One thing you missed about the corporate leadership shuffle in the late 90s....in 1997 Compaq hired a new VP of corporate materials. Six months later, that same guy was hired away by another struggling PC vendor named Apple by Steve Jobs. That man was....Tim Cook.
My great grandmother bought a Compaq Presario laptop for my graduation present when I was done, or nearly done, with high school. I loved that thing. It died, but not until after several years of faithful service.
So, in 97 my mother had a compaq....long story short, 3 days before warranty ran out the computer would reboot after about 5 minutes and the csr on the phone asked me if she could just save every 5 minutes....anyways even though it was under warenty i had to speak to a supervisor, to get it sent back, 3 months later we got the computer back, in the same condition, it had not been looked at and not fixed. I called them again and they said its out of warranty. I said the problem happened under warranty and you didn't fix it when it was.......after multiple supervisors i got it sent back again, and 3 more months later it came back and seamed to work fine. I hated their customer service so bad I still tell this tale of woe. Also, not to mention I called one number, for whom she purchaced the computer and they didn't have anything to do with the warenty, and I had to call a separete phone tree and group of supervisors handling the disputes and returns and rediculous conformation numbers, etc, I hated them so much.
I remember Compaq like it was yesterday. In the Mid and late 90s, they were EVERYWHERE, My Mom worked for them as an Assembler Mounter in 1994-95, they EVEN paid her for her Maternity leave to give birth to my Sister during the Early summer of 1994. Compaq Also literally offered us a FREE Presario, also at the time, they used Netscape a whole lot(my Neighbor worked for their GUI and Assembly Language division, and had a Deskpro. I remember Compaq being one of the Best Damn PCs I ever used and operated, FAST, Userfriendly, easy prompts, simplistic skins and Interfacing and an easy to mod CD ROM Driver. Then in just 10 years time, they basically faded into obscurity, I remember having a personal Desktop build in late 1999, expected a Compaq, but was surprised that it was a Gateway(Which had become their main competitor by that time). By 2004, it was all Leveno and Acer, and for the Mass PCs for offices,Schools,Universities and Libraries, it became Dell,Dell and More Dell.
@@alexhajnal107 Our Neighbor Roberto in 1994-1995 worked at Compaq's Houston Office, the same one my Mom worked at during the time. He had a 7 year old daughter named Carla who played with my little brother. His wife, Liza worked at the CompuServe and she would always provide snickerdoodles to me and my 6 year old brother whenever we would visit and he would play with their daughter. The Family were a bunch of Computer nerds, but Roberto was the biggest of them all. He worked for Compaq Houston's UI Department coding and designing Interfaces and Skins and did double duty for Compaq HQs in Palo Alto(VERY Early Work-From-Home) handling pre loading and Assembly writing for Windows 3.1 and Software Applications. He wrote the Suite Package that was sold in Built in and Retail sold Presarios. Roberto also showed me how to use Netscape in late '94, it was the first time that I learned what "Cyberspace" was.. I was 11 going on 12.
Unfortunately by the late 90s, companies like Gateway and Compaq went from being "affordable" to feeling "cheap." Companies like Dell and HP offered much better built systems with more options - and once they were able to scale up operations and lower cost, it was curtains for the budget brands. Dell and HP also did a much better job marketing to enterprise and large organizations like schools.
22:15 - Actually, the Desktop PC was once called the *Micro*- computer and it isn't the size of a thimble either. Then again, compared to a computer that literally fills up a whole room.... calling it Micro kinda fits as does the Mini even if it is as big as refrigerator.
38:45 F Carly. She single-handedly destroyed HP. [HP's upper management had *always* been engineers. Then some bright spark decided to hire her. She was great for the shareholders but killed the company.] Addendum: If there's one bright spot in the sordid affair it's that the instrumentation division was spun off before Carly and her cabal could "right-size" it into oblivion. Originally split off as Agilent, the precision test and measurement division was further spun off as Keysight (a name some might recognize). They very much continue the HP philosophy. Interestingly they still offer kit designed back in the '70s and '80s (frequency references, desktop multimeters, etc.); that might sound odd but to an engineer or scientist as long as it meets specs (it does) that's a very good thing due to familiarity, repeatability, ease of integration, etc.
When I worked for Computer city in Troy Michigan for five years, I sold more compact than any other computer. It was the most popular computer in the world and now it’s a joke and a memory. That young people don’t even know exist. Hilarious I love it.❤
The first computer I remember my family owning was a Compaq Presario. The only things I used it for was CD-ROM games yes, but Compaq introduced me to computers years ago. We sadly bought a new Dell desktop computer pretty quickly though... Kept the mouse and keyboard though!
Our first was a Hewlett-Packard but got a black compaq presario in 1997.. I was ten years old and I was having like a panic attack at the store because my mom and dad were about to spend $3000 on it 😂 I was certainly and abnormal child 😂
@ pauliedibbs9028 no I do not lol it was black.. had snazzy speakers as part of the monitor.. and was my first time watching a dvd. Think it came with a live Eric Clapton thing and six days seven nights with Harrison ford lol
My first “corporate job” was Compaq. It was a really good company with great benefits. Unheard of cheap health insurance and 6% matching 401k. Pretty good vacation earning. This was 1990. Then 1993 happened. Started bean counting. Started buying company after company… 1987 to then was awesome. Astroworld rented out for us. Eckhard was a canoe…
When I started in the IT field, I supported Compaq & HP Servers (before the HP merger). The Compaq systems were ultra high quality, very expensive, but extremely reliable. The Compaqs rarely broke down. HP systems were total GARBAGE!. The very smart thing that HP got out of the merger were the Engineers from Compaq which made HPs systems much better. HP servers now are very reliable & high quality, thanks to Compaq Engineers.
I was almost hired straight out of college by Compaq back in 1990 as a hardware engineer. They flew me out to Houston and the interviews went really well. It was a beautiful campus, and would have been a great place to work. I ended up with a better offer to work for Amdahl on mainframes in California. I would have loved to work for Compaq, but as this video shows the company started diving and was eventually bought out by HP, but I'd probably have been laid off anyway during that time. Yes, eventually Amdahl ended up crashing as well, but it was also a great experience.
