Compaq Computer Corporation

Having the first PC, though, gave IBM a huge advantage, but of course it gave them a big disadvantage because they'd used these pr- these, uh, off-the-shelf components.

Within a year, Columbia Data Products had produced an early compatible machine, and Compaq soon demonstrated that a highly compatible replacement BIOS could be written using clean room methods.

Clean room methods are where they claim that they have created something which is compatible, uh, without referencing the original's core, uh, source code.

Now, I've always g- had my doubts whether clean room things are clean room, but it can't be proven that they're not, so that's good enough for the law.

Now, over in North America, where I'm not quite as familiar, and Jason will perhaps remind me of anything I've forgotten, but it wasn't Amstrad.

Back then, computers were a global business, but somehow struggled to cross either direction of the Atlantic.

So in North America it was places like Blue Chip and Packard Bell and Commodore selling PCs from shops, and then Dell starting out as mail order, as did Gateway 2000, all of them cutting into the massive premium that places like Compaq were selling at, and IBM were miles above that still.

So all driving prices down.

Right

... you know, companies like Compaq and Dell came along and ate their lunch, so-

Yeah

... you know, there's an opportunity cost to doing nothing, and I'll bet there were a lot of conversations internally where they said, "Let's do nothing-"

It took decades for PC prices to come down.

Do you remember companies like Compaq? Oh, gosh, Hewlett-Packard is still around, but obviously PCs became a commodity very quickly.

Do you remember companies that sold, the Circuit City companies that sold these PCs that had these big mega superstores? that are no longer around as the PC became a commodity, the cost of artificial intelligence is falling at a pace that took the personal computer industry far longer to achieve.

According to a chart published by Who? Oh, no lightweight here.

I majored in management of information systems.

And I got a nice job in IT, working at the time for Compaq Computer Corporation, which was headquartered there in Houston.

So I had a nice job with making good money for the first time.

And I bought a house, big giant three-bedroom house.

So it kind of, yeah, they're still trying to come out of that.

And it was, I did talk to a couple people, you know, in the restaurant at the, at the at the bar and whatnot and um uh who um were um in in the restaurant so they they kind of lived there um but it's a great little restaurant and hotel so that's why they just happen to be there but um yeah so that was just for one night and then uh from there i drove over to houston texas and i stayed in a hotel that i stayed in 30 years ago when i was working for um Hewlett Packard Company, or Compaq Computer, or Digital, depending on what year it was.

All the same company, same job, just different company names.

Yes.

Yes.

So, and then I connected up with, the surprise was...

On my last day on my way out of town, I connected up with a woman, Deborah, who was my boss when I worked for Compaq and HP for years.

And she wasn't going to be in town when I was there.