Hype is the coin of the realm in the technology business. Some "Next Big Things" live up to all the fuss, but many don't. Our list of the 10 biggest technology failures includes a few that weren't all bad. In fact, some were quite good but were either too far ahead of their time or victims of overblown expectations. Others, of course, were downright lousy.

In 1993, Apple hyped its Newton PDA as only Apple can, with clever advertising and relentless word-of-mouth campaigns. But, the Newton flopped. One reason was the ridicule heaped on it by talk show comedians and comic strips, which focused on the supposed inaccuracy of the handwriting recognition. Also, the Newton was expensive at about $1000. In addition, the Newton was arguably ahead of its time.

Presaging our current era of downloadable movies, DIVX (not to be confused with DiVX, the video codec) flashed brightly in the late '90s, then flamed out. Customers could rent movies on DIVX discs to watch for two days. Then users would recycle the discs, or pay a continuation fee to keep viewing them. But as DVD format gained traction, DIVX died a rapid death.

Oh, those glorious days in the late '90s, when everyone thought they'd get rich off the Internet! One poorly conceived dot-com company after another was launched with an influx of money from the venture capitalists. The lucky ones went public and saw their stock prices soar only to plummet after the bubble burst in 2000. Many others never even made it that far before fizzling out.

Like the Apple Newton, IBM's PCjr was ahead of its time. Unlike Newton, PCjr was poorly designed. The PCjr was both expensive and unpleasant to use. Its infamous chiclet keyboard was wireless, but the raised keys were uncomfortable to use for basic tasks. PCjr didn't come with a hard drive. Instead, programs were contained on cartridges that users plugged into the front of the device.

Remember Flooz and Beenz? These two Internet bubble vendors arguably deserved to die simply because of their goofy names. They provided 'Internet currency' that could be used to purchase items on the Web, which many dot-com proponents of the late 90's considered the secret sauce that would lead to the wild success of e-commerce. Unfortunately, consumers preferred to use real money and credit cards.

It was an undeniably brilliant idea to launch 66 satellites and link them with mesh technology for routing calls across the world. And when it started in 1998, Iridium entranced the technology world. But it was extremely expensive to deploy, and most users were resistant to paying dollars per minute of call time and carrying around a phone larger than a brick.

Bob was a graphical user interface built on top of Windows 3.1. The idea was to make Windows palatable to nontechnical users. But Bob, released in 1995, was far more stupid than its users, most of whom saw the interface as an insult to their intelligence. Bob eventually faded away, and even Microsoft executives agreed it had been a miserable failure.

The Net PC was yet another small, overpromoted computing device aimed at home users. Like the thin clients, Net PCs consisted of a screen, keyboard and pointing device with little built-in intelligence. They were designed provide a simple user interface for web and e-mail access. The Problem: Why buy an extremely limited device when you could get a full-featured computer for the same price?

It's not known exactly when this dream emerged, although The Christian Science Monitor suggested in a 2005 article that the term "was probably first coined in a 1966 article in the Harvard Business Review on digital data storage.' But even if office paper consumption is leveling, take a look around your office: Is it paperless yet? Will it be anytime soon? We didn't think so.

The idea sounds fantastic. But VR never took off commercially, even though some useful niche applications, such as providing surgeons with a way to practice tricky medical procedures, still exist. May be because of consumer concerns that the equipment would cost too much or make them look silly. Or maybe virtual-reality worlds were less real and compelling than our own imaginations.