The Compaq video host/speaker is John de Lancie the actor that played the role of "Q" in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Freakin' Cool. Anyways, an intriguing documentary concerning the Compaq story. 🤜🤛👍🖖
I worked tech support for Compaq in 1994 (they outsourced it to 'Project Gold'). Their GUI made the computers really hard to troubleshoot, and they treated us pretty badly. I did a lot of tech support in the mid-90s and it was by far my worst experience, though at least I didn't have to walk retirees through motherboard replacements (looking at you, Zeos/Micron.)
My brother and I each had used suitcase Compaqs in the late 80's as teenagers. We drug them between our parents' houses so we could be on our BBS's at both places. Back then being online was a total sausage fest, but the few girls on the boards were respected. It was such a fun era and I'm so glad to have been that age at that time. I have loads of great memories of those klunky suitcase PC's and we learned so much messing around with them! I'm 50 now and am still very into tech. 😊
My first introduction to internet was BBS as well! It felt like dark web fluff!! 1st you had to flip to the back of circulars or shopper magazines to find a phone number to a local BBS then dial into it.. boy once that connection was made.. it was on! It all felt wrong, like you were being bad!! Weird sexual type games dot matrix style!! Anarchist Cook Book access which was fun to read but I had not intentions to actually create anything. But the only thing I fudged up.. I printed out some girl on girl scene on my pops work printer with my buddy.. but my pops rolled up same time and we Road Runner’d outta there. But I left the picture on the printer. Whoops! Those were the days!
9.6B for DEC, and they didn't know what to do with the Alpha CPUs and VMS (operating system) technology that were the heart of DEC, and for which the services business existed and relied upon. My employer was a very good customer -- we liked the reliability of VMS, and the ease of software development.
Maybe it's just because I was around it all the time during my childhood, but hearing DEC said as "D E C" instead of said like "Deck" really bothers me.
Agreed! How does one do all this research and totally screw up something like this? What else was wrong and/or missing in the video? It’s not like the people are all dead and there is nobody around from that time. I had a college undergrad account on a VAX before the UNIX (not on Digital hardware) took over. And I only just sent my child to college. I’m not dead yet! Honestly wouldn’t saying “Digital” everywhere have sufficed and sounded better if “deck” was opposed by this video’s creator?
I'll let it slide. He's done worse in the past and his pronunciations have been getting much better over all. Still want to hear him pronounce SCSI though.
@@alexhajnal107 mmmm, no, it was always CDC. But yeah, Digital was always pronounced DEC (and I knew of them in the 80s when I worked for Data General. DG was bought by EMC which was bought by Dell)
I remember growing up around these. I also remember the branded versions of Windows. They were quite the big deal back then! The most infuriating thing for me was their lack of compatibility with non-Compaq PC's most of the time.
Back in the day EVERYONE knew what AOL was … it just exploded everywhere all at once. People went to Walmart to buy a budget PC system (their first so they had no idea if the specs were any good) JUST FOR AOL. Buy breakfast cereal? Latest version of AOL software on floppy disk 💾 would be inside! It’s hard to believe people didn’t know (then) what aol was. Today? Sure. But when AOL’s server(s) would go down, it was headline news in 1994. There was no escape from AOL.
@@nickpalance3622 I seem to recall my parents asking me about specifically that situation around that time and having to explain as a barely teenager that aol is "like the internet" and can "give you internet" when we didn't even have a computer. And when we did get a computer I loved the Cereal box CD-Rom games that proudly proclaimed that they "Include AOL" . Not quite the floppy you mentioned, but close enough.
@ yeah the floppies 💾 came first but after a few years CD-ROM drives were prevalent even in the Walmart special so it made sense to pack those into cereal boxes since stamping a plastic disc is cheaper and faster than writing magnetic media and then the cost of the rigid shell and the metal sliding door and spring etc etc. they had to reach mass audiences so going straight to CD-ROM wasn’t an early option. I saved a bunch of both floppies and CD-ROMs all still sealed. They are in a box somewhere in the house.
@ my father was an executive there. i grew up my entire childhood in digitals world. it was NEVER pronounced that way or with periods. it was the way IBM did things and IBM was a dirty word.
@victoriafrench it's English. It's an acronym. Just because people were lazy, or "cool", doesn't change language. You can alter the pronunciation of names, but this isn't a name.
@ no its called disrespect to a once amazing company. its willful disrespect as you were already told how to pronounce it and you continue to argue on merit of language. a language that is malleable and changes every ten years. so we are done. i see you.
@victoriafrench that's ignorant. Only names have "pronunciations". Instead of realizing that people were lazy and saying it wrong. You want to show your grade school education.
The thing I most remember about Compaq was that two beeps was a normal POST unlike everything else of the day. This even included some of they're rack mount servers right up to the HP acquisition.
I have a Compaq Portable and a Portable II (you know, the one that came out months later with a hard drive because everyone was asking the stores to upgrade to them and it was getting ridiculous). I learned to write my first program in 1988 on one. Good stuff!
I was lucky enough to work in the salad days of IT in the mid to late 90’s. Compaq used to throw some amazing golf “tournaments” in Houston. They’d give away thousands of dollars in golf equipment. I still have a nice driver and golf bag I won in a raffle after one of their tournaments. Good times!
$3k for Compaq in 1982? Wow. I'm currently building myself a new gaming rig; water cooled i9-14900k, 4080Super graphics, 128 Gb RAM, and 12 Tb of M.2 storage for nearly the same price.. How far we've come
This is gonna be a silly question, but do you narrate any other channels? Your voice sounds incredibly familiar, like I may have heard you in the lost media community. But I can't place who you sound like. You do fantastic work here, and I'm happy to have stumbled upon your channel!
There's a sports and stadia channel called Five Points who sounds the same but is a different guy. Even the sense of humour and presentation are very similar
One important element of Compaq losing market edge in the early 1990s was that they lead the collaboration of companies in creating the AT computer standard, which ATX is built on. This was because IBM was trying to regain market control of their PC architecture via making the PS/2 architecture (not the console), and they decided to not play IBM's game and that meant Compaq had to make a genuinely open architecture, meaning their rivals had an even playing field with them, but it also meant IBM no longer had the monopoly on what a personal computer is. So a lot of things are an inevitable consequence of that. Low Spec Gaming has excellent vids on this on Nebula, and some of them may be on UA-cam.
