Tech's all-time top 25 flops, by InfoWorld
Interesting list. Ipod imitators, vista, 64-bit PCs, Netscape 6, and DRM are all on there.
I don't agree with all of it though, for example, the concept of a paperless environment. At Adobe (and at old school macromedia for that matter), we REALLY do have a paperless environment. I mean of course we have a standard laser printer / fax machine like any other office environ, but the vast majority of our communication is paperless. We use wikis heavily and (of course) pdfs. In college i remember reading about "The Paper Paradox" which basically said that computers and networking are supposed to reduce paper, but because of the ease of printing, paper consumption has actually increased. To that I say that it takes not just the technology needed to go paperless, but also a generation that grew up paperlessly. If students were to turn in their essays via PDF and/or Word docs, they'll grow up doing the same. And besides, look at what craigslist has done to the newspaper industry. But yeah, it's still debatable.
Also, I use vista at work, and it works fairly well if you disable UAC. My computer is freakin' fast though (at the time of this writing). Vista does make HW installation smoother (even though the article says the opposite), and trouble shooting works pretty well too. I used to use google desktop, now i use vista's native searching, which i like a little better since its native. The task bar is a little less buggy. I don't like the new start menu (even though a good friend of mine worked on the usability research for it)... too much clicking. But yeah, i could have lived with XP. I can't wait until like Ubuntu or some other Linux becomes a lot more user friendly (and Adobe AIR could be the answer to this when we release a Linux version by the way).