Question Weekend Question: What hardware do you regret buying?

[PCG Jody]

I ask the PCG staff a regular Weekend Question and post the answers on the site. If you'd like to throw in an answer here, I'll squeeze the best into the finished article!

This week's question is: What hardware do you regret buying?

What did you buy immediately before it went on sale? What broke as soon as the warranty ran out, or just never quite did what you wanted? What did you buy before moving and then realize you didn't have space for in the new place?

Don't limit yourself to computer hardware if you ever splurged on a gadget like Google Glass, or a Zune, or a Juicero, and then regretted it.

 

[badman]

In september I bought my used Oculus Rift S, for about 250 pounds. At that time it looked like a good deal, but 2 months after that...the Oculus Quest 2 was there and things suddenly went dark in my head I must say: I didn't know about the Quest 2, and even then: I probably would have thought prices would have been much higher. Wasn't the best decision.

 

[Zloth]

Microsoft's Sidewinder Strategic Commander controller. A control for the left hand that's shaped a bit like a giant mouse but functionally more of a joystick with a bunch of buttons. When somebody says "a solution looking for a problem" - that's what I think of.

 

[Johnway]

At the time? The Tiny branded PC for university that i got my dad to buy for me in 2004. UK readers will probably remember, Tiny had a reputation for cack PCs. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and when i got it, the pc would crash within 15 minutes of playing any games. about 30 min if i turned bios setting to x4 AGP.

I was too ashamed to tell my Dad and kept it. I spent over £500 of my own money trying to troubleshoot the issue as to what was causing it. By the time i solved the issue (it was the graphics card) i had practically built a new PC; new antec PSU instead of the one weighed less then a bag of crisps, doubled the memory and put in a new graphics card before the issue was fixed.

In some ways it was a great learning experience and through necessity gave me the courage/motivation to crack open a pc and teach myself the foundations of building a PC. It's probably what gave me the confidence to build my own PC from scratch several years later.

 

[mainer]

It was a Corsair mouse, MS65 Pro RGB gaming mouse. The scroll wheel broke after 2 weeks. Plus, I thought it was way too light, I like a much heaver mouse. I went back to my Rat7, and have since upgraded to a Rat 8. If you search online you find multiple complaints about this the MS65 and the scroll wheel breaking. The only Corsair product I bought that I didn't like.