Discussion on:

10 technologies that are just plain broken

Voice Recognition also makes the cut. Frankly, no one has ever gotten to perfection on it, be it siri, vlingo, windows vista and 7 and even the flagship product of Garmin, the Nuvi. When it works it saves a lot of time, but accent, pronunciation etc etc can make recognition a nightmare and one would end up wasting more time on getting it right as against manually doing whatever it was that he/she wanted to get done through the voice command.

Next would be Java Enterprise Application Servers. Seriously, the same EAR file is supposed to work across them all right? Wrong! The EAR I built works in weblogic but not in websphere. The one which loads fine in JBoss has serious issues with OC4J. It's a wreck. In Spite of following standards we have a good case of incompatiblity being the norm!

While I have to agree that Flash has been riddled with issues, some big some small, over the years, I have to also say :
Anyone who says Flash should die either :
1. Is not a _good_ Flash developer
2. Does no understand the technology

Flash, like almost any other platform, can be used in Good Ways and Bad Ways.
You can get Good Flash Developers and Bad Flash Developers.
Worse, you have a lot of Flash "developers" who are actually designers who dabble in Flash.

The end result is that Flash has gotten a bad name largely because of bad Development, not because the platform itself is bad.

To any naysayer out there, I ask one question :

What, right now, can replace Flash as a multi-platform, vector- and raster-art, animation package which streams high quality, optimised, video and can communicate with the Browser via JavaScript (a standard) and with other backend technologies (eg. PHP) easily via various methods (AMFPHP, JSON, XML, etc), and also provides decent 3D capabilities ?

So yes, it has its shortcomings, and you're welcome to ignore it and dont use it, but Flash has its place, especially in the desktop application field for a long while yet.

Flash apps are garbage. Maybe if someone that actually knew something about flash was writing them it would be different. But the apps I've seen and that we use are nothing more than junk.

You may want to try run that flash on a non premium supported OS and see how far you get with the working well thing. On linux flash sucks and sucks big, it crahses it hogs it's a pain.. It's broken because as a supposed web centric deployment system it's actually a microsoft centric web deployment system only, support for anything else is limited and bad, you need to climb out of the MS bubble.

Android, Linux, Mac...it's a major resource hog. Even the latest versions in Windows causes my GPU to spin up something fierce. Silverlight and HTML 5 apps don't do this.

Have to agree that McCrap is hopeless, but AVG seems pretty good.
McCrap is nowhere near as up-to-date with virus sigs as other tools and interferes with all sorts of other things. Can't believe how much trouble I had getting a Dell wireless printer to work with Windows 7 - until I deleted McCrap and replaced it with AVG.

In addition, McCrap is a tremendous resource hog.

I believe the proper term should be "Internet Security Suites"
I've tried them all (almost) from worst to best:
Norton - takes control of, consumes and destroys everything
McAfee - resource hog
Panda - meh
F-Secure - can get annoying
BullGuard - not bad
AVG - great for a freebie, but not quite the full compliment
ZoneAlarm - rather good, some performance issues
CA - very good but expensive
Kaspersky - the best by a mile, great value, actually works (I tested it with a live virus that McAfee and Norton couldn't even stop - shat my pants as I stupidly unzipped it on my non-backed-up PC. All 'cos McAfee's virus reporter wanted it in a password-protected zip, not a normal one.)

We had CA for 6 years, it never caught one virus. They even sent out a update with a false positive for windows system files and nuked 15 of our machines that got left on over night.

We tried eset for a 3 month trial and it was awesome, low resource, caught everything, but didn't work with 64bit systems.

Ended up with Vipre, catches stuff, but during scans and updates its a huge CPU hog. but it actaully stops stuff... Some of the menus and options do not function like they were deprecated, but the buttons left in the menus.

I have been using ESET for about 5 years. It is by far the most reliable anti-virus software available (excluding business class), low resource, etc. and I have had it running on 64-bit OS (started on Vista x64). I am certain there was a time when it was only 32-bit but that hasn't been the case for quite some time. One thing to note and I am certain it is true with all of them, that unless configured to do so, most anti-virus software will give the user a choice and unseasoned computer users shouldn't be allowed to be given a choice and yes, computers can still get infected.

