Best or Worst Product

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Best or Worst Product

Postby InsideSpin » Wed Feb 03, 2010 12:01 am

I'd like to start a multi-topic debate on the best and worst products from a product managers perspective. If you have a case to site, please do so and we can debate how to approach either repairing the product (worst products) or learning from products with excellence. If we gather enough material on any one product, InsideSpin will organize it and send it to the vendor on behalf of the members.

Some examples for me include:

Best Products
1. Most any router or switch -- plug it in for home use and it works out of the box. Probably easiest device for non-technical consumers to use. I can't think of too many technology devices or software products where that would be true, in fact, I wonder how average consumer uses computer technology at all given the way its packaged and administered (BTW - WIndows 7 is starting to look promising in this category as well, never thought I would say that).

2. Google Chrome -- easy to install, learns quickly building up reusable site list. Only issue is that the Options dialogs are bit-head oriented, but no one really needs to go to them very often. It starts faster than Explorer and seems to handle the Internet better overall especially the way it helps you find new sites.

Worst Products
1. Most any software package that comes with a non SLR digital camera. All crap, poor sync facilities, numbering systems, card maintenance, manuals, etc. Most people just use default settings because advanced settings are so hard to understand and use. The only exception seems to be high-end DSLRs, which seem good overall.

2. Quickbooks -- has improved over the years, but generally non-intuitive. Given they are targeting the average small business owner acting as their own accountant, it really is a mess from a data input perspective. Some new features have eased the burden but it is mostly impossible to work with well. My most recent experience is version 10, needed to handle Foreign currency which it touts but has many problems with still.

3. Lifecycle Treadmills -- we have one, good mechanical device but the software has lots of gaps. This is a good example of where a quality PM process would help -- likely one good product cycle would fix it up, a whole bunch of little things making it less than it could be. It's the best treadmill brand mechanically, but not top end in terms of software - anyone know the product manager?
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Re: Best or Worst Product

Postby cadman_chui » Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:53 am

Best Products:

Apple iPhone:
- all in one product that does everything very well (except typing on touchscreen)
- one button
- touchscreen
- gyro sensors
- GPS
- WiFi
- GSM phone
- iPod
- iPod Video
- ultimate flexibility - you can pretty much write any application
- all products aesthetically appealing

Worst Products: Low-Mid tier Dell Laptops
- constructed of very cheap plastic
- components fail regularly
- power supply cord always breaks
- hard drives fail frequently and before MTBF rating
- generally a 'cheap' feeling when used
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Re: Best or Worst Product

Postby InsideSpin » Thu Feb 18, 2010 9:14 pm

I agree that the Apple family is largely the best set of products in the market -- works, popular, feels good, you're proud to have one. The iPad will hopefully follow suit as it seems like it could be a hot product as well.

I think the story with hardware is a good one -- always looking to be cheaper, they sacrifice a lot -- what I am most critical about is the complete lack of capable support for the consumer. I bought a new laptop which had lots of problems and the supplier was hopeless in terms of getting anything fixed -- would rather just replace everything. I had to get my wife's laptop fixed, they would not explore the problem jumping to replacing a bunch of parts, turned out to be a corrupted wireless network driver. No skills any more, no ability to provide support. These companies are getting bigger and bigger and becoming more responsible for the computing infrastructure used by consumers -- the next generation of users are in trouble, we need to get out of these types of devices and start settling on things like an iPod/iPad for our daily computing needs.
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Re: Best or Worst Product

Postby akw » Sun May 23, 2010 1:48 pm

Chrome
- I agree with the chrome statement. I've entirely switched away from IE. The bookmark manager has gotten better in the latest release and still needs work. The ability to sync bookmarks across multiple chrome instances is very nice as well.

IPhone
Aesthetics are nice but the touchscreen keyboard makes the entire device a failure for me for anything related to business. I have a itouch and don't use it for anything more than music and pictures. Typing on it is just too frustrating for me. At least the Ipad is big enough to justify an external keyboard.

Great Products
I am a big fan of anything that aims to do one thing well. I think that applications are getting too cluttered trying to be jack of all trades.

WriteRoom - a text editor that does nothing fancy. Almost looks like a Unix terminal on the screen.

Skype - has gotten better to the point where I can use it in daily business use now. I do not know if this because of the increase in quality of the software or of the communication lines (or both)

Mindjet MindManager - Appeals to my visual side. Works very well. They are starting to branch out into conferencing abilities which I'm afraid will detract from the essence of the software.

Poor product
- Digital Cable boxes by Scientific Atlanta. They are fine when they work. I especially love DVR. When something goes wrong with the box (guide won't show up, guide freezes, can't change channels) the only option is to reboot. It can take up to 10 minutes to come back online. What is the device doing during that time - self diagnostics? Why not just show me on the TV screen what the device is doing instead of making me guess and wondering if the device is even going to start back up?
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