All my bests are incremental: My first Palm I went back to school with, took notes, wrote my papers on, and each one I replaced it with (I have an Tungsten E2) was better than the last, though I don't try to write much on it now that I have a couple of tablets. My Samsung Q1, though it has driving me batty when it didn't work as it should have, but is tearing it up for me now (with Vista, thanks to Sharon sbtablet). What wonderful technology! I still have my first typewriter, $25 from the used furniture store near the college. Tablets rock! No banging keys, no bell ringing at the end of every line, no fitting my thoughts to the size of the page to avoid retyping. And when I don't want to, no typing at all!

All my worsts are the series of computers with lousy screens and/or horrible keyboards in the '80s and '90s, or else devices that I didn't need, like a hand held photocopier that printed on thermal paper, a portable printer I didn't port, or things I paid too much for, like what I'm typing this on, a Toshiba M400 that I outfitted with two gigs, three extra batteries, a case, extra adapters, the 7200 speed hard disk, etc, to the tune of $3,750, that prevents me from upgrading to a better, faster, clearer, dual screen replacement for half the cost, or a smaller, lighter, cooler device, like the OQO that's blinking an ad at me next to this reply box.

Best: TC1100 (:
Worst: Donut making machine ):

Best purchases.. a iPAQ hx4700 pda (still running now with wm6), a samsung m610 (tethered for internet access), and the Fujitsu T2010 tablet I'm using now (love it).

Worst purchase - the Treo 700wx. Too heavy, and the mic picked up all the background noise so well it masked my voice.

Although, with that OQO ad on the side I'm kinda wondering if my decision to get the T2010 over the OQO was a good idea.

I had to think a bit. Best? Probably my first laptop, a 1998 Dell Inspiron 3200 which still works to this day. It was a hard working machine, built tough, small and lite for its day and I used it daily on multiple continents until its retirement in 2004. Tie that with my trusty Sony Cybershot 505 which was as far advanced a digital camera you could have got back in April 2000 and is still useful today.

Worst? Easy. Treo 700wx. Absolute junk of a phone. Freezes, drops calls, heavy, and does not reliably sync with my computer. I don't blame Palm for that. I blame MS. And I should have got a Blackberry, I think.

Currently rocking an X61t so let's see how it goes. So far, I'm impressed.

I think for myself it was the Palm M505 handheld which was the second color screen palm handheld at the time, the first was the Palm IIIc (Which I also bought). It had a horrible screen which was very dim and the color on it was not very nice. The screen got brighter and a little better with the M515 replacement which came out I think a few months after the M505 release. That was the last Palm I got, until a Palm Treo 700p which I got rid of 2 years ago.

my best purchase so far to date is my lenovo x61t. inking makes note taking 5 times better and 10 times more organized.

my worse purchase: Sony Mylo.
I thought it would be more like Sony's PSP and actually be open to modifications to the operating system. thought makes a decent skype phone. and have been unsuccessful on selling it.

My best purchase: the refurbed TC1000 that changed the way I work forever. Close second would be my Motorola V80 mobile phone, just because (as a three year old handset) it wowed an iPhone owner.

My worst is probably the Sahara i440D, it's never worked right from day one, RMAing it from the UK is a pain, the screen isn't much good outside and I hate most of the accessories that I bought with it. Second here would be my Nokia N95. Who wants to see the texts author as last name, first name??? And not hang up on slide cose. Incredibly shoddy.

I dont think I have ever purchased a piece of technology I have been unhappy with, I have however purcahsed alot that have been of lust/no use to me. Such as the Kohjinsha SH8, Q1, 2710p to name but a few.

I dont consider them bad purchases, the money lost from resale has never been too bad and I have enjoyed the experience of testing the technology to see if it suits my lifestyle. It is however unfortunate that despite my attempts at mobile technology I just seem to keep using a desktop or notebook way to much to justify the use of anything in between.

I do however praise the Mpx200, my first WinMo device, have been on the platform ever since - who knows maybe the Shift Version2 with phone dialling would will give me my nirvana.

There's been a lot, but here's a few I can think of;

Best - HTC Advantage, Cassieopeia E115, Portege M700, Ipod Touch 16Gb

Worst - HTC Kaiser (Potentially great but crippled through lack of screen drivers), HTC Shift (OK, I admit it! Swapping it for a used P1610). And finally from the depths of history, a 486 PC with an IBM 'Blue Lightning' 75MHz chip that wasn't compatible with my £300 soundcard and CD Rom setup.

