be catching on. Ok this product has a cool factor and if I had money to burn I could see myself getting one. But thinking practically, I couldn’t justify purchasing one. If I want to surf the internet I will use a computer not the fridge. If I want to listen to music I will use the stereo, not the fridge. I can imagine the slew of new excuses now… Sorry we ran out of milk, the fridge inventory database got corrupted a few days ago.
2) Pet Gadgets. Do our pets need their own cell phones and digital cameras? I remember a time when checking if your pet had enough water was enough now their are pet bowls that will ensure the quality of the water is up to par!
1) Toothbrush. Ok this is one product that does not need a built in computer. A plastic stick with bristles stuck in one end is fine for me. Adding some water and some motorized movement is an improvement to the standard. But who is the marketing team that is thinking we want or need a computer in our tooth brush? I think we have gone too far when our toothbrush has multiple computer controlled settings and a downloadable user guide! What is next 24 hour tech support?

15 Comments


  1. Heh, those are probably the most useless applications of technology (aside from the knife, that’d be handy)


  2. yea the knife is definately useful for people in the computer repair business when cutting cable and transferring data is needed.


  3. I feel you are completely wrong on thr flash drive. In electronics retail and pc service you use the pen all the time, knife to open boxes and other items, scissors for tags, and the USB items to hold revenue reports or updates for customers PC’s. Its even more useful at school, and the flashlight being on a keychain helps a lot at knight looking for the key hole. Its also a small drive physically by itself. Just because you can’t find a use for it doesnt mean it should be there ๐Ÿ™‚ How about a USB powered fan instead? Or usb bobble head?


  4. I agree, the USB knife is dumb. Maybe it’s becuase I use my knife a lot more then an average person, but I do things with my knife that I wouldn’t want my thumbdrive near at all. It gets dirty, wet, droped, banged, etc.


  5. i disagree completely about the “digital pen” being pointess…i do alot of image and web design and i use my pen alot for drawing.
    I do agree however that it is completely pointess for writing letters etc as you mentioned but me and several of my friends and fellow image designers depend on greatly it to finish certain projects


  6. Very dumb gadgets indeed. The knife is useful and can be used for many purposes. However, the
    price that Victorinox/Swiss Army charges for it is a major rip off. USB flash drives are getting
    so incredibly cheap and pocket knives are even cheaper that buying one of these knife combos
    is just plain stupid.


  7. wow… those are the stupidest products ever, except the digital pen which i find useful for drawing straight onto computer wivout the need of a scanner or a tablet… i agree with john on the usb knife… my knife goes everywhere sometimes being confiscated, oh the joys i would have with thinking of them searching the USB drive attached to find a bunch of my transactions like my latest game/dvd/cd or whatever else i’ve bought and all the files i take around with me to put on other pc’s…. plus, if i took that into school to upload my homework onto my school network i’d never get it back =/


  8. Hi Sam,

    I could just imagine taking a flight and having important data on my knife/USB drive and having to hand it over at the X-RAY checkpoint ๐Ÿ™
    I went through one time and had a pocket screwdriver taken…


  9. What happens when an incompetent company produces a bad product? Well, what if they are very good at marketing the bad product to a selective group of people? What is that group of people happen to be too shy to return things? Will the incompetent company succeed?


  10. Ok, the Swiss Army Knife is good and the refridge is good. You get on a internet TV station or normal TV and u open fridge for a drink for the 5 hour long marathon. The tooth brush is BEST because no more annoying computers.
    The pen is a bit fancy. Forget the computer thing and use ink. Photons are being wasted here LOL.


  11. What’s that Lassie? Your automatic food bowl needs to be fixed? Your water’s not pure enough?


  12. Oh yah, you know its all about the pet cell phones.


  13. In the words of Larry the cable guy: Dog water purifyin machine. It purifys your dogs drinkin water. huh. My dog just ate a turd five minutes ago, do ya have anything to purify that?


  14. LOL, then your friend comes over and your dog gives him some loving licks. ๐Ÿ™‚


  15. Actually digital pens are being used in nursing homes to send prescriptions straight to the pharmacy rather than faxing, so it’s not so useless.

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