Worst computer hardware feature you have seen?

[T-Aoki]

You may want to take a multimeter to that supply and write down what line holds what voltage, so you can retool a standard supply later on. Doing so after it had the magic smoke escape is a lot more trouble.

Unfortunately, the physical connectors of those are non-standard and not available in (consumer) markets. Once any of the connectors is physically broken with unrepairable way, no way to fix it other than sending it to "official" repair services.

 

[T-Aoki]

Any laptops with dGPU but has no option to disable iGPU on BIOS/firmware menu.
Even worse, (not sure by which vendor it was sold) some cannot work with internal display panel when iGPU is disabled (usable only on external monitor).

 

[Phishfry]

Sorry I must correct myself. The Tyan Tiger was the first upgrade. I built the Antec 3U chassis with a SuperMicro P6DGE with 440 BX chipset that I later upgraded with Slockets.
Then upgraded to Tyan.

But yea I second Toms sentiment.
Optimus Sucks. You think they would sell a Mobile CPU without Integrated Graphics since they have so many SKU's..
Utter waste of power in a platform you least need the drain. Battery powered.

 

[blackbird9]

Where to start. I look back to the good ergonomic design and engineering of the classic IBM (pre-lenovo) thinkpads and despair. The whole crazy cult of thinness. Now we have a horrible small cramped keyboard jammed up near the screen and a vast touchpad thing with acres of wasted space on either side. The travel on the keys is so small you can hardly bear to type on it (I tried an M2 macbook pro recently, ugh). No RJ45 ethernet socket, you have to use a bloody dongle. Removal of as many usb sockets as possible, so you end up with 'extenders' trailing over the desk attached by bits of cable. Soldered on RAM chips. Glued together cases that can't be taken apart. Chips lifting off circuilt boards with heat, a la Louis Rossmann. Sockets soldered directly to motherboard instead of being on easily replacable small daughter cards, so that when the socket inevitably breaks, it's time to buy another machine. Crap ergonomics, thinness, lousy reliability, intended to break after a couple of years. The horrible membrane case/keyboard thing they gave you with the surface. I could go on...

All of which tells me these machines are not designed to be used for real work, instead they are designed to be disposable fashion accessories. After a couple of years, they are e-waste.

I guess it sells, though.

 

[RetroComputingCollector]

Where to start. I look back to the good ergonomic design and engineering of the classic IBM (pre-lenovo) thinkpads and despair. The whole crazy cult of thinness. Now we have a horrible small cramped keyboard jammed up near the screen and a vast touchpad thing with acres of wasted space on either side. The travel on the keys is so small you can hardly bear to type on it (I tried an M2 macbook pro recently, ugh). No RJ45 ethernet socket, you have to use a bloody dongle. Removal of as many usb sockets as possible, so you end up with 'extenders' trailing over the desk attached by bits of cable. Soldered on RAM chips. Glued together cases that can't be taken apart. Chips lifting off circuilt boards with heat, a la Louis Rossmann. Sockets soldered directly to motherboard instead of being on easily replacable small daughter cards, so that when the socket inevitably breaks, it's time to buy another machine. Crap ergonomics, thinness, lousy reliability, intended to break after a couple of years. The horrible membrane case/keyboard thing they gave you with the surface. I could go on...

All of which tells me these machines are not designed to be used for real work, instead they are designed to be disposable fashion accessories. After a couple of years, they are e-waste.

I guess it sells, though.

Wow! I didn't know lenovo made Apple products!

 

[Espionage724]

Any laptops with dGPU but has no option to disable iGPU on BIOS/firmware menu.
Even worse, (not sure by which vendor it was sold) some cannot work with internal display panel when iGPU is disabled (usable only on external monitor).

Muxless I think. I would prefer having a hardware mux or everything wired to dGPU, but I've only seen muxless and generally was fine (power saving fine Windows, and fine Linux with nouveau pre-Turing D3 stuff). I've only ever had gaming laptops like this, was plugged-in most of the time, and preferred NVIDIA's I think non-reverse prime thing and just throwing all rendering on the dGPU (had lowest latency and least amount of pci/power mess for max perf)

Interestingly I've seen a dual-graphics Alienware laptop where you can't disable the NVIDIA dGPU nor use the Intel iGPU directly even though the iGPU shows as a display adapter (built-in display and HDMI port are dGPU-wired); it's conveinent but odd

 

[astyle]

Muxless I think. I would prefer having a hardware mux or everything wired to dGPU, but I've only seen muxless and generally was fine (power saving fine Windows, and fine Linux with nouveau pre-Turing D3 stuff). I've only ever had gaming laptops like this, was plugged-in most of the time, and preferred NVIDIA's I think non-reverse prime thing and just throwing all rendering on the dGPU (had lowest latency and least amount of pci/power mess for max perf)

Interestingly I've seen a dual-graphics Alienware laptop where you can't disable the NVIDIA dGPU nor use the Intel iGPU directly even though the iGPU shows as a display adapter (built-in display and HDMI port are dGPU-wired); it's conveinent but odd

I have an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, an AMD Advantage laptop that supposedly does have a mux, and a dGPU (Radeon RX 6700M). It functions just like that Alienware laptop, BTW. If not for the N-Key keyboard not being supported under FreeBSD, it would have been my daily driver.