Best would be my Fujitsu T4010. My first tablet, and it hooked me forever.

Worst would be my (former) HTC Advantage. Given that one of my preferred uses for the Advantage was as an Ebook reader, it was just too heavy. I sold it and stayed with my Loox for Ebooks and my HTC Touch as a phone.When I need a bigger screen for my data, I tether my phone to the T4010.

I know someone else posted the Advantage as their best, and I think that's a great example of how there are some objective best/worsts, and then there are some highly subjective ones. One person's boat anchor is another person's mobile dream.

Best: TREO 650 because it taught me hiw to organize my life better. Software availability is ourstanding ie: Passwords, Diet and Exercise and GPS.

Worst TREO 750: Thought it woul outperform my TREO 650 but I have gone back to the 650. Software availability is poor. Harder to use. I bought a Pearl for my wife and it is so much easier to use.

Thanks

Chris

Best - TiVo
Worst - Ink Jet Printers (any of them). Horrible, messy, unreliable.

Best=HP 4700 Movies, mp3, PDA it was great. It replaced a stupid Sony Clie which was a gift so it doesn't count as 'worst'. I replaced the 4700 with a TyTN and then that was replaced with a TyTN II. Tablets are incredible in general. My CX210x is heavy but plenty capable.

Worst=Sony Minidisc player right before iPods and mp3 players took off. It was only cool until I saw something infinitely cooler.

Tough poll;

Best by far is TiVo with honorable mention to my Chumby!

Worst: :: 9 out of 10 BT headset's purchased for my Sammy I760 Mobile phone including, BlueAnt Z9 & Jawbone. They all stink. I have settled upon the Moto H12 however.

Best: X61T

Worst: Belkin KVM switch so I could use my big monitor and IBM full-sized keyboard (with trackpad) on both the X61T and the PC. The KVM software screwed up everything and it took me days to get it fixed.

Best: Sony Clie SJ-20 black & white PDA. Became a second brain--a repository of information, in lieu of all those post-it notes and clippings. Started a succession of tech purchases, none of which had the same impact.

Worst: Creative Labs CB2455 Bluetooth Headset - not usable. Nothing to salvage except for the foam earbud cover.

Best: NEC VersaPro VY11F/GL-Y Tablet PC, that I managed to finagle from Japan. Under 2lbs and 11mm thick is what a slate was meant to be. And it has THREE USB ports! I just love using it to ink or sketch. To be honest it's too slow, and the disk is too limited of capacity, but I don't care because it is so delightful to hold it in my hands.

Worst: I had to think about this, too. It would have to be the Apple III that (my aunt) bought when I was in high school. I inherited it because it was completely unreliable for her business needs. There was a good way to get it limping along again, though: Lift the right side about 3" off the desk and let 'er drop. That tended to re-seat the chips on the board and it would start working.

Best: DirectTV Tivo - wouldn't have thought of it till someone else mentioned their Tivo. Hon. Mention to my Canon SD1000 camera which may not be the greatest with the mostests but it just takes good pix and is always around since its so small.

Worst: HP TX1410US Notebook/convertible. Others were worse but were far less money. I am so disappointed with this this little machine. Why was it such a top seller?

Best: IBM TransNote. My first note taking tablet PC wannabe. Led to a Motion 1200, and my current x60T. (Stil have the TransNote)

Worst: So many choices. Probably Palm LifeDrive. Was hoping it could be my UMPC-like travel machine, before there were UMPCs. Ah, no. Not even close. (Now using the HTC Advantage, which I love) (Also still have the LD, although why? I have no idea)

Best: Toshiba M7 tablet
Large 14" screen, active digitizer

Worst: Sony UX180
Touch screen that you can't really write on, battery went bad after 1 year, $300+ to replace.
Bad keyboard

Next to worst: Dell Axim
Unit worked OK, but battery life stunk. No keyboard

Worst and best both: Franklin E-Bookman, circa 2000. Worst, because it had a dim and ugly grey scale display, a proprietary ebook format, and didn't follow through on the promise of allowing storage and use of other more univerally available file formats, such as mp3, txt or pdf. Best, because in doing internet research on how to make it more useful, I somehow stumbled upon the now defunct Pocket PC Passion, promptly returned the E-Bookman, bought a Cassiopia E-125 (the real best) - and never looked back!

