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[Real Reality]

The Complete List of PC World's 50 Greatest Gadgets
PC World's list of the top 50 tech gadgets of the last half century was assembled after we polled our editors for nominations. We then rated the nominated gadgets for usefulness, design, degree of innovation, influence on subsequent gadgets, and the "cool factor." Here are the results. (For more on our 50 Greatest Gadgets project, see the full story.)

Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)
Apple iPod (2001)
(Tie) ReplayTV RTV2001 and TiVo HDR110 (1999)
PalmPilot 1000 (1996)
Sony CDP-101 (1982)
Motorola StarTAC (1996)
Atari Video Computer System (1977)
Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)
M-Systems DiskOnKey (2000)
Regency TR-1 (1954)
Sony PlayStation 2 (2000)
Motorola Razr V3 (2004)
Motorola PageWriter (1996)
BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld (1998)
Phonemate Model 400 (1971)
Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (1978)
Texas Instruments SR-10 (1973)
Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 (1998)
Sony Handycam DCR-VX1000 (1995)
Handspring Treo 600 (2003)
Zenith Space Command (1956)
Hamilton Pulsar (1972)
Kodak Instamatic 100 (1963)
MITS Altair 8800 (1975)
Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 (1983)
Nintendo Game Boy (1989)
Commodore 64 (1982)
Apple Newton MessagePad (1994)
Sony Betamax (1975)
Sanyo SCP-5300 (2002)
iRobot Roomba Intelligent Floorvac (2002)
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (1999)
Franklin Rolodex Electronics REX PC Companion (1997)
Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System 10 (1998)
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983)
Iomega Zip Drive (1995)
Magnavox Magnavision Model 8000 DiscoVision Videodisc Player (1978)
Milton Bradley Simon (1978)
Play, Inc Snappy Video Snapshot (1996)
Connectix QuickCam (1994)
BellSouth/IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993)
Motorola Handie Talkie HT-220 Slimline (1969)
Polaroid Swinger (1965)
Sony Aibo ERS-110 (1999)
Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 (1997)
Learjet Stereo-8 (1965)
Timex/Sinclair 1000 (1982)
Sharp Wizard OZ-7000 (1989)
Jakks Pacific TV Games (2002)
Poqet PC Model PQ-0164 (1990)
The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years
Dan Tynan, special to PC World, and PC World Staff
http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20051224/tc_pcworld/123950

[mindmetoo]

The Iomega zip drive was the most insane product on the planet. The cost of the drive wasn't bad, $200 compared to $400 for a CD burner. However, when you compared the price of media, $5 for a zip drive floppy versus $1 for a CD which held about 10x more data, it quickly became apparent CD was the way to go. Sure at that time CD wasn't R/W but when you looked at your experience with floppy disks, how often did you ever re-write to a floppy? Usually when you threw something on a floppy you left it there because it was nice to think you had a back up. If it was important enough to move from one computer to another, it was probably important enough to have a back up on floppy.

I owned a Newton. I liked the big screen compared to the Ipaq however the unit was dreadfully slow. And the Newton connection utility wasn't free. You bought some hugely expensive piece of hardware then Apple expected you to pay more for a little bit of software to hook it up to your PC and transfer files. Aholes.