Your Top 10 Most Annoying Tech Products

Last year, in our list of the Worst Tech Products of All Time, we said Windows Me was the "worst version of Windows ever released." In our survey, you plainly agreed. It was a mess. Shortly after its release a tidal wave of bug reports smashed into Redmond. Installation was difficult, hardware driver support was sketchy, and system crashes were routine. As one PC World columnist said: "If you upgraded to Me from an older version of Windows, you might feel that the term 'Millennium' refers to the length of time it will take to fix the glitches."

The media players themselves are mostly fine, but their incompatible digital rights management (DRM) schemes drive you nuts. Despite Apple's recent decision to sell some DRM-free songs, most iTunes tunes still play only on iPods, a couple of Motorola phones, or a computer with iTunes software on it. (And the DRM-free songs cost 30 cents more.) Microsoft has said it will "soon" sell DRM-free music for the Zune. We'll see.

Security suites are supposed to be like personal bodyguards for your PC, quietly enforcing the rules and keeping you safe without drawing attention to themselves. Not these two. Norton and McAfee are constantly prompting us to check our security settings, update our subscriptions, and/or buy more products. Time was when you didn't have to buy annual subscriptions to antivirus products, and you wouldn't be nagged about it either. A lot of you seem to remember that time.

In 1996 Progressive Networks (now called Real Networks) began offering RealPlayer in a $30 Plus version and a free version, but finding the download link for the free one was like playing "Where's Waldo" on the Real.com site. Once you tracked down and installed the free player, it declared itself your default media player for all file formats and began nagging you to pony up $30 for Plus. Later versions installed themselves into your Windows system tray and popped up pointless (and annoying) "special offers" from Real advertisers. And, of course, Real's notorious attempts to assign unique ID numbers and track consumer media usage--anonymously or otherwise--did nothing to endear itself to us. Pay $30 for this pioneer of pushiness? Get real.

Described as a "helper" application, Bonzi Buddy delivered contextual ads to your PC, basically after collecting information from you. Its passing has not been mourned. As reader Randy J put it to us: "I used to do support for one of the big ISPs. Bonzi Buddy was one to remember. I once used a computer with it on there. It kept popping up and obscuring things you needed to see. I had to uninstall it from many, many people's systems."

Gwendolyn would like to be added as one of your friends. Brittany would like to be added as one of your friends. Latisha would like you to view her free adult video, which incidentally will download spyware to your hard drive. Sure, the biggest Web sites always attract scammers (see eBay), but they don't have to make it easy. MySpace's minimal barriers to entry make it a haven for bogus "friends." Apparently, our community has all the "friends" it needs.

It's one of the unwritten laws of computing: All versions of Windows are annoying. Windows Me takes the cake, but Vista has its own unlovable annoyances, like its overzealous "Cancel or Continue?" confirmation windows so brilliantly lampooned by Apple's "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. But that's only the tip of the Vista annoyance iceberg. Installing Vista onto an older system? There's a good chance that your graphics card, sound card, and some of your older software won't work properly. And even if you have a new system with either the Premium or Ultimate version installed, Vista won't display its nifty 3D Aero interface if your PC lacks the graphics horsepower for it. No warning screens, no error messages, no explanations--Aero simply doesn't work. That's annoying.

Yes, we know, our computers would be even more vulnerable if we didn't use Update to plug Windows' seemingly endless security holes. But using it to distribute Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage tattleware puts Update firmly in the annoyance column (not to mention the way it autorestarts your system after it's done installing). Delivered as a "critical" update last spring, WGA installed itself with minimal notice, secretly phoned home with information about users' systems, and wrongly identified possibly millions of legitimate copies of Windows XP as pirated. No one likes a rat, and clearly that's the sentiment our readers hold toward this otherwise reasonably useful service.

What is it about media players that makes them think they own your PC? Install QuickTime, and it immediately sets up camp in your Windows system tray, drops icons on your desktop, and loads the qttask.exe applet every time you power up--no questions asked. You can kick it out of the tray, but the next time you upgrade or reinstall the program, it sneaks back in. Worse, if you want to use iTunes, you have to take QuickTime along with it. Plenty of programs are looking for a home in your system tray, but most of them ask politely first.