There have been many notable failures in history - English cooking, French modesty, German humour and the Canadian home for baby seals. But the IT industry has had more than its fair share of clunkers.

Take for example the AMD wristwatch featuring PowerNow!™. It certainly had impressive battery life, but slowing down when you weren't looking at it and stopping altogether when you took it off did somewhat impair its timekeeping efficacy.

Who can forget the IBM PC Jr? A cut down PC so cut down it wasn't PC compatible any more. Or the ICL One-Per-Desk? A Sinclair QL with a phone bolted on the end. And the Sinclair QL itself, of course.

Microsoft claimed Bob was the future of Rock 'n' Roll (or GUIs, anyway). It wasn't.

Then there was Intel's fabulous Virtual Millennium Dome. A web site so terrific that it had even fewer visitors than the real thing.

And Intel's Cape Cod mobo [That's enough, thankyou - Ed] ®