Hatred! Ugliness! Stress!
Artwork: Chip Taylor21. 10 Things We Hate About Apple: Back in the spring, we decided to let off a little steam with two stories--one listing stuff we loved about Apple and its products, and the other listing our gripes. The latter article made the news in a way we never would have predicted.
22. The Ugliest Products in Tech History: Great industrial design has always been hard to find in the tech world. Terrible design, however, has always been plentiful. And hey, we even included an Apple product in our slide-show roundup of notable eyesores.
Artwork: Chip Taylor23. The Most Collectible PCs of All Time: Three decades into the PC revolution, the oldest and rarest computers aren't just curiosities, they're prized collectibles. Check out our slide show to see if you have a $10,000 relic stored away in your basement.
24. 19 Tools to Get the Junk Off Your PC: Applications you don't want. Files you don't need. Almost every PC is bloated with stuff that bogs down performance and fills up the hard drive, so we gathered tools for clearing out all the clutter.
25. 35 Things Every PC User Should Know: This compendium of useful tips on troubleshooting and other topics was the cover story of our March issue, which was a best seller. But the article's popularity has persisted far beyond the dead-tree version.
Artwork: Chip Taylor26. iPhone Stress Tests: On June 29, legions of gadget freaks waited in round-the-block lines to be among the first to get their hands on Apple's phone. We were there too--and we were probably the only buyers who promptly began trying to destroy our new toy. Our torture tests, starring Senior Associate Editor Eric Butterfield, became the most popular video we've ever created.
27. Top 10 External Hard Drives: No, they're not glamorous. But since every PC user needs at least one big USB-connected drive for backups, archiving, and other data-preservation purposes, the PCW Test Center and storage guru Melissa J. Perenson try out many of them over the course of the year.
Artwork: Chip Taylor28. Vista vs. Leopard--Battle of the New Features: When Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system finally appeared in October, we compared and contrasted it with Windows Vista in this slide show.
29. Top 10 Inkjet Printers: Today's printers are one part printing press, one part photo processing station. Our lab-tested reviews are perennial favorites.
30. 14 Great Programs You Didn't Even Know You Needed: Here's yet another practical guide to practical software that found a big audience in 2007.
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