Hey I noticed Asianometry released a video similar to yours a few days after yours went live (probably just a coincidence). However watching that video was like listening to an insurance seminar. I couldn't help but immediately contrast his with yours, and how much more I enjoy your narrative style. For whatever that's worth. :)
The first computer we had was a Compaq Presario originally with Windows 95 and later upgraded to Windows 98. The thing was dead slow and froze up all the time. Around 2001 we got a HP Tower which we used until 2007 or so running Windows 98 the whole time mostly for CD-ROM games and programs but we also use dial-up internet on the HP
I have some of old internal publications from DEC, HP, IBM, Unisys, and Sperry-UNIVAC. I got a real kick out of reading a somewhat bitter sounding HP document about how DEC was a serious competitor that needs to be undermined at every opportunity. I read it shortly after HP bought Compaq. By then the old Unix market was running on fumes as Dell and Linux were taking over the market in which DEC and HP had competed.
If they're at all of a technical nature I'd encourage you to scan those and post them on the Internet Archive or Bitsavers. (They'd also likely aid with the scanning.)
I did not know that happened to Compaq. I remember the Compaq computers as a kid and my Dad had a Compaq computer in his office and one of the computers, he had was the one with the laptop with a laptop deck that connects with the desk screen and that was so cool.
I bought my very first computer, a Compaq, in 1995. I have fond memories of that computer, it opened up a whole new world for me. Of course I was on AOL. 😅
My parents had a Presario 4160 from 1997 (?) and it was definitely the super budget model - it always seemed broken somehow with how slow it was - the thing was a Pentium 150 and the 120Mhz machines at school were always faster and more responsive than it was even after I secretly and slightly overclocked it to 166MHz by moving the bus speed select jumper from 60 to 66MHz and begged, borrowed and stole it from 24MB to 72MB of RAM - this was 4 16MB SIMMs and 8MB on the motherboard explaining the weird total. Part of it was that it didn't have any L2 Cache - had the solder pads for the COASt module slot on the motherboard but no slot. It would not run MS Monster truck madness at the Pentium 166 setting (this is how it was selected in that game) well at all and I always had to use the lowest setting and still got a terrible choppy framerate. I distinctly remember it being so slow that it would draw in the icons in the explorer in Windows 95 singly - one after the other and this always infuriated me. In addition to being overclocked a bit It got a bigger and faster HDD and an ATI Rage 128 video card and it was still a s l u g - no amount of reinstalling windows or pruning bloatware or anything ever did much to change it the damn thing was just kind of fked up somehow. I know it used the 430VX chipset which was the cheapest one but that can't have been that much of an impact?
I had an ipaq in 2002ish. It wasnt a touchscreen, it needed a stylus (or a fingernail and hard press). It also didnt have wifi. It was basically a color screen, microsoft pocketpc, more advanced palm pilot.
Touch screens that used a stylus were usually resistive ones (as opposed to the capacitive ones that are ubiquitous today). A big advantage that resistive screens have is that they work when wet, something that's nigh-impossible with capacitive screens.
My parental units worked at Compaq from nearly the start. Rod was a great guy and it was an amazing company. Eckhard Pfeiffer destroyed the company. The Presarios were called the "PrettySorrys" inside the company. Shipped with the worst modems on the planet, while markets as a home PC for getting on the internet. Of course the Portal was my first computer.
For that market the primary consideration is support [service contracts], not raw performance. But yea, cost-cutting measures can seriously hamper performance, e.g. choosing a 68008 CPU over a 68000 [wrong era but same idea].
My dad bought me a Compaq Presario when I was 12 around 1996. I used that thing so much leading to its inevitable death a few years later. Replaced by an eMachine of all things. Ugh. 🤬
Bit of a correction here; Compaq servers, their ProLiant line specifically, dominated the mid-to-late 1990s and were not Windows NT nor Unix systems. By far, the dominant corporate server NOS was Novell NetWare, which dominated the 1990s in corporate environments across all server hardware manufacturers.
Oh Compaq. I remember my IT days supporting ProLiant servers as well as doing some side work supporting Presarios. Current have a P4-based Presarios (given to me a few years back) that I'm getting back up and running for an early 2000s era gaming system.
I had the HP COMPAQ with both names. I forgot that part! Kids at school would be like what kind of computer do you have? And talk trash bc they thought I was just naming computers bc I didn’t have a clue😂
The whole time I was watching this I kept thinking about how I used to love their cow themed boxes......then I realized that was actually Gateway computers. 90s were wild.
When you described those simi-anual meetings, 9:48, you said dialog between the management and the "boots on the ground" was encouraged. My first thought was that they encouraged dialog between the boots on the ground and the boots on the desk. 😎 👢👢
W-mart ALWAYS has at LEAST one brand in stock that associates in electronics department will will advise 'tape the receipt to thr bottom' BECAUSE YOU WILL BE BRINGING IT BACK!' Sadly, for a while thos was Compaq. I did so, and got THREE DAYS out of a new computer....
When i was a kid in Nigeria in 99, the first computer my dad bought for his work and for home use was a Compaq desktop. I remember using that machine to play Prince of Persia and many other games 😂 We had no internet then but it was still fun. After tgat i rarely saw Compaq computers anymore
17:50 I sold one of these recently - it needed a LOT of work as it was stored outside for a bit - brilliant engineering though, I was able to save it completely.
There's quite a story to be made with the downfall of Gateway. Acer did't buy the _business_ of Gateway, only the Trademarks. The business, the huge backlog of orders and the lifetime warranties went to MPC (formerly Zeos). MPC went t!ts up one year and one day after the "acquisition", extinguishing the Gateway warranties.
