We love gadgets – we really do. And that's why, when a gadget fails to measure up to its promise, doesn't work as you'd expect, is locked down with DRM or crippled with a terrible user interface or hobbled by a stanky-ass design, we get angry. We speak with the disappointed, crushed hearts of the gadget idealists we are: Why does this thing suck so bad?

Well, we've had it with crappy gadgets. Like our friends at Underwire, Autopia and Wired Science, we're recruiting the help of a black hole to crush the worst gadgets into nothingness. Here's a list of 10 gadgets – plus one bonus "gadget" – that deserve to be thrown beyond the event horizon, never to return.

We've probably only scratched the surface here, so feel free to nominate (below) your own candidates for gadgets that should be thrown out of normal spacetime.

1. iPod/iPhone earbuds

The crummy earbuds included with every iPod or iPhone are ugly, don't fit well and deliver terrible sound. They're a beacon for burglars: Hello! I've got an iPod in my pocket, and it's right here! And they don't even last very long: Within months of normal use, they often start developing painful buzzes.

2. CueCat

The most amazing thing about this infrared barcode reader, which did nothing but read special codes printed in magazines and then take you to a website, is that the company convinced so many publishers to distribute them. During the height of the CueCat craze, hundreds of thousands were shipped to customers around the U.S. – including a half-million subscribers to Wired – whether they wanted them or not. They were ugly and almost totally useless, and most probably wound up in landfills within the year.

3. Sony MiniDisc

Sony's come up with many annoying and proprietary formats in an ill-advised attempt to control its customers, but this was one of the worst. It combined a new physical media format with Sony's annoying ATRAC file format, and of course had ridiculous restrictions on copying files. While MiniDiscs achieved some popularity with musicians for their ease of recording and editing live performances, most people gave this horrible format a justifiable pass.

4. Motorola RAZR

Everyone had this phone, and everybody hated it. So sexy, yet so crappy with everything it did: poor call quality, cheap buttons, bad software on every carrier.

5. Sony Vaio Series P Lifestyle PC

Screw this thing. Sure, it looks beautiful, and it's meant for fashion-conscious people who want a stylish, amazingly portable PC. But its crummy keyboard, short (two-hour) battery life, squint-inducing 8.9-inch screen and high price tag make it the perfect device for – well, we don't know anyone we would wish the Vaio Series P on.

6. HiPhone

There are a lot of crummy Chinese knockoffs of the iPhone. We bought this, called the HiPhone, for $118 plus $42 shipping, to see if it might be a budget-conscious consumer's alternative to a pricey Apple handset. We were almost instantly sorry.

7. Apple's Hockey-Puck Mouse

Everybody makes mistakes, and Apple, the king of industrial design, really screwed up on this one. The hockey-puck mouse, which Apple shipped with its tooty-fruity iMacs, was an ergonomic atrocity. You never knew if it was pointed the right way until the pointer started moving diagonally on your screen instead of straight across like you intended. And who could possibly find a circular mouse comfortable? Perfect peripheral for Cookie Monster, we suppose.

8. BlackBerry Storm

BlackBerry Storm. Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com

When RIM announced it was going to make a touchscreen phone, lots of Crackberry addicts were excited. Finally, they'd have a chance to use a BlackBerry with a touchscreen! Um, not so fast: The BlackBerry Storm has an oddball interface, with a touchscreen that "clicks" down (the whole thing physically moves) every time you press a button. It's supposed to make the touchscreen experience more accurate and more tactile, but it just winds up slowing you down. And it feels weird besides.

9. Asus S101 Netbook

Yeah, yeah, we've seen the numbers about how many millions of netbooks people are buying. But seriously, how much junk are people willing to put up with? With a crummy trackpad, substandard keys and horrible build quality, this netbook disappointed us more than most. While Asus may have lead the netbook revolution, this is one product that needs some serious work.

10. Simon

Did you ever have to play this game? That was one annoying gadget.

BONUS: AT&T Wireless

While not technically a gadget, it's the network that supports one of our favorite gizmos, the iPhone. But good gravy, have you ever seen a carrier that was so good at providing service so badly? It's infuriating enough 3G data speeds are slower than a stunned yak, but AT&T seems to revel in giving its customers less than everyone else. Between crippling some features that became standard on other devices years ago (MMS and tethering) and having notoriously spotty coverage – even in metropolitan areas – it's a wonder why people would volunteer to sign away two years of their lives on service that borders on barely functional. We don't want to destroy the network that powers our iDevices. But unless AT&T shapes up soon, we'll have no choice but to crush it into a state of infinite mass and density for its own good. Think of it as the cellular equivalent of the ending of Old Yeller.

Top image: Artist's rendering of a black hole. Courtesy NASA .

What gadgets would you throw into a black hole? Enter your nominations below, and vote on other readers' suggestions right here. We've primed the pump with a few gadgets that didn't make it into our top 10 list, mostly because the G-Lab crew didn't all agree that they sucked. NOTE: Voting "up" means that yes, you agree it is a gadget and should be thrown into a black hole.

Submit a gadget

While you can submit as many gadgets as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.

Back to top