The E-125 changed my life, and led to a series of other great Pocket PCs, most recently and notably the Toshiba e800 and now the HTC Advantage. It and my involvement in the Pocket PC online community also led directly to my love affair with Tablet PCs, from the moment they were first being announced as coming, and to my other best purchase, right at launch - the Motion M1200. I still have that (my son's using it now) but have to include my Toshiba M200 and now the M700 (touch and digitizer) among the bests too.

I have to include an "honorable mention" for my poor, currently unused Sony U70 as among the worst however. It's a nice little machine, but in comparison to the active digitizer of my full-size Tablets, its passive touch screen just isn't satisfactory for inking, so for me it was an expensive lesson: I learned that I don't need a UMPC or a MID; my Pocket PC, now the Advantage, serves perfectly as my take everywhere constant companion, and my Tablet, now the M700, serves perfectly for everything else.

Worst: HP4700 PDA. Most unreliable unit I've ever had (I've owned PDAs since the first Palm Pilot), repaired 3 times and still never could depend on it. It now lives in a drawer never to be used again.

Best: Fujitsu T4020. Three years old and still never a blue screen crash or otherwise (until last week with the latest Adobe Lightroom 2 Beta).

Honorable mention: Nikon D70 & D300 DSLR cameras. Hard to take a bad image with these.

Best progenitor type purchases were my first handheld which was a Psion Organizer II XP and my first notebook which was an ALR Ranger. These allowed me to envision ubiquitous computing ....which lead me through dozens of handhelds and notebooks right up to my current best purchase which is an M1400VA.


The worst has been a gift Kindle. With me being a person who lives in the "long tail" of almost all products including books, with no technical periodicals availability on Kindle, and with me living 100 miles to the nearest Sprint wireless, I find the Kindle to be virtually useless.

Best: HD-Tivo. I cannot watch regular TV anymore. Honorable mention to my Samsung Q1p that introduced me to Tablet functions, and I haven't looked back.

Worst: In 1999 I signed up for the "Free PC" that came with free dial-up internet as well. It was subsidized by advertisements and some of the first generation spyware that tracked your every move. Although I didn't "pay" anything it's easily the worst piece of technology I have ever used. It was sooooo slow, and so poorly built that I gave it up after a couple of weeks.

I wonder what kind of performance difference a SSD would make in that NEC VersaPro?

Best & Worst (both): Velocity Micro CineMagix S85 media center PC with dual digital cable card tuners.

This PC was purchased primarily as a media center PC for hosting a distributed PVR system throughout the house via 3 XBox 360 media center extenders. It is now my best technology purchase as I thoroughly enjoy the distributed media center experience with the killer app: "TV". Imagine that!

It was the worst technology purchase during the first 6-8 months of ownership due to the numerous bugs relating to the digital cable card tuners that were infuriating while just trying to watch your favorite TV show. After 6-8 months, and numerous Windows Vista updates (relating to the media center software) and new firmware for the digital cable card tuners, the system finally worked.

Let me start with "worst":
- A PCMCIA TV tuner for my laptop - actually tried it once and then never used it - just one of those impulse buys you do not need.
- A 20GB HD MP3 player I bought a few years ago. Another one of those "don't really need it" gadgets. Why? Well, for walking / running use I have a small, cheap MP3 player that takes SD cards. For this the HD player is way to bulky and heavy and I really didn't ever use it after the first weeks (I am commuting by car, it might have been different if I commuted by train/bus).

Let me go to "bad but somewhat usefull":
- My 14.1" convertible tablet bought 3 years ago. It is a good notebook and I have been using it whenever I needed a notebook. However, for inking in slate mode it is simply to heavy. So it basically is just an overprized notebook, even though it was one of the cheapest tablets available (no, I didn't sacrifice quality for price, ACER just wanted to get a footprint in the market and promote tablets). I basically almost exclusively used the digizer as a mouse replacement (which worked very well).

And now to "best":
The best choice I ever made was in spring 2001 when I bought a Dell Inspiron 8000 as a portable desktop replacement. It cost me an arm and a leg, as at that point of time it was the top model in Dell's lineup. But it was exactly what I wanted and needed and I used it for roundabout 6 years. I still would be able to use it for most of my daily tasks, it still is fast enough for that, however last year I bought a full desktop again and the Dell is stashed away. Maybe I'll auction it off on ebay soon, however this will probably hurt as I know that I won't get nearly the money I believe it still would be worth.