Microsoft's Most Glorious Failures

Critics are fond of saying that Microsoft lacks an inventive or innovative spirit, but history begs to differ. The past two decades are littered with experimental Microsoft technologies and products that tried hard to push people toward new ways of using a computer. The company has attempted to bring the world numerous devices for viewing digital content on televisions, ambitious plans for a Web-wide single-sign-on feature, and independent displays.

Microsoft's problem is often not that it's stuck in rewind; rather, many of its products have failed spectacularly because they were either ahead of their time or poorly executed. In fact, many of these flops proved to be predecessors to several of the popular gadgets we use today. Let's take a look at some of Microsoft's most glorious failures.

TV Photo Viewer
Date of release: Circa 2001

What it was: A floppy disk drive that displayed image files on your television

Price: $159

Why it failed: By the time the TV Photo Viewer made an appearance, not only was the floppy disk old news, but displaying images directly on your TV from your digital camera was a simple trick that required only a few inexpensive wires.

Fate: Discontinued

Successors: Digital cameras, TVs, and set-top boxes with SD Card or USB slots; Apple TV; Internet-connected TVs; Flickr, Picasa, and Snapfish

Tablet PCs
Date of release: 2002

What it was: Tablet PCs were clamshell laptops that could transform into one-panel slate computers running Windows. You could write on the screen and interact with the OS using a stylus.

Price: $2000 to $2500

Why it failed: A year after Microsoft launched Windows XP Tablet Edition, the device had still not taken off. People just never gravitated toward Tablet PCs, despite Bill Gates's prediction that tablets would be the most popular PCs in America by 2007. The high price also may have contributed to the Tablet PC's failure.

Fate: The Windows Tablet PC still exists, and HP is planning on producing a Windows 7 one-panel slate aimed at business users. But the iPad has effectively proved that the Windows Tablet PC was a failure among everyday users.

Successors: iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab

more on: pcworld.com