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My 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 sur
by ColanR 7y ago
My 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).