Les Jones

Tech > Wired's Lame Vaporware Issue

Wired released ther annual vaporware report, tracking the most notoriously overdue technology products. Thing is, some of the products in their top 10 are barely late enough to warrant a harshly-worded interoffice memo at some companies.

Alienware's Video Array is a high-end bit of hardware and software that allows video cards to run in parallel, dramatically boosting performance. Or so the company says. Alienware promised the technology in Q4 2004. Needless to say, it's still off-planet.

Golly, and here it is January 7, 2005 in the Wired offices. Welcome to the futuristic year 2005, when a major magazine publishes an article about a tech product being a quarter late.

At the #9 spot is Intel. They were supposed to push their Pentium 4 to 4.0 GHz this year, but - get this, fellas! - they only reached - gentleman, prepare to guffaw! - 3.8 GHz! Flavin!

Wired's knock on TiVo is equally lame. TiVo actually released the Tivo ToGo service just before Wired went to press with their vaporware report, but Wired is too uptight to admit it, and resorts to using exclamation points to get in their zingers.

TiVo announced the service at CES in January 2004, and released it Jan. 3, 2005. That was cutting it very close, TiVo! And the product still doesn't support the Mac or DVD burning!

Look, tracking vaporware used to be good nerdy fun. I say that as a past reader of the pre-Web era Murph's Vaporware. But if Wired can't dis anybody better than this they need to drop the feature or change their name to Tired.