Amusing, but frankly I cannot agree about the electric carving knife. You have to be an idiot to use it on a turkey but carving a roast with it is a joy.

Where's the iphone?

I think my biggest problem with the Autotape, when I was given one as a gift, was that it didn't work - I could feed the tape out, but the return didn't work.

I think I swapped it for some clamps when I took it back, IIRC.

It must be hard designing these gadgets, it's sometimes a VERY thin line between useless and cool/off the wall and wanted/niche but useable and just useless and laughable.

If you haven't already seen it, Wired decided to exact some revenge on gadgets gone bad - http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/multimedia/2008/04/gallery_gadget_abuse

and novelty cigarette lighters - WHY?

First time you use one there's the "ooh, a button!" *click* response then the novelty wears off very quickly, the extra gubbins installed eat up valuable space originally used for holding the butane gas so you find the lighter regularly needs to be refilled.

BTW, best gadget I've ever owned, got 3 & always carry one with me, is a PhotonLight keychain torch - very bright, very durable, not cheap but the lifetime guarantee is most welcome.

I'd like to nominate Vista.

In the UK our choices are limited.

It seems all we have to vote for is a selection of useless tools who live a parasitical existence in Westminster.

What really confuses me though is why so many of the pricks are Scots.

Ours sat in a draw gathering dust for many years whilst it's manual equivalent happily carved any sort of join put in front of it with far greater easy.

Then one day I was fitting curtain rails and the need arose to cut one of the sections. DAMN, not enough room to get a reasonable stroke with a saw. I scratched my head. My father in law scratched his head. It had taken about an hour and much swearing to get this far and the though of marking it up, taking it down cutting the damn thing and starting all over again didn't bare thinking about. In strolls the wife, with two life saving beers. We described the problem.

Why don't you use the electric carving knife - she says

Don't be so bl**dy stupid wo..... Good idea hand me the gadget would you please darling.

30 seconds later and the jobs was done.

So contrary to popular opinion they can be useful.

Get busy with the fizzy!

I love my SodaStream, aside from being able to carbonate drinks that don't have a massive amount of sugar in them, it's great for reviving flat Cola (for when sugary drinks are required (Long Island))

try getting a double shot of caffeine/sugar goodness in a homemade cola without this priceless invention.

Of course if you worked for Maccas etc you could dip into their post-mix supplies but for the average person these things are great.

I actually own two machines so I never run out of carbonating goodness, me thinks these brits like their beer too much...

I was an early adopter on one of the second generation of RomeMP3 players which established the cassette form factor MP3 player genre.

For its day it was as compact - of not moreso - as MP3 players of the day, was easy to use, had pretty good sound quality, and allowed me to take MP3s on the road with ease.

Likewise the venerable Soda Stream was born in the day of glass bottled softdrinks when lugging that junk from market to home was a wrist snapping exercise that made summer agonizing and door-to-door softdrink sales profitable.

Judging these fellows out of context is like comparing the register to Popular Mechanics in the heyday of the transistor.

Admittedly the slightly bizarre resurrection of the cassette MP3 thing (albeit at 1/10th the price for several hundred times the capacity) brings it back into play, but as an idea whose time came, was reveled gloriously, then passed - not as some freak mutant device to be scorned by Gen X'ers who believe the digital world was spawned 5 years ago, fully formed and shining white, from Steve Jobs' prognostic backside

To heck with you all. To heck.

My favourite is the telephone fitted with a bright LED that flashes so that deaf people can tell when the phone is ringing.

>What really confuses me though is why so many of the pricks are Scots.<

Because, 'They cannot steal our land...' It's their revenge, (does explain why Gordon Brown is screwing us over so badly tho'). When he retires he goes back to Scotland and they all laugh at the 'if it isn't mandatory it's illegal' English. They, of course, secede from the UK and live in a land of flowing milk and honey... until the oil runs out and the melting ice caps floods them out of history.

Most backfired invention, democracy.

When I saw the advertisements I thought - That looks useful. I then got one and realised that it is the most useless invention of all time. It is big, heavy, cubersome and actually makes using a tape measure more difficult than a normal one.

Someone went to the effort of taking a design that had worked for many many years and screwing it up. "The better mousetrap!!!"

Anyway it most definetly gets my prize (along with cheap sat navs that use maps from 2003!!!)

You don't think we want them in our own country do you...

... we ship them out but it's caveat emptor, you get what you deserve ;)

Next thing you know, they'll come out with a ready-made 360 million dollar check to use for defrauding banks and the like.

"So contrary to popular opinion they can be useful."

The knives or women? Arf.

<get's chased out of the Reg Comments ection by an army of women with electric carvers>