Lol, I have a slightly different list - "Things I Liked Last Year But Have Cooled Off Towards This Year".
1. Disc Brakes. They work great in the wet, and on my winter bike it's nice that I'm not grinding stuff into my rims when I brake. But damn it, I have 2 different bikes with 2 different brands of disc brakes (Shimano Alfine disc brakes, and something Avid and hydraulic) and they both have the same issues - once it gets cold or they get wet, about 50% of the time when you brake they squeal really, really annoyingly. And any time I take off the front tire and put it back on again, there's always a good chance the brake pad will start rubbing against the brakes slightly, requiring adjustment to get them well aligned again. My rim brakes just don't have these problems, and with decent pads haven't been to bad in the rain either.
2. Nokian 294 studded tires. It's more a matter of overblown expectations - I thought I'd be able to ride in the snow on my mountain bike with these. But they're much heavier, pricier, and only marginally better (in my experience) in any snow over my much skinner Schwalbe Marathon Winter tires. (I wrote about it in the Winter biking section.) We got 6 inches of snow here, and biking on unplowed off-street paths is still impossible. (To be fair it's apparently also impossible sometimes with a Pugsley, so it may be less the tires themselves than physical limitations of bikes and snow).
3. Every bike light I've ever purchased after my first one. The first one was cheap(ish), a Dinotte 200l, and worked well enough. Every light after that has been more expensive and something of a disappointment - I've never found a beam pattern I'm really happy with. I've owned a Dinotte 600L (terrible beam pattern in my opinion), 2 Dinotte 400L's (decent but not enough throw for road biking), Light and Motion 900 (more throw but a bit of a tunnel vision effect), Light and Motion 1400 (the opposite of the 900 - very wide beam, but to many complaints from oncoming traffic on the MUP, the "low" setting is to high at 350 lumens, and it puts a tiny bit to bright of light right in front of the bike versus further from the bike, though that's a smaller thing).
4. The supposed maintenance benefits of an IGH hub (chain version). Turns out most of the maintenance is spent on the chain which is still has. If I wasn't to lazy to clean any of my chains most of the time, lol (once a year at most), I'd still be spending some serious time on chain maintenance. To be fair, I another complaint is how hard it is to find an IGH+Chain bike with a full chaincase which might have solved my problem.
5. My Civia Highland as a winter bike. It's not terrible - I'm still riding it. But in addition to #4, and even not counting all the noise issues I finally got sorted out (Civia did go way out of their way to help me), it's really disappointing that it doesn't take larger than 35c tires. Just seems like a...rediculous oversight in retrospect.
6. Merino Wool - It's more a matter of overblown expectations. They said it was as smooth as cotton - yeah right. Still a little itchy on my sensitive skin (like my chest, but not my legs, oddly enough). And they say it doesn't smell - well it doesn't get that "odor" like it needs to be washed. But when it gets wet at all, no matter if it's freshly washed or been worn 5 times, it still smells vaguely like a sheep. It is still really is warm in the winter - there's been several days I'm warmer wearing the wool around outside than I am sitting on my couch at home! But some of the hype was a let down.
I guess I should make a list of "Things I Bought Last Year That *Haven't* Disappointed Me". :-)
1. My Schwalbe Marathon winter tires have continued to perform very well.
2. I have some Goretex winter gloves that look a lot like the "Cyclocross" ones pictured above, but actually have about twice the insulation that have continued to be pretty great. I got them at Freewheel Bike in Minnesota. They're hard to find - haven't found them anywhere else.
3. My Specialized S-Works Helmet that has the plastic band on the inside that goes all the way around the inside of the helmet, rather than halfway like most models, has continued to be the most comfortable helmet I've ever worn. It's price is rediculous - it's like over $200 retail, I got it for $125 on clearance. But it's also the only helmet I've ever owned that I forget I'm wearing while I'm biking. It's that decently comfortable for me.
