Top 7 products that should still exist (pictures)

Five years is a long time in any industry, but this is particularly true for televisions. One of the saddest boom-to-gloom stories is that of the Pioneer Kuro, which disappeared in 2008 but is still a "="" rel="">reference TV today. It is a spectacular screen, and only in 2013 with the impending launch of the Panasonic ZT60 could the Kuro finally see its match. However, as Panasonic is considering ending its plasma business, it seems that these TVs just weren't made for these times.

A couple of years ago it seemed that Pure Digital had a monster on its hands with the Flip -- a small, handheld camera that did one thing and did it well: capture video. Cisco bought the company in 2009 for $590 million, and within two years the wheels just fell off. Despite larger storage capacities and higher resolutions, the competition from smartphones was simply too much.

In what I hope was more of a coincidence than a kiss of death, I reviewed the Logitech Squeezebox Touch just two months before it was pulled from the market. This is a shame, as this is by far my favorite piece of hi-fi gear. Though you can still find units online, its future as a supported platform is by no means guaranteed.

With rear projection now finally over, some people are looking to front projection as a cost effective big-screen replacement. Joe Kane's Samsung SP-A900B was the bee's knees when it was released, but it didn't kick-start a revolution in home theater and is, sadly, discontinued.

As the smartphone OS landscape quickly becomes a duopoly, some excellent operating systems (and phones) have gone by the wayside. Palm's (then HP's, then LG's) WebOS is sadly missed by its fans, and the WebOS-based Palm Pre was praised by CNET for its "well-integrated features and unparalleled multitasking capabilities." Can LG make WebOS succeed on smart TV? Time will tell.

Logitech took a hard hit with the public failure of its Google TV box, but that doesn't explain some of the questionable decisions it's made in the last 12 months. In addition to the Squeezebox, it's also discontinued its fantastic Harmony 900 and Harmony One remotes and replaced them with the mewling Harmony Touch.

Anyone who was anyone had a Motorola Razr. It was one of the last true omnipresent phones, save for perhaps the iPhone. I also remember with affection my Sony Ericsson and Panasonic models from the '90s. While Sony had flip phones up until last year, its catalog consists entirely of candy bars now.