Hand-held image scanner
Seemed like a real good idea, when flat bed image scanners were so expensive.  The hand-held scanner would let me scan anything I wanted at 75dpi.  Of course, you need a real steady hand and a smooth swipe motion.  Proving that flat bed scanners were expensive for a reason.
Cost: $400

Tablet PC
Compaq TC1100.  Over-priced for what is was.  Purchased so I could learn about tablets, in the hope I could pickup some tablet SOE design work.  The design work never eventuated.
Cost: $3000

Bulletin Board Systems
Running a number of bulletin board systems.  Exercises in youthful ego and hope.  Hoped to make money out of running them, but since I didn’t host pornography, didn’t make a thing.  Learnt a lot about modems, networking and end-users.
Cost: $4000

Zip Drive
Remember these? 100MB rigid floppy disks.  Expensive rigid floppy disks.  Number 15 on PC World’s “The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” list.  Poor quality killed this product in the market faster than you could say “click of death”.
Cost: $500

NSLU-2
These are a really great idea, I love them.  But they are seriously under powered.  Over-clocking does not help.
Cost: $300

Amiga 1000
I loved the Amiga 1000.  Paid too much for it.  The Amiga 500 was available new, but I thought “oh I’ll save a few bucks and buy a second hand Amiga 1000”.  Couldn’t run any of the newer software, as the 1000 didn’t have enough memory.  Didn’t have a hard disk either.
Cost: $600

CP/M 3
Impressive user manual.  Used CP/M 3 about 5 times.  Wasn’t directly compatible with CP/M 2.2.  If I wanted to revisit CP/M, the MyZ80 emulator would be my choice.
Cost: $100

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Hand-held scanners are still crap, even at $99 USB Type C, USB Type A and Canon scanners–they do not work. Today’s security theater brought to you by Iron Mountain

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