Posted 10/16/09 at 10:00:00 AM by The Maximum PC Staff

So much in life is unknowable. Will the economy rebound? Hard to say. Will oil prices skyrocket? Maybe, maybe not. Will Brangelina add to their brood? Frankly, we don’t care. But one thing’s for sure: Technology is ever-changing and each year guarantees new advances for the PC user.

As we do every year around this time, we got on the horn with our industry contacts—experts in their respective fields—and pressed them for details about what new and exciting hardware power users can look forward to in 2010. Some of what we learned was expected (SATA speeds will double), some came from out of left field (six 30-inch panels on a single videocard?!), and some just plain make sense (like a Nehalem chip for the masses).

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Posted 07/17/09 at 09:45:25 AM by Paul Lilly

For every Core i7, GTX 295, and other technological marvels, there's a piece of hardware sitting on the other end of the technological spectrum that, for one reason or another, just didn't make it. Maybe the design was flawed, or in the case of HD-DVD, it simply lost the marketing battle to a competing format.

Whatever the reasons might be, CNet has composed a list of what it believes are the 25 biggest tech flops of the past decade. Ranking No. 1 on the list is the Sega Dreamcast console simply because after staying on the market for just three years after it was originally released in 1998, "it didn't make it."

Other items on the list include DVD Audio, Sirius satellite radio, the two-wheeled, self-balancing electric vehicle known as the Segway, UMDs, and more than a few handheld devices.

Spy the full list here, then hit the jump and tell us what you think are the biggest tech flops of the past decade.

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Posted 05/15/09 at 09:48:18 AM by Paul Lilly

There's still more than seven months left in 2009 for any last minute tech flops, but barring any amendments, Time has posted its list of what it views as the 10 biggest tech failures of the last decade. Compiled in no particular order, Time kicks off the list with Microsoft Vista, pointing out the OS's "underwhelming" user satisfaction and rocky start.

Gateway comes next for its fall from being the No. 3 PC maker (in terms of market share) in the US in 2004, to being acquired by Acer in 2007 for just $710 million.

HD-DVD makes its requisite appearance on the list (we're still bitter over that one), and somewhat surprisingly, YouTube makes an appearance as well based in large part on low estimated revenues.

View the full list here, then hit the jump and tell us what you'd change.

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Posted 07/09/08 at 08:25:30 AM by Chris Moody

It turns out that off-shoring tech support and customer service might not be such a great deal for companies after all. A paper titled, “Does Offshoring Impact Customer Satisfaction?” posted on ssrn.com for feedback, touches on the subject. There is plenty of evidence that off-shoring saves companies money on their bottom dollar, but what hasn’t been looked at until now is how it affects customer satisfaction and loyalty. What is surprising is not that the papers over all conclusions that in customer service off-shoring is bad but that back office functions like tech support can be a good thing for customer perception. I find that hard to believe from a tech’s aspect. 

If you’re the tech Guru for your circle of friends and family you know that they all cringe at the thought of calling tech support. They will relate horror stories of speaking to someone claiming to be named “Bob”, who is reading text from a computer screen in a hard to understand, thick accent. This is why they call you with their technical woes. The paper however suggests that this alone isn’t what causes customer dissatisfaction, but rather the perceived lack of expertise.

 Make the jump to hear more about off-shoring and the invasion of the computer puppets!

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Posted 03/11/08 at 01:35:27 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

it's time to put your PC schooling to the ultimate test. Hope you studied!

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