Top 10 product mishaps

Every year we have our share of product mishaps -- and 1998 was no exception.

The rush to market, errors in judgment, broken promises, poor quality control and even disasters in outer space led to this year's biggest flubs.

1. Windows 98

At Spring Comdex in Atlanta, all eyes were on Bill Gates as he demonstrated Windows 98 to an eager global high-tech audience. What did he teach them? It crashes -- just like any other Microsoft OS. At Fall Comdex, Gates talked about fonts. Under pressure from pending DOJ court action pressure, there was no way Microsoft was going to hold back its Windows upgrade. The result, a product that a high percentage of users could not install properly. Even vendors recommended that new buyers not install the upgrade and wait until Microsoft released patches and BIOS fixes.

2. Celeron
When it comes to high-end microprocessors, Intel is the undisputed champ. But the company falls short when it tries to make a cheaper chip to compete for the low-end market -- remember 386-486sx? The original Celeron was no exception. With PC prices plummeting, manufacturers eagerly awaited an all-star chip from an all-star company. And what did they get? A chip that lacked cache -- Level 2, that is -- as well as many high performance features. Consumers were not amused. Intel realized its mistake and upgraded Celeron with more speed and a 128K Level 2 cache, but serious limitations remain.

3. SiNday, Bloody SiNday
How's this for your worst nightmare? You download a demo of a hot new computer game, install it, hit play -- and watch your computer die on the 26th of the month, because you inadvertently installed a virus along with the game. That's what happened to fans of SiN when the game's developer, Activision Inc., posted a demo version of the game that was infected with the CIH virus.

4. Rio player
Sometimes products are so good that they're bad. Diamond's Rio player fit the bill and even had a court order temporarily block its release. Why? The music industry feared that Rio users could download all the high-quality music they desired from the Net, crippling CD sales. After the lawyers were called in, Rio finally made it to market -- and now the music industry is looking at other ways to protect its assets.

5. Windows NT 5.0 -- er, 2000
Unfortunately, the biggest NT 5.0 news in 1998 was that the highly-touted high-end operating system changed its name, but not the face of computing. Hopefully, if and when the product is released on Valentine's Day 1999, it will be worth the wait. It looks like Microsoft was upset, too, as Windows Development Vice President Moshe Dunie took what the company called a sabbatical, but what Microsoft-watchers called the fall for the delays.

6. Network Computers
Remember Oracle's big plan to revolutionize computing? Earlier this year Oracle subsidiary, Network Computer Inc., finally gave up and conceded the desktop to lower-priced PCs. The company decided to concentrate on "Internet appliances." This change may breathe new life into the dumb terminals. Then again, do you remember Oracle's big plan to revolutionize computing?

7. Spam and Internet content filters
In theory, filters sound like a cure-all for Internet excesses. In reality, they are a lightning rod for controversy. Microsoft Outlook drew some free-speech thunderbolts when its spam filter blocked any message with an exclamation point or question mark in the subject line. Content filters also got the Frankenstein treatment in November, when a district court struck down a Virginia county's library policy to require filtering software for the purpose of blocking pornography on all its computers connected to the Internet.

8. Galaxy IV
The United States lost nearly 90 percent of its paging services when one little satellite, the Galaxy IV, went AWOL. It took several days to reroute transmissions and completely restore services. The fiasco served to remind us all just how fragile our communications systems really are.

9. Smart cards
1998 was supposed to be the year that ushered in new forms of cash payment on the Internet. The last time we checked, though, the old standbys -- MasterCard, Visa and Discover -- were still the online currency. In the United States, smart cards were a resounding failure in their Manhattan trial this year after being a no-show at the Atlanta Olympics. The DOJ thinks it knows why. It filed suit against MasterCard and Visa, claiming that they had conspired to delay the development of smart cards. Don't count Microsoft out just yet, though. Microsoft will unveil a new OS for smart cards in 1999.

10. Rechargeable batteries
Can booting up your laptop at 30,000 feet blow you out of the sky? The computer industry doesn't think so. Still, in March the Federal Aviation Administration received a letter from the Portable Rechargeable Battery Association highlighting the potentially explosive dangers of power ports used in 1,700 planes to recharge laptop batteries. Now think about that the next time you boot up mid-flight to play Solitaire.