The 100 Best Tech Products of 2006

prostoalex writes "You've read about the 25 worst tech products, now it's time to check out a list of the 100 best tech products of 2006 from the same publication. PC World named Intel Core Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core, Craigslist.org, Apple iPod Nano and Seagate 160GB Portable Hard Drive the best tech products of this year."

New layout

[AchiIIe]

I just reloaded and lo and behold the new css is up. Are you not going to publish a story on this, taco? Anyways this looks great, keep up the good^W work.

Sad for MS

[grub]

They have two products listed: a keyboard (#54) and the Xbox 360 (#89). Odd for a company that focuses mainly on software. Apple has a decent showing, even Ubuntu Linux shows up at #27.

Dual Core Processors

[bwave]

Can't believe they feel Intel Dual Core 2 Duo X2 Dual-Processor CPU2 better than the Athlon 64 X2?

Re:New layout?

[pjbgravely]

I wish I knew, this is too bright, and my monitor is already turned so dark I can barely view pictures. I guess slashdot is no longer a site for headache sufferers unless there is a workaround.

And on top of it all it's another dupe.

Re:New layout?

[Osty]

Am I just hallucinating, or did slashdot just switch over to that new CSS layout like they were threatening to last week?

(Yeah, yeah, this is off-topic)

Looks like you're not hallucinating. However, it also looks like they didn't really bother testing it, either.

• Loading pages spikes my IE7 process to 100% CPU for a minute or so, even on short pages like this one.
• The subject and comment box I'm typing in right now extend too far to the right (or more precisely, they're not lining up on the left correctly, pushing the boxes out to the right).
• A number of the collapsible arrows on the main page to hide sections and such simply don't work
• Speaking of the left-hand section headers, don't click on them. If you do, you'll waste a couple minutes while Slashdot AJAXly tries to load configuration information.
• The "Meta Moderated" link in the "Have you Meta Moderated recently?" block is unreadable (dark green on dark gray)
• Bulleted lists in comments don't display correctly, at least in the preview. For those that can't tell, this indented section here is supposed to be a bulleted list. (This one is also broken in FF)

Interestingly enough, most of the above issues are fine in Firefox. While I realize Slashdot is Firefox-friendly and anti-Microsoft, I wouldn't be surprised if 50%+ of their traffic is still on Internet Explorer. I don't have IE6 installed on this machine so I can't veriify that the site works correctly there, but it's horribly broken with IE7. Way to go, guys.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[geminidomino]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

Took me a few minutes to put my finger on it, but I finally figured out why I hate it:

Too much negative space. (Read: blinding fscking WHITE). Sure, it's cleaner, with all that space, but now its little bits of black on white. Too hard on the eyes.

How about a green-on-black CSS option, CmdrTaco?

Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[Bushido Hacks]

I believe that this list is BIAS. This list is not rated on raiting but by who gave PCWorld the most money. Since I, Bushido Hacks, is a broke college student here is a top 10 list.

1. YouTube.com - Who the hell put in in 9th place?
2. Google Earth - Google Maps: good. Google Earth: f***ing awesome!
3. eBay - Great spot to browse for technology products. Though the virtual mall is great, it is a good idea to browse the real mall to compare prices and features first.
4. Sony Viao Notebooks smaller than 12 inches - Any notebook with a screen larger than 15 inches is NOT a notebook. It is a freaking TV. Computers are suppost to be small as well as fast.
5. Any MP3 player not by Apple or Dell - As much as technological convergence is a convience, I prefere to buy things for what they were used for. An MP3 player is for playing MUSIC, not videos, not "podcasts", not these overated technology that turns everything into TV or as I call it "The Virus". Televison is stupid!
6. Texas Instruments graphing calculators with the USB port - FINALLY, TI gets with the program.
7. Sony PSP - Who cares what the critics say! This would be the greatest gaming platform since the Sega Game Gear if only Sony didn't keep trying to kill itself like a 15 year-old emo kid. Why does Sony keep trying to kill itself? By the time the PS3 gets here, Nintendo and XBox will be on to the next thing. Why does Sony keep procrastinating? The people who create the Sony products want what they are making as badly as their consumers, but their Marketing (marketing, the sworn enemy of any computer sciencist!) keeps pushing it back saying things like "people are going to hack into it" or "DRM". These Japanese guys need to grow a little backbone and stop letting these salarymen with hidden agendas kill their company.
8. Yahoo! Answers - I must get up to 20 answers sometimes with the questions I ask. Some times I ask questions to test peoples knowledge or to express their opinions about things.
9. Holograms - yet another suppressed technology. You know what would be a great application for these things: automobile decals. You've seen these cars with the hydrolics at car shows with teh airbrush. Why not airbrush a hologram onto a car. One of those 3D projected holograms with a half-naked valkyre warrior woman with a battle axe or sword riding horse with wings that breaths fire! Something worthy of Heavy Metal magazine and Popular Science! 10. The new Slashdot layout - Do I really need to explain why?