Good to see I'm not the only one with the problem of VIPRE being a resource hog (see my comments on above post: http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/102-353334-3533683). I'll agree that it actually stop lots of stuff but their biggest claim is that they are "fast-high performance and low impact on system resources" (this sentence taken directly from their add in Windows IT Pro magazine).

I don't have any experience with VIPRE that live up to that claim; in fact it is totally the opposite.

We have substantial experience with Kaspersky during 5 years of supporting users on hunderds of different computers, and we had some really annoying issues with the recurring "corrup virus definitions" en "blacklist is damaged". We have switched to Trend Micro wich is fare more stable.

I deal with virus removal on a daily basis.
The best solution really is Avast, with it's auto sandbox feature.
Also, Avast detects and blocks when network users try to open files on my shared drive - that's a feature I've not seen anywhere else.
I see Avast detect and remove malware left behind by mcafee, norton, avg and many others alll the time
IMO, for the average consumer, Avast has the best combination of effectiveness, user friendly GUI and price. (Also, Avast has the pirate talk language pack, which is just plain cool! ...kinda shows me there's actual people working on it, not some cold corporate entity)
I am also a fan of kaspersky and avira, but those tend to be a little too obtrusive for the average user.

That being said, no single A/V program is going to block EVERYthing by itself.
With today's malware, you always need more than 1 layer of protection.
On systems with enough RAM and CPU, I always install Ad-Aware along with Avast.
Using Avast and Avast/AdAware combination, I've not had a machine come back to me re-infected.
And, no matter what, Malwarebytes Antimalware is a MUST have tool.

Sorry folks, but AVG is just about crap anymore. When AVG 8 was the current release, they were on top of their game - but these days I see toooo many avg "protected" machines with major infections.

and, um, seriously y'all.... MS security essentials?
MS security is an oxymoron in itself.
They crash their own OS often enough with faulty updates, how can you possibly expect them to keep it safe from others.
Just 3 days ago, I worked on a machine with MS Security essentials - mbam found 244 infections and Avast found 20 infections.

On top of all that, one other poster hit the nail on the head - often times, there's no way to protect the operating system from the moron users.
Another tech in my office has a favored diagnosis - EBKAC (error Between Keyboard And Chair)

Also, I would like to agree with everyone who said printers are horrible.
I HATE printers.
I mean, they're necessary and all, but dang. what a nightmare network printing can be.
Also, even though they make good printer hardware, HP's software sucks B.I.G. time.

Symantec and Mcafee are crap. System hogs. Vipre is pretty useless also. They all inform about the virus AFTER it has installed itself. There is very little real time protection. Avg works very well.

AVG cant stop spyware that are in its definition -- Many spyware disabled AVG before it could react.. Experienced this anytime. Once you have manually killed the processes for the spyware, AVG wakes up and says "Hey, look!!.. I found something" and of course, these are leftover of spyware that you removed manually...

MS Security Essential is the best
TDSSKiller form Kaspersky -- best in removing rootkits (but that is after the infection). I cant comment on Kaspersky as a whole as I never used it.
Symantec products are good only when you have 4 GB or more RAM and your machine is fairly new
McCafee is crap. But stinger can be useful at times when the machine is already infected
rest of the free stuff -- well it all comes to how good they update there software to the emerging trends in spyware and virus attacks. After so many years, I still get amazed by the techniques (or part of Windows registry) new spyware uses to attack a machine (please do not go into Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac debate. Windows is still the most widely used)

Outlook / Exchange and browsers "plain broken"??? Nonsense. Outlook works great for me. Firefox and IE work fine for me too. Is it web standards we should be looking at as browser just seem to keep catching up with them.