I'll always think of one of my favorite estate sales I've been to when I think of Compaq, the guy seemed to be an employee of Compaq (later HP), to what capacity I don't know, but they lived in a pretty nice area. There were so many cool things, like little branded Compaq bear keychains, flip flops, etc, and of course I ended up with a Presario laptop from the sale too. It's a pretty decent laptop too. Sucks what happened lmao
Had a Compaq Presario back in 99, a tower... I ended up using it with spare parts from an HP in 2002 and an nVidia GeForce 5200,,, With overclocking, that PC lasted me until 2009 and ran better than a brand new Dell until my mom spilled coffee inside it...
"you must make money to spend money" I think this pretty much sums up your ending statement about having to first make a profit in order to please the shareholders; that you can't prop up a business on "pleasing the shareholders" alone I.e you must make money (a profitable business) to spend money (pay dividends to shareholders/please shareholders)
Come on man you did not discuss Compaq phase out of DEC Alpha and the adoption of the Intel Risc based Itanium CPU line. Compaq wanted to get into the mid range and workstation business. Intel X86 servers won.
@chebrubin Itanium was considered VLIW, not RISC. The compiler was responsible for stringing several instructions together in a Very Large Instruction Word. This concept was different from CISC or RISC, and was referred to as an evolution of RISC. This made the compiler overly complex and real-world performance was disappointing.
I bought my first Compaq around 99 from radio shack I had to finance it because it was almost 2500 with all the bells and whistles and keep in mind this was in 1999 😆
I had a compaq laptop in late 2014 and used it until 2021 and I started to hate it so much. The laptop I had kept constantly dropping the internet connection randomly when I didn't expect it. It happened so much I kept taking my rage out on it until it stop working completely (or worked when it felt like it).
My dad’s company he worked for ordered a ton of these computers. Oddest machines to work on, down to the screws as they used hex screws. Can you please do a video on the Reading Company? That would be an awesome video.
Torx screws were the easiest to set the proper torque for the screws. Our assembly lines literally had 1 person screwing the mobo down, then another putting in memory, then another screwing in the power supply, then another screwing in a drive, then another plugging in a nic, then another plugging in cables, etc. Then another screwing on the cover/lid… Depending on the line there could be up to 50 people.
Could you make a documentary about the New York Susquehanna & Western? Out of all the northeastern railroads that struggled throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the Susquehanna is unique, because they’re still around.
They released a model of dot matrix printer that was freestanding that was the loudest consumer printer ever made. When I was younger I worked in a computer shop and we would repurpose a lot of old stuff and one of those came in and I would play a trick on the owner and schedule a print task for after I left for the day and it was up against the wall and he said that it would make everything shake and it was loud
Why don’t you just do a 5 of the Worst Mergers Ever video at this point? You’ve covered the Penn Central merger, the TimeWarner-AOL merger, Kmart’s purchase of Sears, and now this.
I had a Compaq tower in middle school in the mid/late 90’s with a Pentium 2. It lasted FOREVER despite being outdated haha…so I can’t talk too much trash on it. Then again I think my parents paid like $3k for the whole ‘monitor/tower/printer/scanner’ deal from Best Buy with like a $300 mail in rebate (remember those? Haha).
We had a Compaq when I was in high school. And at the time (mid to late 90's) they were considered cheap ass low end computers, at best. Basically the same reputation that Dell now has. My first PC was a Compaq too, which was... not really upgradable as I recall. The monitor lasted me a good long while though.
One thing you missed about the corporate leadership shuffle in the late 90s....in 1997 Compaq hired a new VP of corporate materials. Six months later, that same guy was hired away by another struggling PC vendor named Apple by Steve Jobs. That man was....Tim Cook.
😮
Elon Musk was also at Compaq for a short period.
*tim apple
@@rngwrm Tim Cook.
@@Tornado1994 tell me you don't get it w/o telling me you don't get it. hint: "tim apple" is not a rngwrm original
My great grandmother bought a Compaq Presario laptop for my graduation present when I was done, or nearly done, with high school. I loved that thing. It died, but not until after several years of faithful service.
So, in 97 my mother had a compaq....long story short, 3 days before warranty ran out the computer would reboot after about 5 minutes and the csr on the phone asked me if she could just save every 5 minutes....anyways even though it was under warenty i had to speak to a supervisor, to get it sent back, 3 months later we got the computer back, in the same condition, it had not been looked at and not fixed.
I called them again and they said its out of warranty. I said the problem happened under warranty and you didn't fix it when it was.......after multiple supervisors i got it sent back again, and 3 more months later it came back and seamed to work fine.
I hated their customer service so bad I still tell this tale of woe. Also, not to mention I called one number, for whom she purchaced the computer and they didn't have anything to do with the warenty, and I had to call a separete phone tree and group of supervisors handling the disputes and returns and rediculous conformation numbers, etc, I hated them so much.
I remember Compaq like it was yesterday. In the Mid and late 90s, they were EVERYWHERE, My Mom worked for them as an Assembler Mounter in 1994-95, they EVEN paid her for her Maternity leave to give birth to my Sister during the Early summer of 1994. Compaq Also literally offered us a FREE Presario, also at the time, they used Netscape a whole lot(my Neighbor worked for their GUI and Assembly Language division, and had a Deskpro. I remember Compaq being one of the Best Damn PCs I ever used and operated, FAST, Userfriendly, easy prompts, simplistic skins and Interfacing and an easy to mod CD ROM Driver.
Then in just 10 years time, they basically faded into obscurity, I remember having a personal Desktop build in late 1999, expected a Compaq, but was surprised that it was a Gateway(Which had become their main competitor by that time). By 2004, it was all Leveno and Acer, and for the Mass PCs for offices,Schools,Universities and Libraries, it became Dell,Dell and More Dell.
_"GUI and Assembly Language division"_
That's a rather strange combination of foci.
@@alexhajnal107 Our Neighbor Roberto in 1994-1995 worked at Compaq's Houston Office, the same one my Mom worked at during the time. He had a 7 year old daughter named Carla who played with my little brother. His wife, Liza worked at the CompuServe and she would always provide snickerdoodles to me and my 6 year old brother whenever we would visit and he would play with their daughter. The Family were a bunch of Computer nerds, but Roberto was the biggest of them all. He worked for Compaq Houston's UI Department coding and designing Interfaces and Skins and did double duty for Compaq HQs in Palo Alto(VERY Early Work-From-Home) handling pre loading and Assembly writing for Windows 3.1 and Software Applications. He wrote the Suite Package that was sold in Built in and Retail sold Presarios. Roberto also showed me how to use Netscape in late '94, it was the first time that I learned what "Cyberspace" was.. I was 11 going on 12.
