Posted on March 2nd, 2010
Last year had been a mixed one for users and also the IT industry. Falling sales, particularly on servers and PCs, have hit vendors hard as companies have scaled back costs. Even so, users have continued to buy latest devices, with netbook and smartphone sales holding up well.
These are four worst IT screw ups in 2009.
Windows Vista
The OS has struggled since its initial release, but finally in October 2009 when Microsoft released Windows 7, it reached the end of all practical purposes,
Windows 7 released to critical acclaim – or at least, it was more warmly accepted than its direct predecessor. The time-tested Windows XP seems to live on cheaper, less powerful netbooks, for a while yet. However, large discounts on Vista computers in high street stores confirm that finally, the scorned Vista will slowly be left to die.
Google Apps and Google Mail
Both are great online services, when they work. But companies that had switched from on-site email systems to the Internet giant’s cloud-based offerings may have had a few reasons to question their decision. In 2009, Google Apps and Google Mail have suffered a few outages, leaving customers unable to use e-mails, or work with the collaboration tools, for a couple of hours at a time.
Certainly, no cloud-based service and no IT service can ever be a hundred percent reliable. But organizations planning to substitute in-house infrastructure with cloud services may need to consider the reliability issues.
Facebook privacy issues
The site made the headlines a few times during 2009 because of critical privacy failures. The most serious failure came towards the end of 2009, when Facebook updated its settings, promising easier usages.
However the new pre-programmed “recommended” defaults left millions of users’ private data accessible to everyone. More experienced users changed their settings back, however not before the site had made it on to TV news, for all the bad reasons.
Sony Ericsson Satio
With its large touchscreen display, 12 Megapixel camera, the phone should have been the Sony Ericsson’s ultimate weapon for taking the fight to BlackBerry, Android and Apple. Instead the device suffered unusually high failure rates, caused by critical software bugs.
Experts considered it as the worst Sony Ericsson cellphone ever and many major stores withdrew the phone from sale. For now, Sony Ericsson is pinning its hope on the Windows-based Xperia X2, recently launched in January 2010 and also the future X10.