QOTW: Which tech do you boycott?

[Rapp]

Anything Apple its just such poor value for money or 3D stuff TV/monitor etc I don't like the tech and sick of it being shoved down my throat

[badass]

I actively avoid buying anything made by Sony after multiple experiences with their customer service, all negative. My views are then further reinforced periodically in the news where they are demonstrated to still view their customers as suckers for buying their products.

However if they made something amazing that I really wanted and it was priced well, I would consider it, but in whether dedciding to buy, I would take into account that if anything went wrong, I would have to fight them through the credit card company rather than waste time dealing with them.

[failquail]

Not a tech boycot, but i do have company boycots.

Nothing annoys me more than vendor lock-in and proprietary software. As a result, Nvidia is public enemy number one for me and i will never buy another of their products until they drop their highly damaging to the industry proprietary products (Physx being the classic example, where they literally brought an open standard then actively went out of their way to make it run as slowly as possible on non-Nvidia systems)
Apple for similar reasons.

[anselhelm]

As others have said, "Apple", but it's less of a boycott and more akin to "I dislike their products and therefore won't buy any of them".

I think the purposes of this article was not to mean boycott in the sense of actually expecting to have an effect on products or sales but rather a question of what tech we avoid for whatever reasons. (I'm going by the "spirit" of the article, rather than the "letter" of the article.)

To this end, I won't buy into any Apple products on account of Apple's software and hardware, both of which mean nothing to me.

In a more general sense, I'm withholding tech upgrades entirely until 2017 now to allow time for AMD "Vega" and "Zen". I had hoped that "Polaris" would introduce HBM2, but it seems this has now been pushed back to its successor in "Vega".

[B0FHY]

I won't buy anything from Acer due to a period (at the very least) of such poor build quality, not to mention a customer service that you'd find abrasive on a traffic warden! After that it's more a case of preference or taste rather than anything as strong as a boycot

[deejayburnout]

Anything made by apple. over priced devices.

[Tarahumara]

Apple - We'll rip you off exorbitantly and proudly while making you feel good about yourself, then we gonna rip off
someone else's idea or design and sell it to you again 5 months later in different color. In the meantime we
will be on a lookout who to sue in case another company is more innovative than we are while avoiding xillions
of $$ in tax in our own home. We also don't give a slightest toss about dem factory worker kids as they are
part of something bigger and cool that Apple brand is.

HP - Their laptops, desktops and printers are rubbish, successfully designed to last no longer than 2 years or less,
preferably. Yea we're spending our money to pay dem designers that can ensure our stuff won't last rather than
quality control cuz dat drives dem sales ya'll know?

Seagate - Yes we could do reliable HDD's in the past but Ya know itz not a matter of choice, making HDD is getting more
and more complax by teh day! The failure rate shouldn't be too surprising to our customers c'mon now. Yes we
could do reliable HDD's in the past but we suddenly can't anymore. Oh btw the firmware failure fiasco that
cause xillions of our HDD's to suddenly die wasn't us we swear, it waz WD that has done it!! Oh we've also
nothing to do with keeping the prices gauged for as long as possible after the Thailand flooding it waz WD
again, we only want what's best fur our customerz ok thx.

Facebook - I use it very scarcely and don't dislike it as logging in is optional.


Nike - suppose not strictly tech related but maybe in not so distant future with implementation of chips that will
help us track how many more miles (many!) do I need to get out of these shoes to get my money worth before
they fall apart..? Anyhow, here at Nike we believe into brainwashing our customers and make teh impression some serious science ( that we have to re-invent with each shoe line ) goes into making our trainers rendering them twice as expensive than pair of truly sturdy boots or even the military boots! but shhh


Well, hope I didn't sound too cynical or negative


oh well

[flufflogic]

I don't "boycott" anything, but I have skipped Playstation hardware for 2 generations now simply because the exclusives aren't what I want to play. I game for the games, not some weird loyalty to the companies, and Sony simply don't make the games I like right now.

[DanceswithUnix]

I think the purposes of this article was not to mean boycott in the sense of actually expecting to have an effect on products or sales but rather a question of what tech we avoid for whatever reasons.

These QOTW threads should be called "Friday clickbait", that's what makes them interesting. So I'm pretty sure they did mean boycott, because that implies something really winds you up. Surprised I haven't seen any open source rantings, I guess we are all too laid back about open vs closed source. A long time Linux supporter, I am typing this in Windows so I can play games after.

[Moogly]

Warner Bros Games.

I bought MKX for PC.

Never again.

[dfour]

Anything apple. Overpriced and over hyped.

[ET3D]

I don't boycott anything. I buy what I feel fits my criteria, and these criteria do include my opinion of the company, but I don't hate any company with enough fervor to boycott its products completely.

I find the hipster responses to Apple funny. People apparently don't buy it because it's popular. Personally I prefer Android but will probably buy an iPad next, due to its better games compatibility.

Warner Bros Games.

LEGO games are the best. I could never boycott WB Games.

[Biohazardamo]

Anything to do with the BBC mostly as i dont agree with being forced to pay for a TV license even though i dont own a TV. If possible i would prefer to be blocked from all BBC services so they have no reason to charge me.

Apple as they are overpriced and under speced

Razer my old Dell keyboard that i got from a carboot sale for £2 lasted 8 years before finally giving up. my razer black widow didn't even manage 6 days. and felt cheaper made than my dell one

[Zhaoman]

I don't really boycott any companies but the closest is probably Google since I've never used Chrome and don't ever intend to. But even that is a pretty amateur attempt since I have had an Android phone (got as a gift) for nearly a year now (but I do turn the location tracking off). If I could live without Google I happily would but it's almost impossible not to inadvertently use their search or map services even when you don't mean to since they're embedded everywhere.

I would boycott Facebook if I could but it is just too useful as a tool to keep in touch with people. Again I try to keep my footprint down with the bare minimum of personal details and I rarely post anything but I do use it a lot as an IM service.

The one company starting to get on my nerves is Microsoft because they are pretty blatantly going down the Google route of trying to extract as much information as possible from you. I suspect I'll just have to eat it up like with Google and Facebook and just try to give them as little as possible. Privacy is probably not possible anymore in this day and age.

Amazingly enough I have never had any bad experience with any tech company so I don't hold any grudges in that regard.

[SteveWilliams]

Recently, I've come to boycott 2 tech companies. AMD and Asus...

With respects to the AMD products, I've just seen too many of the gfx cards die for my liking.

Asus, I used to be a loyal customer and would swear by their products, but within the space of 6 months, I had a faulty laptop and a motherboard. As part of the diagnosis of each, I was asked to do a BIOS update and both bricked them. Upon returning the laptop for RMA, I was asked to pay €400 (twice what I paid for it) to replace the board. With the motherboard, they wanted me to pay for the return costs plus the cost of replacing the chip, despite them telling me to do it to see if it fixed the issue with the board.

[ChuckyDB]

Apple
But then, I had to use an iphone last year for work! What a prehistoric system.
Recently, I've come to hate Samsung phones just as much.