@@Tornado1994 what about Toshiba Laptops? They were still big back then….
@@paulsz6194 They still make them, under the Dynabook Brand. I've had one for 2 years.
Is that the same neighbor you think you are going to hook up with one of these days or another one?
Unfortunately by the late 90s, companies like Gateway and Compaq went from being "affordable" to feeling "cheap." Companies like Dell and HP offered much better built systems with more options - and once they were able to scale up operations and lower cost, it was curtains for the budget brands. Dell and HP also did a much better job marketing to enterprise and large organizations like schools.
It's a shame that HP has turned into what it is now. That used to be a great company.
22:15 - Actually, the Desktop PC was once called the *Micro*- computer and it isn't the size of a thimble either. Then again, compared to a computer that literally fills up a whole room.... calling it Micro kinda fits as does the Mini even if it is as big as refrigerator.
38:45 F Carly. She single-handedly destroyed HP.
[HP's upper management had *always* been engineers. Then some bright spark decided to hire her. She was great for the shareholders but killed the company.]
Addendum: If there's one bright spot in the sordid affair it's that the instrumentation division was spun off before Carly and her cabal could "right-size" it into oblivion. Originally split off as Agilent, the precision test and measurement division was further spun off as Keysight (a name some might recognize). They very much continue the HP philosophy. Interestingly they still offer kit designed back in the '70s and '80s (frequency references, desktop multimeters, etc.); that might sound odd but to an engineer or scientist as long as it meets specs (it does) that's a very good thing due to familiarity, repeatability, ease of integration, etc.
I love that Q is doing the intro tour for Compaq. That brings back the day.
When I worked for Computer city in Troy Michigan for five years, I sold more compact than any other computer. It was the most popular computer in the world and now it’s a joke and a memory. That young people don’t even know exist. Hilarious I love it.❤
Please do a video on the Rise and Fall of the Gateway Computer and their own Retail Locations and the junk they sold.
The first computer I remember my family owning was a Compaq Presario. The only things I used it for was CD-ROM games yes, but Compaq introduced me to computers years ago. We sadly bought a new Dell desktop computer pretty quickly though... Kept the mouse and keyboard though!
Our first was a Hewlett-Packard but got a black compaq presario in 1997.. I was ten years old and I was having like a panic attack at the store because my mom and dad were about to spend $3000 on it 😂 I was certainly and abnormal child 😂
@@kylebarton6498 a spoiled child!! lol jk jk… do u remember what video card/chipset it had??
@@pauliedibbs9028the onboard video card in the presario wasn’t that great. I swapped out mine with a voodoo 2 almost immediately when I got it.
@ pauliedibbs9028 no I do not lol it was black.. had snazzy speakers as part of the monitor.. and was my first time watching a dvd. Think it came with a live Eric Clapton thing and six days seven nights with Harrison ford lol
My first “corporate job” was Compaq. It was a really good company with great benefits. Unheard of cheap health insurance and 6% matching 401k. Pretty good vacation earning. This was 1990. Then 1993 happened. Started bean counting. Started buying company after company… 1987 to then was awesome. Astroworld rented out for us. Eckhard was a canoe…
When I started in the IT field, I supported Compaq & HP Servers (before the HP merger). The Compaq systems were ultra high quality, very expensive, but extremely reliable. The Compaqs rarely broke down. HP systems were total GARBAGE!. The very smart thing that HP got out of the merger were the Engineers from Compaq which made HPs systems much better. HP servers now are very reliable & high quality, thanks to Compaq Engineers.
I was almost hired straight out of college by Compaq back in 1990 as a hardware engineer. They flew me out to Houston and the interviews went really well. It was a beautiful campus, and would have been a great place to work. I ended up with a better offer to work for Amdahl on mainframes in California. I would have loved to work for Compaq, but as this video shows the company started diving and was eventually bought out by HP, but I'd probably have been laid off anyway during that time. Yes, eventually Amdahl ended up crashing as well, but it was also a great experience.
The Compaq video host/speaker is John de Lancie the actor that played the role of "Q" in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Freakin' Cool. Anyways, an intriguing documentary concerning the Compaq story. 🤜🤛👍🖖
Awesome video! Loving all your stuff lately, glad I found your channel!
I worked tech support for Compaq in 1994 (they outsourced it to 'Project Gold'). Their GUI made the computers really hard to troubleshoot, and they treated us pretty badly. I did a lot of tech support in the mid-90s and it was by far my worst experience, though at least I didn't have to walk retirees through motherboard replacements (looking at you, Zeos/Micron.)
My brother and I each had used suitcase Compaqs in the late 80's as teenagers. We drug them between our parents' houses so we could be on our BBS's at both places. Back then being online was a total sausage fest, but the few girls on the boards were respected. It was such a fun era and I'm so glad to have been that age at that time. I have loads of great memories of those klunky suitcase PC's and we learned so much messing around with them! I'm 50 now and am still very into tech. 😊
I got my first PC and got online in 1996 never got to experience the BBS era but man the internet was different back then
My first introduction to internet was BBS as well! It felt like dark web fluff!!
1st you had to flip to the back of circulars or shopper magazines to find a phone number to a local BBS then dial into it.. boy once that connection was made.. it was on! It all felt wrong, like you were being bad!! Weird sexual type games dot matrix style!! Anarchist Cook Book access which was fun to read but I had not intentions to actually create anything. But the only thing I fudged up.. I printed out some girl on girl scene on my pops work printer with my buddy.. but my pops rolled up same time and we Road Runner’d outta there. But
I left the picture on the printer. Whoops!
Those were the days!
9.6B for DEC, and they didn't know what to do with the Alpha CPUs and VMS (operating system) technology that were the heart of DEC, and for which the services business existed and relied upon. My employer was a very good customer -- we liked the reliability of VMS, and the ease of software development.