I'd say these are more software applications than technologies.
And yeah, what's wrong with outlook? I can't find anything comparable, and if your IT department has issues with it, perhaps they should consider observing the manual and revising their configuration.
Browsers? If they were "broken" no-one would be able to browse the Internet. Though I will admit I'm having difficulty finding a different browser from IE that works faster and is fully functional with all add-ons and scripts.

I used Outlook for many years in a corporate environment and didn't see that many problems. However, I happened to be at Siemens when the "I Love You" bug shut the company network down for 2 days. That's when I got serious about learning Linux.

If you are using a standalone email client for a home computer, I think I like Thunderbird better for security reasons although you lose the calendar and some of the other niceties. If that's the case, you just have to be aware that Microsoft-haters around the world are trying to shut your installation of Outlook down and be very careful about what you click.

I agree with you about the browsers... it's web standards. I haven't had problems with Firefox. I am a bit jumpy about IE due to past security issues.

1. Norton any version, just too horrible to support.
2. Airprint, and they complain about Flash.
3. File sharing with IOS 5 and a PC via (cloud) try it !
4. Sorry Kaspersky, you have caused too many software breakdowns
5. WebDav. So sad.
6. OOPL's, Jackson still reigns ( for those old enough). OOPl's are not properly understandable by 75% of programmers. If you cant debug software after a night out then its broke.
7. Majority of Apps, 95% of them are functionless - fun tho.

Things that do work.:-

1. ThinClient, RDP, and LogMeIn to you, thank you for my life back
2. AVG for letting my software work correctly.
3. Quickbooks, yes it can be problematical, but accountants and bookeepers understand it. You can also interface databases and systems to it. Try doing that simply with Sage.

Logmein and it's companion Logmein Hamachi - both the spherical objects of the proverbial dog. ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL facilities.

Yes, I agree with LogMeIn and I would agree that Hamachi works but the performance (at least two years ago) was very lackluster when compared with file transfers via LogMeIn File Manager. I was hoping that the Hamachi VPN would provide the means to copy files at a rate similar to LogMeIn File Manager which it didn't. However, as far as a VPN solution without having to utilize VPN routers it does serve the purpose. Can't say that neither were bug free but they do what they are supposed to do with not a lot of bugs.

I love LogMeIn. It works great with Mac too.
Hamachi is of course wonderful

I love LogMeIn as well -- even the free version is quite useful, especially for basic tech support.

of being one of the most secure RDP solutions. I use it to protect my clients. I just don't trust any other just yet.

I agree, QuickBooks is a thing that do work.. I never has issue in administration of QuickBooks -- backup, upgrades, application level issues or whatever. I agree there are sometimes issues within a file or some features. However, the users know better to deal with these. They are the exerts and if you are having any issues with some features, contact some experts or become one. Do not blame the application. It is Lifeline for many.

I had a quickbooks install where on one machine it crashes regularly through the day for no reason. Rebuilt the persons profile, replaced the machine and finally swapped some cables. Now it only crashes once every couple days. The machine it was installed on has been in place and running perfectly for about two and a half years before the quickbooks install.

To be honest, my biggest complaint about quickbooks is Inuit's licensing model. It seems like you have to pay an arm and a leg to get anything more than basic functionality.

Bill

Agreed that it can be a bit pricey for your average business or home user...it's just that the next step up (beyond Enterprise, their $3-11K uberversion; Intuit doesn't make anything above this level) makes even Enterprise look dirt cheap by comparison.

As for administration, making backups, etc, it's really an issue of getting it done. I always spent a certain chunk of time on the installs sitting down with the Admin and showing him how the user filters and Audit Trail work, asking them "who do you want to have access to X?", et al, and also stressing the importance of simply backing up the data file regularly. I had sooo many tech support calls that could have been resolved in five or ten minutes if the users had done regular backups...Instead, I get a response like "Backups??? O_O" or "Uhm....what month is it?" or "I thought the server did that? ("Great! Does anyone here know how to Restore your server backups?" "Uhhhhh...")

