Categories:

The Biggest High-Tech Flops Of 2008

3:10 AM - January 8, 2009 by Pierre Dandumont
Source: Tom's Hardware FR – Keywords: oled, hd, dvd
Categories: Microsoft Windows 7, Windows Tech Talk

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Organic LED (OLED) displays deserve a place in our list of the flops of 2008. Aside from a few telephones—where their advantage is not at all clear at first glance—OLED displays are most conspicuous by their absence. With Sony's 11-inch TV at $2,500, OLED is not exactly what you’d call a sales stimulator. Even though the technology does have potential (Ed.: we saw plenty of it on display at CES this year), its high cost and its limitations (in particular its life expectancy) have kept OLED from breaking through.

Comments
one-shot 01/14/2009 8:21 AM
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I looked forward for GTA IV on PC for a long time only to realize that I would be crazy to buy it. Now Piracy will be blamed because of a rushed ported console game that had poor sales because of the game's low quality. Worse sales on the PC side will result in the studios investing even less time into a game resulting in worse quality than before. Even though Piracy is to blame...obviously.

cangelini 01/14/2009 8:39 AM
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I'd like to think that the few gems that come out on the PC first (and people actually buy) remind developers that it's still worthwhile. Wonder if TTWO rushed that one out to try affecting the buyout offer?

twisted politiks 01/14/2009 9:01 AM
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cangelini 01/14/2009 9:12 AM
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twisted politiks :
im confused as to why they have a dell laptop with an exploded battery with the article flopping Sony's battery? XD



Sony-made batteries were in Dell and Apple systems when the exploding battery saga began...

jtnstnt 01/14/2009 9:22 AM
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You guys know what the internet is really for. No need to say just find it on picture 9.

kingraven 01/14/2009 10:50 AM
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I don't know about France but here in Portugal there is at least 1 ISP that has already started to make some pilot tests with fiber optic cabling. I am one of the happy testers of a 60Mb download/ 16Mb upload connection :). Fiber cable comes all the way to the house and in to a modem.

arsenoxide 01/14/2009 11:39 AM
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jtnstnt :
You guys know what the internet is really for. No need to say just find it on picture 9.



Haha, I just noticed that. :D
In regards to the Phenom X3, I agree that its 3 cores are underpowered in comparison to Intel's dual cores. It's pretty sad.

randomizer 01/14/2009 12:09 PM
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The Aussie governmant wants to lay down a fibre network to 98% of the population over the next 5 years, but they can't even get a buyer for the network. Too bad it will likely be FTTN; it won't make a difference to speeds while the country is sitting on ancient, waterlogged last miles. :sarcastic:

ravenware 01/14/2009 12:33 PM
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Phenom x3 was useless. The majority of the Phenom line is considerably underpowered and out performed by its own predecessors. There was the 4x4 cluster fu** before it too.

Anonymous 01/14/2009 1:53 PM
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100Mbit (12MByte/s) upload and download speeds
already enabled in a part of The Netherlands :]

HD movies in 12 mins :O

safcmanfr 01/14/2009 2:40 PM
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umm, I live in France and 100mbps has already been up and running for a year and a half in the city near me. 30 euros a month, TV and telephone included.

I live in a village, 200 people, and I can get 4mbps, tv, and telephone for 40 euros a month.

Now the UK is a country that is way behind on broadband speeds, prices and connections (I am English)

enewmen 01/14/2009 2:48 PM
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GTA4 runs fine for me - on Vista 64 no less with no lag. There was a strange problem with no dialog audio (can hear music), but that went away after some windows updates and reboots.

FarCry2 should have been included, just because I was not able to resume the game after completing 80% of the missions. The next mission was at the UFLL headquarters, but no people inside to give me a task. Another problem was DX10 seemed to skip frames no matter what driver version I installed. At least DX9 was silk smooth at MAX settings and didn't look worse than DX10.
Too bad, the game was enjoyable and immersive otherwize and the story had promise.

I also tried the Windows-7, but had to remove it just because I kept getting "not supported for this OS" errors when I try to install apps - even though I sure they will run if the OS will just let them install. Such as Daemon Tools.(older, more funky apps where able to run)

I notice no flops from Intel. What about the p45 chipset that uses more electricity and slower than the p35? The PCIe 2.0 makes up for it for me.

Maybe I told more than people want to read...

Anonymous 01/14/2009 2:49 PM
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2009 Flop Predictions:

1)Tom's Games Site. ->No more content just lame flash games.
2)Best of Media's management. ->For sucking so hard they actually blow.

Anonymous 01/14/2009 4:11 PM
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Meh - it would have been better to mention in the bits about vista that it was mainly killed by poor 3rd party driver support, OEMs shipping it with tons of bloatware, and negative public perception largely via Apple's ads.

There's no doubt that it was a flop, but it didn't really deserve to be

nekatreven 01/14/2009 4:12 PM
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Is it me or does the phone on page 11 never name the product in the image? I had to look on the page before or after to get the product model/name from the text of the link to it's page.

zodiacfml 01/14/2009 4:30 PM
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i never considered hd dvd a flop. it's just sony gave everything they got to avoid another betamax from happening again.
hd dvd's capacity is sufficient considering mpeg4 is getting popular and mature.

Anonymous 01/14/2009 5:50 PM
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The title of each web page names the flop in question.

gm0n3y 01/14/2009 8:48 PM
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pollom 01/14/2009 9:13 PM
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hahaha in the screen shoot of yahoo search, looks like looking for porn hahahaha lol

crockdaddy 01/14/2009 9:16 PM
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I know negative thoughts tend to get communicated more often than positive ones, but I wonder if the best of media management have a clue in regards to what would work or not work going forward with this site. The negative tone against this site has become in my view common place. If I was honest I am slowly but certainly starting to agree with it. I hate to admit that because I have been a loyal reader for over ten years now. I think my final straw was the reorganization of the TomsGames site ... the part of Toms which I was taking the most value from and entertainment was Second Take. With it gone my daily surfing of this site has dropped. I find this to be very frustrating.


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