All companies swing and miss from time to time. Apple, which seemingly can do no wrong, had its Pippin and Lisa. Microsoft has had its share of flops, too. Money.co.uk recently took a look at 10 of them.
Some of the choices are obvious, like Windows ME and the Kin. Some are obscure, like ActiMates (a creepy children’s toy). Missing from the list is Windows Vista, which has been the object of much scorn.
What’s number 1 on the list? I’ll give you a hint. He had big bubble-shaped eyeballs, and was integrated into Microsoft Office. Remember Clippy?
For the rest of the list, head on over to the source.
Is there anything missing from the list? Do you see anything on the list that shouldn’t be?
Kosmo @ The Soap Boxers says:
The Zune owner I know absolutely loves it. Unfortunately, he’s the only Zune owner I know.
I have a downgrade CD somewhere that would allow users to revert to an earlier OS (NT 4 to Windows 3.5.1 or something? The details elude me). An officially sanction method to rid a computer of the currently shipping OS is probably indicative of a failure :)
Yeah, Clippy can go [bleep] himself. Darryl from “The Office” was apparently a fan of his, though.
May 31, 2011 — 10:11 pm
Evan Kline says:
My wife has a Zune, and likes it. I like the FM tuner it has. I think revert CD’s are actually pretty common with Windows.
June 1, 2011 — 4:57 pm
Dan says:
Thank goodness Vista isn’t on the list. Anyone who bitches about Vista either haven’t used any Windows prior to XP, or didn’t remember the problems with migrating/upgrading their PCs from a DOS-based one (Win 3.1/95/98/Me) to an WinNT system. Vista is a solid, secure, and capable OS that has had bad press from inexperienced XP users, Linux and Mac fanboys, and MS-haters in general.
Now that I got that off my chest, let’s look at the list. I agree with most of the entries except that I would’ve put Win Me higher. Comic Sans is a bad font but it’s not a flop since it’s still widely used, sadly. Unless “flop” means something the author disliked rather than “a market failure”. I would add the MSN Browser since it was rarely used back in the day and was removed in later Windows versions.
Also, I don’t see any of MS’s online flops in the list. Until Bing, all previous MS online search engines were irrelevant attempts to challenge Google. MSN Live Spaces was shuttered and most of the “millions” of accounts there weren’t really used for blogging. The XPS file format never threatened PDF and Silverlight had little adoption outside of MS websites.
June 1, 2011 — 10:47 am
Evan Kline says:
Some great points, Dan. I agree on Vista, although given how much of a bad rap it got, I was surprised not to see it. I wasn’t a huge fan of it, but I did think it got treated a bit unfairly. I remember seeing a story somewhere, where someone compared complaints with Vista with complaints of XP, at the same point in their lifecycle. They were pretty similar as far as hardware compatibility and other issues.
June 1, 2011 — 5:00 pm
Antonia says:
Clippy was the monster that showed up in my nightmares when i was a kid. I don’t know when they stopped using it, but my life definitely improved from that point on.
June 17, 2011 — 10:46 pm
guest says:
window 10 is crap it is windows 8 again crap
October 23, 2014 — 10:59 pm