Re:Slashdot CSS

[glavenoid]

No doubt!

Slashdot totally needs some sort of meta-discussion category. And here, on-site, not that silly sf.net bug tracking thing that's used for *slash* right now. Slashdot used to be so cool, but now, although the 3-day old "news" aggregation is still *sort-of* neat, it could so easily be so much better...

A few ideas...

1. Perhaps have a user-submitted section where people could vote on interesting links/headlines (freely submitted by users, a-la k5...) instead of waiting days for "news" to go stale. It could even work in a similar manner as the comment moderation system. Not too difficult to implement, no?
2. Slashback is great - I'm happy to see it's return! I think many other readers are also. Maybe give us more say, though, rather than just commentating... More interactive Slashback - Fuck yea!
3. More revelant polls that actually count for something here ie - Sections. BSD seems to be missing from the list, whereas linux, politics and IT are relatively new (what 3/2 years, maybe 2). How about meta-polls for logged-in users that help govern the direction of Slashdot? I'd like to see a music section. Nerds like music too! Or even entertainment/media. Put the vote to the users. Have a new section for digital media, see what happens... Not even sharing links to "pirated files". Just a place to have a diversion here from the "mentos and coke" articles?!
4. Post clarification - that is - editing. Not post deletion, merely adding onto a previous post to clarify a point, or even to publicly retract a drunken post... Even with a prominent "EDIT:" tag on the edited portion, this could save some bandwith. Which leads to the next.
5. A new posting system. This goes beyond all the other gripes that I have. For instance, have a larger input pane for posting. It's not necessary for people to post long messages, just clear messages. 11 lines is NOT enough. The ability to read the entire thread *so far* while posting would be nice also. Maybe even move the "submit" button to the bottom of the page like the moderation system, encouraging people to actually preview their responces first...

   That's just the beginning of *my* gripes. I know that this isn't the proper place, but this is the best I could do, because there isn't a proper place...

Maybe they should consider a calendar next year?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... lots of the products were'nt this year or even close. Google search? Come on that's not even the right millenium let alone year.

Re:Well, let's face it...

[dimension6]

I never mentioned any personal participation or lack of participation in the general public. I merely provided a couple (admittedly unencompassing) points to explain the parent's situation. Capitalism is built around the very fact that altruism is not commonplace (read The Modern Firm by John Roberts for insight as to why markets and companies exist or read this economic analysis of altruism [surrey.ac.uk]). And, I think it's fairly safe to say that most individuals who sell items on Craigslist are not salespeople by trade (if you can provide some evidence proving otherwise, I will retract that statement). Incedentally, I am a licensed salesperson (real estate), although my license is inactive and that is not my profession.

I've used both eBay and Craigslist extensively (eBay more), both buying and selling (about 50%/50%). Because both those sites reach such a large audience, the range of users is really too great to summarize in any detail. The user groups get more homogenous when dealing in specific items, but even then there is a wide variety. One point I'd like to make is that in at least 600 transactions, I have not seen any bona fide altruism. I have never had any buyer pay more than was necessary and have never had a seller send me an item that was vastly better than what was shown in the auction (although every now and then they'll include something small that wasn't mentioned). If sellers included something small extra, it was often a way to vye for repeat business (and hence, they were probably more experienced salespeople). People do things for a reason (even the Dadaists [wikipedia.org] ran into trouble there).

In judging on the amount of time it takes to list an item on eBay as compared to Craigslist, it's clear that Craigslist takes far less time to list an item on. It's also free to list most items/services. Because they have very little to lose, it's easy for anyone to throw a five-word ad up on Craigslist. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that because they have so little to lose, people will try to "reach" for the best deal they can. Craigslist does fill a need, though, for those of us who don't read newspapers at all....