4. My Shower's Pass Elite 2.0 jacket was annoying because I was stuck choosing between a little to short or to baggy, but even though I went with baggy it's been pretty great for winter riding. Really way, way more comfortable to ride in than anything non-windproof that I had tried before. (Though it occasionally gets a little clammy if I'm pushing it, still looking for that 100% perfect jacket...). Not totally without complaints - wish it had front hand pockets, to.
5. Time ATAC pedals and cleats. Best mountain bike cleats I've used, and I've also used spd's and crank brothers. Spd's were ok, but I wanted some float, and they have a reputation for not being as good at shedding mud, snow, and gunk. Never took to the Crank Brothers - worse of of the bunch for my knees, strange cleat height issues made float inconsistent (floated fine on one foot, but rubbed the pedal on the other - not a problem with the atac's so it's not a shoe problem).
The Time Atac's have decent float which I like (though after I changed pedaling technique I found I needed less of it, but they're still great). I've now waded through piles of snow and never had a cleat get jammed up. No problems clipping out in an emergency, either, and believe my I've emergency unclipped several times now.
6. Dynamo hub and light - they've just worked, and continued working.
Disappointments -
1. Hitch Mounted Bike Racks. Thought that with a hitch rack I'd finally get a rack that was stable, easy to put on and off the car, let me carry 4 bikes, and let me get in the back of the vehicle. Well - at least the last one was true.
Stability - Turns out none of them are terribly stable. Connecting a rack of bikes to the car via a single connecting point (the hitch) seems to be just inherently unstable. The hitch was designed with a trailer with it's own wheels in mind - is has a single connection point so the rack always bounces a little bit, plus the racks themselves have a little play in them. The "hold by the frame" style was the worst - I'd look back and the bikes were bouncing up and down in a disturbing way every time I hit the slightest bump (a problem I did NOT have with the strap-style racks). I was perfectly fine putting my carbon bike on the strap-style rack where it didn't bounce, but it was just way to much bounce for me with the hitch rack. And it would have been difficult to actually fit 4 bikes on the rack. The Saris T-Rax I bought also let the mounts on the rack slide around, resulting in all your bikes stacked up against each other by the end of the trip.
So I went with the "hold by the wheel" style of rack. Much better for bounce - still a little bit, but now it's bouncing against the tire with air in it rather than the frame so I'm not constantly bouncing the frame. At least on the front...problem is, you can't carry more than 2 or 3 bikes on it with a small or midsize car because they usually don't take a better hitch than a 1.25" Class 1 hitch, and in order to carry more than 2 or 3 bikes you need a 2" Class 3 hitch. There are some 3 bike versions available out there, but all the 4 bike versions weigh to much and need a sturdier hitch. So it's not like they carry more than the strap version anyways, and if you want to go biking with 3 other people, you still can't just take one car (or you need to buy a roof rack in addition to your hitch rack).
They are also more work to put on and off the car. You need to screw in a bolt to attach the rack to the hitch, which ends up taking about as long as it did to put on the strap-on rack. The rack itself is also quite large and heavy - the t-rax was noticeably larger than my old "strap" rack, and the "hold by the wheel" rack is not only wider than the car just for the rack, but also weighs 50 pounds itself. It's pretty huge - it's about as long as my couch. With my strap rack I just kept it in the trunk. With the hitch rack that's impossible, it's just to big. Not such a big deal if you have a garage, or if you're willing to leave it permanently attached to the vehicle, but a problem if you're keeping it in your apartment. Problem with leaving it on the vehicles is worries about rust and rain - and I live in Minnesota.
And funny enough, a hitch rack isn't really more secure than a strap rack either. Even if you attach the bikes to the rack, removing the bike-holding part of the rack from the hitch (even with a locking hitch pin) just requires the right size wrench and removing one bolt.
And did I mention that the hitch rack cost over $150 for the hitch and over $300 for the rack itself, so over $450? And with that it only carries 2 bikes...
If you go with a roof rack, you have to deal with not pulling into your garage or under low hanging signs with it - everyone I know who's used one has at one point forgotten about this with something on top. They're even more expensive. There's often whistling with the rack (from what I've read), and it takes some noticeable time to take the rack on and off...
If I had it to do over again, I think I might have just stuck with the "strap" rack, lol.