PCWorld: The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007 These much-ballyhooed products, sites, and services, it turned out, left much to be desired.

PCWorld should be embarrassed to call themselves a publication house… I haven’t seen facts this abused in support of biased arguments since… I don’t know the last time I’ve seen it like this, but it was probably political.

PCWorld can bite my entire shiny metal ass.

I know what you’re thinking… I’m only upset by this because of the three Microsoft products on the list: Zune, Office 2007, and Vista. But that’s not my problem – or at least it’s not my only problem.

For good will, lets look at why the Apple iPhone is on the list. Yes, it made this list! Why, though, is the question… Bad keyboard? No. Weird UX? No. The fact that you can’t close applications? No. They ding the iPhone because of at&t! Um, what does that have to do with the iPhone being on the list? Got a problem with at&t, say you’re disappointed with at&t… why loop in a piece of hardware that has little or nothing to do with the quality of service? Meh.

If you’re going to complain about something, at least use the right argument.

What did they say about the Zune? Props for wireless sync’ing, improved hardware, a retooled UI, an updated software experience, and the fact that all of that puts it above the iPod classic in terms of features? No, they ding the Zune because the Zune still has DRM on it’s downloaded music. Um, hello? Lemme guess – FairPlay is OK because everyone seems to have accepted the fact that it exists? Or maybe, just maybe, did Apple pay you off in advertising for this one?

I simply can’t believe that you’d ping a product for this when nearly every online download music store has this same “problem”.

If you’re going to complain about something, at least use the right argument.

Office 2007 and Vista? These need to be looked at together because PCWorld has somehow conflicted itself with opinions. When talking about Office 2007, they bitch about the new UI. They never mention that it’s better or worse – just that it’s different. Their argument: “we spent 10 years learning Office – we don’t want to relearn it.” Meanwhile, they are content to tell people to Switch to other OS’s and unlearn whatever they’ve already learned? Um, OK. Why I point this out will be clear in a moment.

With Vista they complain that it’s not different enough, that it’s got some niceties but all of the “cool new stuff” was left on the cutting floor. “After five years, this is the best Microsoft can do?” was a good comment. Sure it was five years. The original plan for Vista was to start on a completely new base of code, a la the change from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X, which would have orphaned all of the XP-based software. Everyone in IT land freaked. So the plan changes: back to beginning, start over and take backwards compatibility to heart, even after all of the time that was invested on the previous effort, because that’s what people told us they wanted.

So, if I understand it correctly, Vista isn’t different enough when compared to XP but Office 2007 is too different when compared to 2003? I mean, that’s what they’re saying. I mean look at Vista, over all. First people bitch that it’s changing too much and now people bitch that it isn’t changing enough. On top of that, PCW feels obligated to point out the $299 upgrade price for Vista and leave out the fact OSX would have cost twice that going from 10.1 to 10.5 over the same period of time. And it’s not that I’m trying to push Vista on people – if you like what you have, work with what you have, be it XP, 2000, Linux, or OSX. My point is that they are disappointed in products because they have their heads up their asses they have the wrong expectations when doing their reviews. Like instant driver support for thousands of devices the day a new OS ships. Or no issues with older software on a completely new OS, which they ding both Vista and Leopard for. They haven’t even bothered to get their facts 100% straight – or at least they’re taking a very skewed view of it, to support a higher agenda. What does all of this mean?

If you’re going to complain about something, at least use the right argument.

t3h lame.