Even on a file that gets light use, most of it when the CPA comes in twice a month to do data entry, I encourage places to backup no less than once a week. If you do, say, a hundred transactions a day, backup daily. Several hundred to a thousand, consider twice-daily backups. And I'm NOT talking about server backups, I mean the one from within QB (or PT) -- It takes two minutes, unless your file is either huge (Over 500MB for Enterprise, 250MB for others), or your network is interfering in some way.

There's no such thing as "too many backups". When asked how often you NEED to backup, my usual response was "OK, what is your tolerance for re-entering lost data by hand..." ^_^

It's appropriately named.

Just the other day I was standing over someone's shoulder when some drive by infection rolled right over Symantec Endpoint, I've seen the same thing with MSE.

I'm thinking these articles are increasingly influenced by TR's advertising relationships.

Full disclosure -- In a former IT job, I worked for a consulting firm that did third party sales and support for users of both QuickBooks Accounting software (QB) and their main competitor, Peachtree Accounting software (PT). I was certified in both programs, but I am no longer in the accounting industry.

I won't deny what you mentioned -- QB definitely has its issues, but it is a matter of paying for what you get, and it's downright "Maytag reliable" compared to PT. Both QB and PT are smallish, low-end programs as far as accounting is concerned, and their sub-$1000 products are explicitly not intended for use even in TerminalServer environments (I did not see that mentioned, so I was wondering if that could be part of the issue). The next step up would be the larger packages from Sage (QB/Intuit doesn't go above SMB-level), which can easily be around $10K+ to buy, setup, and install, and run into the thousands per month to maintain; they're obviously meant for larger businesses, and that's where the real investment in their programming goes (and it shows). The last major headache with QB was in 2006 -- a Flash issue which was easy to bypass; and both it and PT had MAJOR problems with that year's Norton (and sometimes, still do, to the point where the recommended solution is "Uninstall Norton and get another AV").

QB's occasional network issues aside, if you think it's bad about that...? Try Peachtree. Keep in mind that PT is far older -- there are even people still using the MS-DOS releases (they run fine and dandy under WinXP), simply because it's more reliable than the modern versions. As sad as that may be, when it goes down, it goes down HARD.

In my experience with both programs --

QB is simpler to use, especially for non-accountants; it has a smoother learning curve, and it much more user-friendly. It's the Windows XP of accounting. It has its problems as far as its rather simplistic database structure is concerned, and it has almost no built-in end-user accessible DIY data correction available. On the other hand, it doesn't need them nearly as often. I have found that their network issues mainly crop up when you have more than one computer attempting to act as the Host (NOT the same thing as "where the data is physically located", aka "the server" as far as QB is concerned), causing all data requests to be routed through it, slowing everything down; of course, if that comp crashes or gets turned off while someone is entering data... >_ The issue with this is that the program makes it incredibly easy to become a Host when you don't intend to be, and deactivating Hosting is *not* as simple as just unchecking an option box.

PT, on the other hand, is really intended at the old-school, pen & paper ledger accountants who either never wanted to computerize in the first place, or who were quite happy with the DOS versions, TYVM; it's the Windows NT of accounting (no, not 2000...I wish). Its learning curve is much closer to climbing a brick wall, but it can be more powerful than QB once you get used to it. On the tech side, it has a very in-depth data repair utility (Integrity Check), which is normally hidden from the end-user with very very good reason -- if your data gets to the point where you NEED to have it reindex your data structure, one table at a time, you have some major problems anyway. It is also FAR, far more twitchy when it comes to network irregularities (e.g., it wants its data, in which every "file" is represented by a folder with 40+ separate files) in one particular place, but it won't actually stop you from, dropping it wherever you want. This becomes an issue especially when companies want to store their data on an NAS or something similar -- which neither PT nor QB officially support. PT's main issue is that the slightest network hiccup really WILL cause the whole schmeer to come crashing down in your face, or even corrupt the database. A lucrative market is out there in Peachtree database repair. Expect to drop at least $400-700 per incident for competent assistance.

