4 ms·
Arguably, HPE has more of a Compaq legacy than HP legacy. Much of their x86 server line has a Compaq lineage.
by subway 7y ago
Arguably, HPE has more of a Compaq legacy than HP legacy. Much of their x86 server line has a Compaq lineage.
- ColanR 7y agoMy rule of thumb for buying laptops (since the mid 2000s) has been that compaq is the bottom-rung cheap brand that should always be avoided. Not sure their survival has been a good thing.
- subway 7y agoThe consumer gear was trash. The server lines were an entirely different story. Also worth noting that by the mid 2000s, Compaq was just a branding on the consumer side. The hardware was all the same old HP consumer junk.
- Anarch157a 7y agoThe server line was a legacy from Digital, especially the Alpha line. It was a shame when HP killed it to go with Itanium.
- tzakrajs 7y agoItanium is why we can't have nice things. (Wishes SGI would have never tried)
- bitwize 7y agoIn 2006, every single one of my coworkers bought a brand-new MacBook, and within a month every single one of my coworkers had a MacBook in the shop. I bought a Compaq laptop with a 64-bit CPU for under $1000. It ran flawlessly for over a decade, needing only a new battery. I eventually gave it to my parents who still have it.
- astrodust 7y agoBrand necrophilia. Compaq consistently built better gear than HP before being absorbed. HP used that brand for their junk as a way of getting back at Compaq.
- mpa000 7y agoWrong. Compaq had much higher DOA and other defects in the mid 90s. They relied on customer institutional memory from the 80s when they really were the best.
- bdcravens 7y agoSounds like Apple's current laptop strategy.
- astrodust 7y agoTrue, Compaq started to go down-market and that did dent their reputation. HP had already been racing to the bottom for years, though.
- yellowapple 7y agoCounterpoint: my Compaq Presario 1210 survived for about 20 years before it finally stopped POSTing. Even the original hard drive still worked (albeit with a range of bad sectors around which I had to partition).
- jabl 7y agoThe HP Compaq merger as well as the Agilent spin-off in many ways marked the transition from an engineering company to a bunch of vacuum cleaner salespersons. PS: Yes it's unfair to blame all this on Compaq, probably more a result of increasingly expensive semiconductor R&D.
- zwieback 7y agoOuch! I've worked for hp since 1999 just about when we spun out Agilent and it was definitely a painful cultural transition to a consumer business. However, on the more profitable inkjet side of the business we've been doing a lot of R&D and I don't think we've sold a single vacuum cleaner.