Alpha went to Intel. VMS went to Microsoft (well Cutler did, in '88); NT is basically VMS.
Maybe it's just because I was around it all the time during my childhood, but hearing DEC said as "D E C" instead of said like "Deck" really bothers me.
Agreed!
How does one do all this research and totally screw up something like this? What else was wrong and/or missing in the video?
It’s not like the people are all dead and there is nobody around from that time. I had a college undergrad account on a VAX before the UNIX (not on Digital hardware) took over. And I only just sent my child to college. I’m not dead yet!
Honestly wouldn’t saying “Digital” everywhere have sufficed and sounded better if “deck” was opposed by this video’s creator?
I'll let it slide. He's done worse in the past and his pronunciations have been getting much better over all.
Still want to hear him pronounce SCSI though.
Random thought: If DEC is pronounced "deck" then CDC must be pronounced "kodak".
@@alexhajnal107 mmmm, no, it was always CDC. But yeah, Digital was always pronounced DEC (and I knew of them in the 80s when I worked for Data General. DG was bought by EMC which was bought by Dell)
@@MarjB-u1x I spoke in jest regarding CDC.
I remember growing up around these. I also remember the branded versions of Windows. They were quite the big deal back then! The most infuriating thing for me was their lack of compatibility with non-Compaq PC's most of the time.
"What's an AOL?" OMG.... We're getting to the point where that's going to be a question kids ask. First my parents. Soon my kids...
Back in the day EVERYONE knew what AOL was … it just exploded everywhere all at once. People went to Walmart to buy a budget PC system (their first so they had no idea if the specs were any good) JUST FOR AOL. Buy breakfast cereal? Latest version of AOL software on floppy disk 💾 would be inside!
It’s hard to believe people didn’t know (then) what aol was. Today? Sure. But when AOL’s server(s) would go down, it was headline news in 1994. There was no escape from AOL.
@@nickpalance3622 I seem to recall my parents asking me about specifically that situation around that time and having to explain as a barely teenager that aol is "like the internet" and can "give you internet" when we didn't even have a computer. And when we did get a computer I loved the Cereal box CD-Rom games that proudly proclaimed that they "Include AOL" . Not quite the floppy you mentioned, but close enough.
@ yeah the floppies 💾 came first but after a few years CD-ROM drives were prevalent even in the Walmart special so it made sense to pack those into cereal boxes since stamping a plastic disc is cheaper and faster than writing magnetic media and then the cost of the rigid shell and the metal sliding door and spring etc etc. they had to reach mass audiences so going straight to CD-ROM wasn’t an early option. I saved a bunch of both floppies and CD-ROMs all still sealed. They are in a box somewhere in the house.
digital equipment corporation was pronounced “deck” not “d e c”. so DECMate was the “deck mate” etc. but we never pronounced it as an abbreviation
Because DEC is capitalized.
"DecMate" would be Dec-mate,
When letters are capitalized it's the same a successive periods (D.E.C. Mate).
@ my father was an executive there. i grew up my entire childhood in digitals world. it was NEVER pronounced that way or with periods. it was the way IBM did things and IBM was a dirty word.
@victoriafrench it's English. It's an acronym. Just because people were lazy, or "cool", doesn't change language.
You can alter the pronunciation of names, but this isn't a name.
@ no its called disrespect to a once amazing company. its willful disrespect as you were already told how to pronounce it and you continue to argue on merit of language. a language that is malleable and changes every ten years. so we are done. i see you.
@victoriafrench that's ignorant. Only names have "pronunciations".
Instead of realizing that people were lazy and saying it wrong. You want to show your grade school education.
My very first PC that I bought for myself was a Compaq presario in 1999 from CompUsa with windows 98se. I miss that old thing.
Compaq went too proprietary on their systems down to silly things like the way additional hard disks, tape drives and CD ROM were mounted.
The thing I most remember about Compaq was that two beeps was a normal POST unlike everything else of the day. This even included some of they're rack mount servers right up to the HP acquisition.
I have a Compaq Portable and a Portable II (you know, the one that came out months later with a hard drive because everyone was asking the stores to upgrade to them and it was getting ridiculous). I learned to write my first program in 1988 on one. Good stuff!
Ohhhh god I love the aesthetics of 1960s computers 🥹
Especially DEC's PDPs, they're exquisite.
Further branching out into technology product companies, eh? Love it. Keep up the great work.👏
I was lucky enough to work in the salad days of IT in the mid to late 90’s. Compaq used to throw some amazing golf “tournaments” in Houston. They’d give away thousands of dollars in golf equipment. I still have a nice driver and golf bag I won in a raffle after one of their tournaments. Good times!
$3k for Compaq in 1982? Wow. I'm currently building myself a new gaming rig; water cooled i9-14900k, 4080Super graphics, 128 Gb RAM, and 12 Tb of M.2 storage for nearly the same price.. How far we've come
@@raypeeler3585 get and CPU wait for new gpus
This is gonna be a silly question, but do you narrate any other channels? Your voice sounds incredibly familiar, like I may have heard you in the lost media community. But I can't place who you sound like.
You do fantastic work here, and I'm happy to have stumbled upon your channel!
There's a sports and stadia channel called Five Points who sounds the same but is a different guy. Even the sense of humour and presentation are very similar
Darkness is an OG UA-cam Channel. He Started off mostly as a Angry Game Reviewer in 2007 and then was a Sonic Game Channel for 10 years.
One important element of Compaq losing market edge in the early 1990s was that they lead the collaboration of companies in creating the AT computer standard, which ATX is built on. This was because IBM was trying to regain market control of their PC architecture via making the PS/2 architecture (not the console), and they decided to not play IBM's game and that meant Compaq had to make a genuinely open architecture, meaning their rivals had an even playing field with them, but it also meant IBM no longer had the monopoly on what a personal computer is. So a lot of things are an inevitable consequence of that.
Low Spec Gaming has excellent vids on this on Nebula, and some of them may be on UA-cam.