One of the age-old legacy issues from PT, which still had not been fixed as of the last time I used it (about a year ago) was that a bad year-end "close" of the accounting data would corrupt your data file in ways which will generally not become apparent unless you know exactly what to look for, but which will screw you up down the line and cause significant data loss. The manifestation of the bug is part of the issue: It does the Close (forcing you to Backup the data first), *tells the user* that the Close screwed up( which specifically says stop now and restore that Backup), and then jumps to the default "Close Successful" screen. After a long slog at the computer, far too many people apparently assume that only the "success" screen was true (we got plenty of business from this issue), not even mention it, and move on with their lives. Protip: If you use PT and suspect that this may be an issue, check the size of your logfile for your Company Data. It should be in the low 100's of KB at most, as it's plain text. If it's several MB in size and is full of errors referencing zero-dollar transactions and "invalid periods", this problem has hit you. Call someone for tech support; I hope you have a service plan with someone, as it can be time consuming and expensive to fix, and even a "fix", in this case means one of two things: Restoring your Pre-Close backup as you should have to begin with, or making a list of all of the transactions you lost ...which will be most or all of them since the last Close...so you can re-enter them by hand and delete the bad ones.

I suppose what I'm trying to say here is, yes, QB has its issues and a certain leel of Brokenness, but PT -- its only real competitor does, as well. I've not used MS's (defunct) version, nor any of the free alternatives, but I would assume that they are even more suspect, and likely just as unstable. You want cheap and quick? QB and PT are the way to go, think of them as the Ford 150 of accounting -- their "lower end" stuff goes from around $200-1100; the "Medium size" versions, Enterprise and Quantum, respectively, are in the $3K-10K range (tho they invariably include a year of upper-tier, priority support directly from the manufacturers; well worth the (optional) yearly fee if you even need them once a year. You need and want Power, buy an 18-Wheeler (like MAS90) and be prepared to pay through the nose, but you will get what you pay for. Note -- by "Medium", I mean 60-100 employees and $1Mil a year. Stuff like MAS90 comes into play once you've left those in the dust, it's overkill before that point.

I have to agree on Acronis B&R.
I changed one of the settings on the main server network card and had to do a complete re-install, as it would not recognise the license server anymore (even though the license server is on the same machine?).
Just lately it has failed to do any backups at all as it couldnt find any source drives to backup, even though it has been backing up the same drives for the last 18 months.
Some of the Acronis responses on the forums are laughable, you can plainly see that on occasions the techs are guessing solutions until (usually a forum member) comes up with a valid answer..

Boy are you wrong about Flash. It seems Techrepublic never has anything good to say about Microsoft and Adobe. Man, you are stuck in the 90's. Get a grip. The internet is always evolving and these Companies are always evolving with it. That's why all the updates. You have to stop picking on these Companies just because their Numberr 1. Its old and and a real TURNOFF.

It went from being a good product on Windows to a lousy product on everything very quickly. It's been full of exploits for years now and the performance penalty on any non-Windows OS is unacceptable (Android, Linux, Mac OS X, etc).

Can you explain why a web-based technology now requires GPU support to run properly?

You say Quickbooks is bad?

You sir, have never had to deal with SIMPLY ACCOUNTING. That program gave me enough gray hairs and fits of cursing that would make a sailor blush.

There is nothing, and I do mean NOTHING that compares to how horrible an accounting software is Simply Accounting. For one person doing accounting, it's ok. But try to network that thing and have multi-users? Oooooh crap. Then the fun begins. It's horrible. backups done in SA can corrupt at a drop of a hat.

And if you want to have tech support? Forget it. Phone lines are stuck in the 90's, the forums are nothing but a PR's handbook for company apologetics.

And the worst part? Accountants swear by it!!

Oracle software tends to be flakey, sluggish, hideous 1990's proprietary UI and it falls over when the wind blows the wrong way.
I have worked on at least 20 major projects at different companies, with direct Oracle support, in-house DBAs and consultants and have never had an Oracle implementation of anything go smoothly. Every single project that used Oracle overran on time and budget, and was almost invariably the cause of any performance issues or unplanned downtime. In comparison, the Microsoft components in the projects were bullet-proof and cheap.

