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The Twelve Most Tarnished Brands in Tech

18 points by technologizer 17y ago

WalterGR 17y ago
AltaVista was great (or at least sufficient) until they disabled searching for phrases, which made them useless. It was at that point I switched to Google. Though AltaVista lost in a big way to Google, is it fair to say they are one of the 12 most tarnished brands?
- michael_dorfman 17y ago
  I agree; many of the brands listed are not "tarnished" so much as "diminished".
cubicle67 17y ago
It's actually a better article than I was expecting May I also add Borland, who at one time built some of the best programmer software ever. Turbo Pascal was brilliant, and Delphi was so far ahead of anything else in it's day I could cry. [cuts long rant short...] There should be a special spot reserved in Hell for Borland management, right next to the management of Commodore. Finally, lets not forget that once great electronics company Hewlett Packard, makers of the finest (and most expensive) electronics test gear bar none. A true engineering company with world class products that has now become yet-another-printer-manufacturer and maker of crappy budget PCs
- wglb 17y ago
  They actually didn't build much of their stuff, for example, Turbo Pascal was built by a contractor, and they tried to build Turbo C for quite a while before they bought that as well. What they did have was glow-in-the-dark PR and Marketing. Didn't HP spin off the electronics test gear?
  - jbl 17y ago
    Yep. The test gear subsidiary (spin off?) is called Agilent. It's probably the last remaining vestige of the HP of yore.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I wouldn't call HP so much a printer manufacturer as a manufacturer of subscriptions to disposables.
NikkiA 17y ago
I'm surprised by the lack of mention of X10 in there. Their 'pioneering' use of popups must still cause their name to instil bad thoughts in anyone that grew through the web's early years :)
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I've been in a position several times now where I could have used one of their products with little to no alternatives even close in price and every time I thought 'over my dead body'. Never ever in a 1000 years will I buy something from X10. They're not quite in line with SCO in my book but they're up there. (nothing really gets close to SCO, I'm surprised they're not the #1 slot in this list). Microsoft and Radio Shack definitely deserve to be on the list too.
johnohara 17y ago
Back in the day, I was working on my master's using Oregon Pascal on a Vax 11/780 (cost: ~$20,000). I purchased Turbo Pascal for $49.00 out of curiosity -- not expecting much. The whole thing came in a standard white box. The disks (I think 2 5 1/4" floppies) were sandwiched inside the manual which was as thick as the shipping box. A couple of promotional pieces and my receipt. That was it. Happiness -- because it worked just as well. I remember thinking "How can this be?" Little did I know that it was time to get off the beach and seek higher ground.

18 points by technologizer 17y ago

AltaVista was great (or at least sufficient) until they disabled searching for phrases, which made them useless. It was at that point I switched to Google. Though AltaVista lost in a big way to Google, is it fair to say they are one of the 12 most tarnished brands?

michael_dorfman 17y ago
I agree; many of the brands listed are not "tarnished" so much as "diminished".

cubicle67 17y ago

It's actually a better article than I was expecting May I also add Borland, who at one time built some of the best programmer software ever. Turbo Pascal was brilliant, and Delphi was so far ahead of anything else in it's day I could cry. [cuts long rant short...] There should be a special spot reserved in Hell for Borland management, right next to the management of Commodore. Finally, lets not forget that once great electronics company Hewlett Packard, makers of the finest (and most expensive) electronics test gear bar none. A true engineering company with world class products that has now become yet-another-printer-manufacturer and maker of crappy budget PCs

wglb 17y ago
They actually didn't build much of their stuff, for example, Turbo Pascal was built by a contractor, and they tried to build Turbo C for quite a while before they bought that as well. What they did have was glow-in-the-dark PR and Marketing. Didn't HP spin off the electronics test gear?
- jbl 17y ago
  Yep. The test gear subsidiary (spin off?) is called Agilent. It's probably the last remaining vestige of the HP of yore.
jacquesm 17y ago
I wouldn't call HP so much a printer manufacturer as a manufacturer of subscriptions to disposables.

NikkiA 17y ago

I'm surprised by the lack of mention of X10 in there. Their 'pioneering' use of popups must still cause their name to instil bad thoughts in anyone that grew through the web's early years :)

jacquesm 17y ago
I've been in a position several times now where I could have used one of their products with little to no alternatives even close in price and every time I thought 'over my dead body'. Never ever in a 1000 years will I buy something from X10. They're not quite in line with SCO in my book but they're up there. (nothing really gets close to SCO, I'm surprised they're not the #1 slot in this list). Microsoft and Radio Shack definitely deserve to be on the list too.

johnohara 17y ago

Back in the day, I was working on my master's using Oregon Pascal on a Vax 11/780 (cost: ~$20,000). I purchased Turbo Pascal for $49.00 out of curiosity -- not expecting much. The whole thing came in a standard white box. The disks (I think 2 5 1/4" floppies) were sandwiched inside the manual which was as thick as the shipping box. A couple of promotional pieces and my receipt. That was it. Happiness -- because it worked just as well. I remember thinking "How can this be?" Little did I know that it was time to get off the beach and seek higher ground.