Hey I noticed Asianometry released a video similar to yours a few days after yours went live (probably just a coincidence). However watching that video was like listening to an insurance seminar. I couldn't help but immediately contrast his with yours, and how much more I enjoy your narrative style. For whatever that's worth. :)
The first computer we had was a Compaq Presario originally with Windows 95 and later upgraded to Windows 98. The thing was dead slow and froze up all the time. Around 2001 we got a HP Tower which we used until 2007 or so running Windows 98 the whole time mostly for CD-ROM games and programs but we also use dial-up internet on the HP
I have some of old internal publications from DEC, HP, IBM, Unisys, and Sperry-UNIVAC. I got a real kick out of reading a somewhat bitter sounding HP document about how DEC was a serious competitor that needs to be undermined at every opportunity. I read it shortly after HP bought Compaq. By then the old Unix market was running on fumes as Dell and Linux were taking over the market in which DEC and HP had competed.
If they're at all of a technical nature I'd encourage you to scan those and post them on the Internet Archive or Bitsavers. (They'd also likely aid with the scanning.)
I worked for Compaq in the mid 90s. It was a mess. I quit within a year. Felt like I was going to get laid off any day and I was only there 3 months.
Compaq was super relevant when I got into computers in the early 90’s. Hadn’t thought about them in awhile so thanks!
I did not know that happened to Compaq. I remember the Compaq computers as a kid and my Dad had a Compaq computer in his office and one of the computers, he had was the one with the laptop with a laptop deck that connects with the desk screen and that was so cool.
I bought my very first computer, a Compaq, in 1995. I have fond memories of that computer, it opened up a whole new world for me. Of course I was on AOL. 😅
We called the suitcase Compaq "Luggable" at the time. "Portable" being too generous a term 😉
My parents had a Presario 4160 from 1997 (?) and it was definitely the super budget model - it always seemed broken somehow with how slow it was - the thing was a Pentium 150 and the 120Mhz machines at school were always faster and more responsive than it was even after I secretly and slightly overclocked it to 166MHz by moving the bus speed select jumper from 60 to 66MHz and begged, borrowed and stole it from 24MB to 72MB of RAM - this was 4 16MB SIMMs and 8MB on the motherboard explaining the weird total.
Part of it was that it didn't have any L2 Cache - had the solder pads for the COASt module slot on the motherboard but no slot. It would not run MS Monster truck madness at the Pentium 166 setting (this is how it was selected in that game) well at all and I always had to use the lowest setting and still got a terrible choppy framerate.
I distinctly remember it being so slow that it would draw in the icons in the explorer in Windows 95 singly - one after the other and this always infuriated me. In addition to being overclocked a bit It got a bigger and faster HDD and an ATI Rage 128 video card and it was still a s l u g - no amount of reinstalling windows or pruning bloatware or anything ever did much to change it the damn thing was just kind of fked up somehow. I know it used the 430VX chipset which was the cheapest one but that can't have been that much of an impact?
my 1st computer was a compaq laptop (one of my Dads hand me downs) always kinda wondered what happened to them.
Your vintage computer/software videos are probably my favourite - also stupid trains 😂lol
I had an ipaq in 2002ish. It wasnt a touchscreen, it needed a stylus (or a fingernail and hard press).
It also didnt have wifi.
It was basically a color screen, microsoft pocketpc, more advanced palm pilot.
Actually I think I had that model pictured! A 2215 if I remember right, vs the 1945 that had screen yellowing defects.
Touch screens that used a stylus were usually resistive ones (as opposed to the capacitive ones that are ubiquitous today). A big advantage that resistive screens have is that they work when wet, something that's nigh-impossible with capacitive screens.
My parental units worked at Compaq from nearly the start. Rod was a great guy and it was an amazing company. Eckhard Pfeiffer destroyed the company. The Presarios were called the "PrettySorrys" inside the company. Shipped with the worst modems on the planet, while markets as a home PC for getting on the internet. Of course the Portal was my first computer.
At a former employer they bought a bunch of compaq's and they were noticeably slower than similar spec'd pc's that you'd build yourself.
For that market the primary consideration is support [service contracts], not raw performance. But yea, cost-cutting measures can seriously hamper performance, e.g. choosing a 68008 CPU over a 68000 [wrong era but same idea].
My dad bought me a Compaq Presario when I was 12 around 1996. I used that thing so much leading to its inevitable death a few years later. Replaced by an eMachine of all things. Ugh. 🤬
Bit of a correction here; Compaq servers, their ProLiant line specifically, dominated the mid-to-late 1990s and were not Windows NT nor Unix systems. By far, the dominant corporate server NOS was Novell NetWare, which dominated the 1990s in corporate environments across all server hardware manufacturers.
Oh Compaq. I remember my IT days supporting ProLiant servers as well as doing some side work supporting Presarios. Current have a P4-based Presarios (given to me a few years back) that I'm getting back up and running for an early 2000s era gaming system.
I had the HP COMPAQ with both names. I forgot that part! Kids at school would be like what kind of computer do you have? And talk trash bc they thought I was just naming computers bc I didn’t have a clue😂
I remember my parents buying a compaq presario 5610 in 1998. Love it and had it for 5-6 years before upgrading to a new PC
The whole time I was watching this I kept thinking about how I used to love their cow themed boxes......then I realized that was actually Gateway computers. 90s were wild.
Sheesh. Always putting out interesting stuff. Glad I subbed.
That’s the problem right there, concentrating on the shareholders and not the company
As always great insight into one of America’s biggest corporate failures. Yes, I do remember when COMPAQ meant the best PC one can buy.
When you described those simi-anual meetings, 9:48, you said dialog between the management and the "boots on the ground" was encouraged. My first thought was that they encouraged dialog between the boots on the ground and the boots on the desk. 😎 👢👢
W-mart ALWAYS has at LEAST one brand in stock that associates in electronics department will will advise 'tape the receipt to thr bottom' BECAUSE YOU WILL BE BRINGING IT BACK!' Sadly, for a while thos was Compaq. I did so, and got THREE DAYS out of a new computer....
When i was a kid in Nigeria in 99, the first computer my dad bought for his work and for home use was a Compaq desktop. I remember using that machine to play Prince of Persia and many other games 😂 We had no internet then but it was still fun. After tgat i rarely saw Compaq computers anymore
Mine was a Presario 4712. I died in a year. I loved it though because of the great JBL speakers it came with.