I am including Oracle DB's and Oracle VM in this mix.

3: Ubuntu Unity
Agreed. It complicates more than helps. I also agree that they should use Gnome 3 in the main distro.

6: Web browsers
Agreed also. Each browser has its strengths and weaknesses. The browser wars have basically came to a stalemate.

7: Outlook
Like some others posted, I think Outlook compared to our other options is about the best. Sure it's a heavy app compared to Thunderbird or even Evolution, but it makes up for it in features. And sure Outlook works better with Exchange, it was developed specifically as a client for Exchange.

8: Predictive typing
Hate it.

9: Consumer-grade antivirus
The general rule of thumb in information security is there is no system that is 100% secure. Which is the better antivirus? Based on my yearly evaluations of these products, it depends on the version that year. One year, I chose Avast and it worked great. But 2 years later, they were slow on updates and new features so I changed. When Symantec 360 was launched, it was heavy app. So I chose Mcafee. But these were on the corporate level. Concerning consumer products, first, I do not trust free antiviruses. It's rare to get anything for free and when you do, it's not always what you expect. Basically free antiviruses just don't get the big stuff and a big part of them don't have an on-access scanner . Concerning paid products, I basically follow my rule concerning corporate products, depends on the year and version. Nothing is 100% secure, not even Linux or Mac OSX.

10: Desktop multi-touch form factor
Hate it. In fact, I don't buy cell phones that are just touch. I need a keypad or keyboard. I haven't tried a desktop multi-touch yet but I can imagine I'll have the opinion and problems.

I don't believe the technologies are "broken". They just need improvements. Just imagine if we had the same opinion of the first cell phones or other first technologies.

I don't use Exchange with Outlook but most of my email is delivered via IMAP. IMAP is wonderful for users that have desktop(s), laptop(s) and mobile devices, yet since at least Outlook 2003, IMAP support in Outlook is very poor. Configuring an IMAP account has been decent since Outlook 2007 but the problem is that with multiple email accounts is it very sluggish when changing accounts and it has this terrible bug where it loses handles (I use Taskinfo and get a warning when the system is using too many Win32 handles and I can see that Outlook has them) requiring me to exit and restart Outlook.

Browsers, being a web developer I couldn't agree more. My favorite is Firefox but I am not certain what they were after releasing 5 major versions in 6-7 months?

Acronis - horrible networking support and even after isolating a very specific culprit, after 6 months there is still no remedy in sight.

In general I am in complete agreement with your list!

AVG sux alright. How about ESET? Never had any complaints about them. Works great!

I agree that Acronis has its problems but, it is much better than nothing at all (or windows backup). Exchange is nothing to set up compared to Lotus and even less of a chore to maintain. I flushed all of my Symantec licenses (150) 3 years ago for Avast. Not one machine infected since the change.

Broken? I find this article highly pessimistic. Yes, there are some problems with all of the above likely, but broken? I have no major issues supporting Outlook and our exchange. I have no problems with the Unity Desktop in Ubuntu, but more with Gnome 3 (except for less configuration options), but this doesn't make it broken. I can't say much about Quickbooks as I am haven't used it in years. It seems all of the "issues" above are just issues one encounters or at least I have encountered with most anything in the IT world. It would be miraculous to find anything that doesn't have issues, but this really doesn't make them broken. If so, everything is broken.

Outlook... 2010 is just plain brilliant. I've had to use Lotus Notes in my latest role, and that IS broken...

Android is all it's forms (which is part of the issue).. it's hard to use, and doesn't deliver over IOS/WP7, but until a user (no techie) uses it, they think it's OK.. Every non-techie user of Android I know has regretted the purchase.

Yes and MS security essentials is the bees-nees, and makes the PC as safe (safer the OSX) then the others... it's no longer an issue... nothing to see, move on.

Please try some original ideas next time...