Tech Turkeys Of 2014

This list might be a bit premature, we still have 6 weeks left in the year.

This year, our Turkeys come in three flavors: Those that truly displayed their gobble-gobble from a purely technical perspective; those that failed to realize revenue or garner significant industry adoption; and, those that failed via administrative incompetence or lack of security oversight.

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Without having read the article yet, MCX's CurrentC had better be on the list.

...(5 minutes later)...

Well, this slideshow should be included in the list because I had to reload the page for every frame. CurrentC was not part of the list, so the list gets an epic fail for that, too.

The most interesting thing on that list to me are Chromebooks. I know some around here like them and they have their advantages, but what have they done in the three years they have been on the market besides mostly being the cheapest thing out there with a keyboard? And now with free Windows licensing in that market that's not necessarily true anymore.

I really dislike click bait articles and slideshows, especially with a large computer monitor. It really sucks when an article is written such that it only shows one or two paragraphs per page.
I am fully capable of reading more than one or two paragraphs of text at a time or viewing more than one picture at a time.
Yes, I am aware of the various reasons why an article would be posted in click bait format, I'm just venting. Thanks.

heatlesssun said:

The most interesting thing on that list to me are Chromebooks. I know some around here like them and they have their advantages, but what have they done in the three years they have been on the market besides mostly being the cheapest thing out there with a keyboard?

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Chromebooks are now the #1 selling device in K-12 education. iPads education marketshare is declining.

BladeVenom said:

Chromebooks are now the #1 selling device in K-12 education. iPads education marketshare is declining.

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And this would almost all be attributed to the price of Chromebooks. They do have the advantage of being easier to maintain than Windows devices but now that ChromOS is beginning to run Android apps that's going to make them more complex to manage.

But Chromebooks now have no real cost advantage over Windows in the low end with free Windows licensing. OEMs seem to have a lot more interest in low end Windows devices than Chromebooks the holiday season, there are a lot of machines like the HP Stream 11 that are coming with a year of Office 365 Personal coming in at $200 and less. Walmart is selling a Windows 8.1 10.1" hybrid for $180. And there's even machines with large local storage and 4GB of RAM hitting $250.

Chromebooks market share is growing fast, while Windows is stagnant.

BladeVenom said:

Chromebooks market share is growing fast, while Windows is stagnant.

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Chromebooks may be growing fast but the numbers they are selling currently it's not that impressive in absolute terms. And whatever success they have had is almost all about the low end pricing, an advantage that's all but gone now.

It'll be interesting to see what the sales look like this holiday season. These low end Windows devices with a year of Office 365 Personal seem to be very popular. The HP Stream 11 is ranking 3rd in Laptops on Amazon, with the two devices ahead of it being the other kind of cheap Windows 8.1 laptop with 500 GB mechanical hard drives and 4GB of RAM. For a long time Chromebook fans have mentioned this Amazon list pointing out some variety of Chromebook as #1. In the current top 20 list, 16 are Windows 8.1 machines, 1 Windows 7, 3 Chromebooks and the MBA 11.

Chromebooks make sense for schools. They are relatively "cheap". They have access to Google Drive/docs. This software works really well - I prefer it over Office.
iPads: cost more, no keyboard (well, extra cost you can get one).