There are always winners and losers, just ask anyone that has watched X-Factor or American Idol, so which tech didn't make it through to the end of the decade and were rather left rotting in "fail" hell for eternity? Here are our favourites:

HD DVD

Arh it was good at the time, promised so much, but ultimately fell against the might of Sony who wasn't going to have yet another failed format on their hands. Whether in 10 years time we'll be writing about the death of Blu-ray is another matter, but after a very expensive public battle, Toshiba's HD DVD format was shown the door by the studios, ending the format war.

VHS

Relegated to the kids bedroom and boot sales across the land, the VHS finally saw the end of the tunnel in the Noughties. If you haven't by now upgraded to DVD, Blu-ray or even just pure downloads, you're so retro it's not even cool yet. In fact, stop reading this, go and find your player, and put it in the bin. The thought of fuzzy, orange-hued films makes us cringe.

CRT

Like VHS you've probably still got a CRT TV kicking around the house. That's fine. The picture quality is good, it lets you watch television and that's fine. It's a good job that the industry has moved on though. LCD, LED and OLED are the magic words now. The CRT train has left, say bye-bye.

Teletext

Killed in the final moments of 2009, we are amazed teletext held out that long against the power of the Internet. Mode 7 - we won't miss you.

Motorola's mobile phone software

The RAZR is one of the most popular phones of all time, and at the time it was one of the best designs, pushing the boundaries of what people thought a phone should look like. The trouble was, that the interface was the most badly designed menu system in the world. Ever. But with Motorola saying those days are behind them we can now look forward to better.

Windows Vista

Windows 7 is now here. You have no excuse. Enough said.

Sony MiniDisc

It's like CD but smaller, was one of the claims. Shame then that the bods at Sony didn't see that whole MP3 thing coming. Even when it was apparent that the MP3 file format was going to be dominant that still didn't stop them trying to work against it with ATRAC. The Sony MiniDisc trudged on for most of the decade, however thankfully it seems that Sony let that one finally go to the gadget neverland.

Polaroid

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. So powerful it can make completely rational people make bad decisions. In the case of the Noughties it was keeping Polariod alive as long as it did. The company behind the photos, that are destroying themselves from the moment you take them, managed to be relaunched, killed and then fought for as if it was salad cream. Strangely enough, the digital camera movement was just too strong. But wait....

Sega Dreamcast

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away Sega made gaming consoles for the home and the hand. Then Sony came and changed all that with the launch of the Sony PlayStation and then the PlayStation 2. Sega finally gave up the fight just 3 years after its UK launch in 2002, announcing that it was switching its focus from making hardware to just making software. The move ended 16 years of home consoles from the company. 

Gizmondo

It takes a brave company to go up against Sony and Nintendo, especially in the handheld console market. Looking back probably a precursor to the Apple iPhone, the Gizmondo was a "connected" games console with a Vodafone SIM that promised to change the way we played games on the go. A flashy store on Regent Street, a founder with a penchant for fast cars and jail time and links to the Russian mob, this, like any good video game, ended in a ball of flames. 

Recommended articles