Early Adopters Who Got Screwed:

What new technology did you become invested in (financially or emotionally) that you truly believed in that entirely flopped or is no longer even remembered.

For me there were two:

The Apple Newton.

MiniDisc

(I was absolutely positive that these two gadgets would catch on. I particularly blew a wad on MiniDisc. But I have an unopened Newton that for all I know maybe worth some money--or more likely, worth nothing!)

Under the "It Remains to be Seen" category are these two:

Portable XM radio
Portable Sirius radio

On Edit:

My father believed that Beta Max would overcome VHS.

And his entertainment analyst was hot on Laserdisc.

Another one I blew it on (although I was a teenager at the time) was the KeyPro portable computer. My father urged me to get a Microsoft computer rather than either a Keypro or a MacCintosh. Turns out he was right about the KeyPro.

I also have several of the memory cards, cases, rechargers, spare batteries.

I still think the Newton is wonderful and I still use one of them for storing passwords, account numbers and crucial info. The only thing I don't trust it for is handwriting recognition. :-)

about a day before they went out of style.

My father's old car used to have an 8 track tape player.

I wonder if collectors seek after 8 Track equipment. It was pretty popular (but not huge) when I was in grammar school. My best friend had one at the time and I thought it was super-cool.

only played 4-track tape cartridges...I think I was able to find three or four
4-track tapes. In irony of all irony...someone stole it...without the tapes. :crazy:



Tikki

They were so great. Until suddenly CD burners became affordable. D'oh.

just getting online that I really didn't figure it out until I bought a computer that sort of automatically unzipped documents.

Somethings are still zipped, aren't they?

back when CD burners were a couple hundred bucks and CD's to burn on were pretty expensive, too.,

In about 1998 we got a Zip Drive so we could Zip all of our downloaded music. HA! Thankfully we were able to get the disks from work for free, but God....how many it took!

About a year later CD burners went down in price as did the price of CD"s. We paid $100 for our zip drive and it's basically obsolete, now. aah. I thought that was gonna be the wave of the future hah a

My Dad was an engineer, and thought this was the best innovation since canned tuna.

We should have stuck with the tuna.

they're still using it on the RX-8

And was a bitch to repair: few mechanics knew enough to do a decent job. Granted, this was when they first came out, so things might be better now.

that one always gets screwed when jumping on a new technology right outta the shute, even if it does become a long-term success.

Competed with CDs for a while. I didn't buy in but I remember being asked in an interview for an AV job which one I thought would win and I went with the cassettes. Maybe that's why they didn't hire me.

I wish PBS would remaster the old George Page Nature series for DVD.