27:50, videogame companies need to hear this.
17:50 I sold one of these recently - it needed a LOT of work as it was stored outside for a bit - brilliant engineering though, I was able to save it completely.
bought a Compaq desktop at future shop here in Canada in 2010, had issues by 2013 but was usable until 2020
There's quite a story to be made with the downfall of Gateway. Acer did't buy the _business_ of Gateway, only the Trademarks. The business, the huge backlog of orders and the lifetime warranties went to MPC (formerly Zeos). MPC went t!ts up one year and one day after the "acquisition", extinguishing the Gateway warranties.
I'll always think of one of my favorite estate sales I've been to when I think of Compaq, the guy seemed to be an employee of Compaq (later HP), to what capacity I don't know, but they lived in a pretty nice area. There were so many cool things, like little branded Compaq bear keychains, flip flops, etc, and of course I ended up with a Presario laptop from the sale too. It's a pretty decent laptop too. Sucks what happened lmao
3:01 I was under the impression that COMPAQ stood for COMPatibility And Quality. At least what I was told back in the 80’s.
I remember getting a 13in Compaq Presario from Fry's Electronics and thought it was the best thing ever
Had a Compaq Presario back in 99, a tower... I ended up using it with spare parts from an HP in 2002 and an nVidia GeForce 5200,,, With overclocking, that PC lasted me until 2009 and ran better than a brand new Dell until my mom spilled coffee inside it...
"you must make money to spend money" I think this pretty much sums up your ending statement about having to first make a profit in order to please the shareholders; that you can't prop up a business on "pleasing the shareholders" alone
I.e you must make money (a profitable business) to spend money (pay dividends to shareholders/please shareholders)
I remember Compaq well but never followed the company. Would like to know what happened to Wang. Saw those in the car dealers a lot.
babe wake up new history in the dark video just dropped
Come on man you did not discuss Compaq phase out of DEC Alpha and the adoption of the Intel Risc based Itanium CPU line.
Compaq wanted to get into the mid range and workstation business. Intel X86 servers won.
@chebrubin Itanium was considered VLIW, not RISC. The compiler was responsible for stringing several instructions together in a Very Large Instruction Word. This concept was different from CISC or RISC, and was referred to as an evolution of RISC. This made the compiler overly complex and real-world performance was disappointing.
The HP buyout of Compaq was also a s-show.
The whole smartTV thing with Compaq is just embarrassing.
I bought my first Compaq around 99 from radio shack I had to finance it because it was almost 2500 with all the bells and whistles and keep in mind this was in 1999 😆
My only memory of Compaq is a shocking Vista PC we had that didn’t work until we put Windows 7 on it
love ur videos!
Loving the stories about failed mega companies. Always great stuff
I got to see Capellas speak at a trade show. A total empty suit.
They were my first desktop. 🖥️ they were great! Man I miss those days
I had a compaq laptop in late 2014 and used it until 2021 and I started to hate it so much. The laptop I had kept constantly dropping the internet connection randomly when I didn't expect it. It happened so much I kept taking my rage out on it until it stop working completely (or worked when it felt like it).
My dad’s company he worked for ordered a ton of these computers. Oddest machines to work on, down to the screws as they used hex screws. Can you please do a video on the Reading Company? That would be an awesome video.
Torx screws were the easiest to set the proper torque for the screws. Our assembly lines literally had 1 person screwing the mobo down, then another putting in memory, then another screwing in the power supply, then another screwing in a drive, then another plugging in a nic, then another plugging in cables, etc. Then another screwing on the cover/lid… Depending on the line there could be up to 50 people.
Jack Welch appears to have destroyed the "meta" of running companies
In the old days a Compaq Deskpro was the best there was. Better and cheaper than IBM
Could you make a documentary about the New York Susquehanna & Western? Out of all the northeastern railroads that struggled throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the Susquehanna is unique, because they’re still around.
Wow, I had no idea the Susie-Q was still around. That's pretty surprising.
21:49 In all the decades I worked with PDPs and Vaxes (referred to as "Vaxen") nobody ever said "Dee Ee See". DEC was always pronounced as "Deck".
23:35 neat, John DeLancie continuing the tradition of using Star Trek actors to sell computers!
Had a Presario with a 120Mhz Pentium and 16MB RAM. That thing was a beast at the time.
20:40 missed opportunity for the Sun Microsystems logo.
They released a model of dot matrix printer that was freestanding that was the loudest consumer printer ever made. When I was younger I worked in a computer shop and we would repurpose a lot of old stuff and one of those came in and I would play a trick on the owner and schedule a print task for after I left for the day and it was up against the wall and he said that it would make everything shake and it was loud
I remember when Compaq computers were all the rage. Everyone I knew had one of their models. It's a shame they fell off.
Complete shame. Because I REALLY liked Compaq.
My first AWESOME PC was a Compaq… from Fry’s Electronics! God I miss both… 😢
i’m going to sound so young here but i had a compaq laptop as a preteen in the early 2010’s! many dress up and horse games were played on it lol
Why don’t you just do a 5 of the Worst Mergers Ever video at this point? You’ve covered the Penn Central merger, the TimeWarner-AOL merger, Kmart’s purchase of Sears, and now this.
I like that idea
Canion had a lot in common with Ken Olsen from DEC. Good men who didn’t understand the changes in the market.
I had a Compaq tower in middle school in the mid/late 90’s with a Pentium 2. It lasted FOREVER despite being outdated haha…so I can’t talk too much trash on it. Then again I think my parents paid like $3k for the whole ‘monitor/tower/printer/scanner’ deal from Best Buy with like a $300 mail in rebate (remember those? Haha).
Moving to services has worked out well for IBM and others. Sounds like they couldn't figure out how to make it work internally.
7:46 We called them "luggables" in the day.
We had a Compaq when I was in high school. And at the time (mid to late 90's) they were considered cheap ass low end computers, at best. Basically the same reputation that Dell now has. My first PC was a Compaq too, which was... not really upgradable as I recall. The monitor lasted me a good long while though.
They built so many of the servers that I installed. Excellent company to do business with BEFORE the HP merger.