Rory Reid

The amount of rubbish that passes through PCW’s offices is quite startling. Fortunately it’s not the smelly kind that attracts foxes and other vermin, but the technological kind invented by companies desperate to create new and, frankly, unnecessary products.

Don’t get me wrong – I support innovation just as much as the next man and I certainly don’t bemoan Henry Ford’s invention of the automobile on the grounds that the horse-drawn carriage was adequate for the task. What annoys me is the invention of devices that incorporate useless or unusable functions or whose very existence is utterly pointless.

In Japan these products are defined as ‘Chindogu’, which literally translated means weird/unusual (‘chin’) tool (‘dogu’). The term was coined by Kenji Kawakami, a Japanese inventor and writer who first made the idea prominent in the mid-1990s with such quirky inventions as duster slippers for cats, so your feline pet can help with the household chores as it walks around the home. This is of course supposed to be a form of satirical humour, but it seems the IT industry has begun designing Chindogu-style products, safe in the knowledge that consumers will buy just about anything with an LCD screen attached.

In the world of IT, the list of utterly pointless products is extensive. No disrespect to the companies involved, but, for example, how many users really need a motherboard that accepts both Intel and AMD CPUs? I’ve been building PCs for years and not once have I ever considered swapping between same-generation CPUs from rival manufacturers. When I upgrade it usually involves a next-generation CPU (invariably with a new pin layout), memory and chipset. I admire the technical innovation of such products, but I really can’t see much practical sense in them.

Another of my pet peeves is Portable Media Centres (PMC). Just like handheld television sets of the 1980s, the idea is sound; a small device that lets you watch video while on the move. But have you ever seen anybody using one? I’m not even sure the general public knows they exist. The thought of walking into a lamppost while using one or being robbed just because you couldn’t wait to watch last night’s Eastenders isn’t very appealing.

While there may be some people who could make use of the above-mentioned technologies, I can’t see any reason for the existence of devices that incorporate mp3 playback as an added ‘bonus’. Mobile phones – maybe. But mp3 digital cameras? Mp3 watches? Again, the theory is sound, but don’t be surprised when you are mocked by trendy Ipod listeners because you’re bopping your head to the sounds of your camcorder or have a cable dangling between your ear and wrist.

These so-called ‘hybrid’ products are one of my major annoyances. If any of my friends spent £160 on a set of digital camera binoculars (a digital camera in the shape of binoculars), I’d disown them instantly. Pentax was responsible for the first of these abominations, but later saw sense and discontinued it from its product line.

And don’t get me started on the amount of pointless products inspired by the Universal Serial Bus (USB). While I can see the novelty value attached to a USB ashtray that helps reduce cigarette odour and predicts when the smoker will die of lung cancer, I still can’t figure out why anyone would invent a USB noodle strainer. These products exist, which means someone somewhere is buying them. Please stop.

Another thing which gets my goat is when companies deliberately feed consumers misinformation to gain sales. A prime example is the megapixel marketing strategy employed to sell digital cameras, which implies that the megapixel rating of a camera is a direct reference to the quality of its images – a fact which simply isn’t the whole story.

The problem isn’t limited to the world of IT. In the United States Coca-Cola has just released Coca-Cola (C2) – a low-carbohydrate version of its popular soft drink. Canny readers may have already spotted that a ‘low-carb’ version of Coke already exists in the form of Diet Coke. C2 may taste more like standard Coke than its Diet cousin, but it also contains 12 times as many carbs. If you’re willing to alter your normal dietary habits so drastically as to eat nothing but greasy fry-ups for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I’m sure you can stomach the minor difference in taste between Coke and Diet Coke.

In the old days, people invented things out of necessity. Today, they do it to bamboozle consumers and create or take advantage of new trends. Admittedly, the IT industry is largely reliant on Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’ theory, but I believe consumers need to use more discretion in order to ensure the swift demise of pointless goods.

Reading reviews is one way of finding out whether you should part with your hard-earned cash, but even seasoned IT journalists can fall foul of ideas that seem great one minute, but useless the next. What I ask is that we all exercise a little more common sense. Don’t buy into the fads, since this leaves less room in the market for decent products and less money in your pocket for something that really does deserve your attention.

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