Top ten terrible tech products

By Nate Lanxon on 20 November 2007, 3:50pm

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Gizmondo
Looking like a black version of Shrek's head is not a good start for a device. The Gizmondo handheld games console generated some excitement to begin with when it was released in early 2005; it had a capable set of specifications, text-messaging capability, a digital camera and GPS functions.

The death blow for a gaming device is rubbish games. And with such titles as Colors, Milo and the Rainbow Nasties and the seriously enticing Momma Can I Mow the Lawn?, it could be argued the Gizmondo never had a chance.

You could, however, knock £100 off the £229 price of the device by letting it show you adverts -- Smart Ads, they were called. Deciding whether it was worth £100 to avoid this annoyance was the most fun you could have with it.

A year down the line, the Gizmondo's manufacturer Tiger Telematics went bankrupt, having burned through a preposterous £160m in 18 months, helped in part by Gizmondo director Stefan Eriksson -- of crashing his Ferrari fame -- being paid in excess of £1m a year. The company spent vast wodges of cash on expensive cars, executive perks and various other pieces of creative accounting. No more games were developed, the Smart Ads stopped functioning and the system now rests as a sad monument to what can happen when hype has no basis in reality.