Junk technology

Everyone has a few stories about junk that they buy that suddenly fails on them, and this week – I have 2 new stories about the companies/things that pissed me off.

On the one hand there’s U.S. Robotics’ impressive looking wireless router that has caused me no end of annoyance. I’ve had it for around two years and at least once a week I’d have to restart it to get it to connect to the internet again. That got worse and worse recently until today, when I unplugged it and then plugged it back in, it just decided not to come on again.

This router is probably barely even 3 years old and it’s now just a funky looking piece of junk.

And on the other hand there’s VTech’s amazingly crappy portable phone. It’s 2.4 GHz of uselessness. Why you ask? Because since I bought it a few months ago I can barely leave it off the recharger. At first I could leave it off for 5 or 6 hours and still get some use out of it, over the holidays I was down to maybe 2-3 hours, and today, less than 6 months after buying it, I’m down to maybe an hour before I have to recharge it. What a joke.

Okay, I’m done ranting now. I just wanted to offer some kind of warning after this irritating experience. My vote now that I’ve had some experience with these products – stick to a reliable Linksys or D-Link router, and for cordless phones try Panasonic, Motorola, or maybe Sanyo.

That, or save your cash and don’t spend it unless you’re sure you’re buying something worthwhile. Better yet, don’t buy stuff unless you absolutely need it since you’re just adding to the piles and piles of electronic garbage.