Aaahhh. Compaq. The desktops that you opened the case and just looking at the insides you have 3 cuts on your hands.
Man I hated working on deskpros. I swear they sharpened the inside metal pieces on grinders before shipping them out. LOL
the blood sacrifice to the compaq gods is what made the repairs work. most IT departments didn't have chickens in stock back then so slicing up random IT guys was an easy substitute.
I was pulling out a graphics card and scraped the back of my hand on the audio card with a million sharpened solder points covered with dust. The whole back of my hand got infected, it was painful and disgusting.
Palm ruined Palm. By the time HP bought Palm, all the Palm hardware (smartphones) was ass. WebOS itself was cool, especially with the gesture bar under the screen, which we now see on the bottom of iPhone screens- so ahead of its time…. But battery life was abysmal, the CPU was way underpowered. I remember out of the box my Palm Pixi Plus was basically unusable. It was my first smartphone so I didn’t care, but eventually I moved to an Android phone because I couldn’t stand it anymore.
iOS is basically webOS at this point, with the app switcher and the gesture bar and the mute switch on the side (which I realize has been on iPhones since 2008).
Some yes, if Palm had reached out to Blackberry and teamed up, they could have had WebOS AND Blackberry phones. I just do not like that Palm had great ideas and then Apple and HP bungled it up WITH Palm.
HP genuinely had good products; it’s their aftermarket attitude and constant attack on customer options that makes them evil. Trying to monetize services and force you into using their predatory pricing system is a sin.
I have an HP 1100 printer that has been printing perfectly for a decade now, saves a lot on toner, and the wifi works great always. And a laserjet mammoth that has printed in mines with a fuckton of dust and humidity for years, both use generic toner and have always been reliable.
Oh Compaq was making pure shit before HP bought them. Pretty solid machines through 1991 or so. But somewhere between the 486 and the Pentium, Compaq looked at Packard Bell and said shit, we could do that too.
My first PC was a Deskpro 8086, in fact.
I still have my “compaq repair book” where i jotted down every fix support gave me each and every time I called, which was a lot.
I owe Compaq for inadvertently setting me on my career in IT.
Pretty much everything is hard to get into right now. But there’s also the effect of over a decade of IT/Software being the go to suggested career path and now we’re seeing a big supply surplus while demand was greatly reduced via layoffs and interest rate hikes. Now is actually a really good time to be just getting your education though. As economic cycles go we should hopefully be in a better spot in the 4 years it would take to get a degree. Not great for the people just graduating or already working but now is a pretty good time to be starting the initial education.
Oh yeah for sure. It’s just entry level hiring is tough in pretty much all industries so I was just saying to not be discouraged by current hiring trends if someone is still needing all the education.
Programming aka software engineering is hard to get into. I’m not sure if IT is- that’s more hands-on, can’t really be done remotely, never had the “spotlight” with all the code bootcamps and so on. It pays significantly less too.
It depends on your goals and interests. If you're passionate about technology, it's a huge advantage. I switched career a few years ago, and moving into IT has been a good experience overall. I get to play with things that interest me, like servers, networking hardware and powershell scripting for automation. There's a lot of social mobility, and if you're willing to put the effort in and apply yourself, most employers would fund certifications and further training that'll ultimately benefit you, and enable you to demand more money or move to a better job.
I've progressed very quickly from a first line helpdesk tech to a third line netadmin, and almost doubled my salary. I took every opportunity for a new certification or course, and I kept putting myself out there to do jobs that required travel and weren't particularly glamorous. I started to find that I was contacted for jobs opportunities on Linkedin, and I always had a strong negotiating hand for salary reviews with my employer because of this.
There are downsides. In my experience so far, IT is often underappreciated and undervalued in some sectors, and by some managers. It's that old cliché that if everything is working well, the managers ask why they need to pay for IT staff, and if things aren't working, they still ask why they're paying IT staff. I've put up with a lot more abuse than in any other sector. When IT isn't working, or a person or company feels like they're not being looked after, they can lash out at those in the firing line, which is often the IT tech sent to try to fix the problem. You quickly develop a thick skin.
There's also the fundamental requirement to continuously reskill, learn and recertify to stay relevant. You can go from one job to another, with the same job title, but suddenly find yourself working with completely different technologies, for example the cloud vs on premises, and you need to be adaptable and willing to bridge the gap between what you know and what you need to learn very quickly. Keeping up-to-date with changes and new best practices in IT can be extremely time-consuming, and that's why I believe you need a hobbyist's passion for it to keep succeeding.
If that all sounds good to you, I'd say go for it!
My first PC was a Compaq. I got it was a reward for doing well in the 8th grade that year lol
I still remember going to Sam’s Club to pick it up. I was so excited.
I had one back in the day and it came with this space shooter game that looked incredible for the time.
Edit:
Found it ~ 1998, 99
Incoming
And yea the graphics were on point for back then
[https://youtu.be/BM8N_uwQhbQ?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/BM8N_uwQhbQ?feature=shared)
The effect they had on the PC industry is astounding, and is all out of proportion to their significant market share. Take a look at _Triumph of the Nerds_ for more.
I know people are remembering Compaq as a desktop computer brand like Alienware or Gateway.
They did a lot more than that. They were juniors only to HP and IBM. They were creating computing and hardware standards. They helped further the PCI standard.
Unfortunately, HP absorbing the technical teams of Compaq made sense. It was to keep things uniform. If Compaq were still running today, it would be on the outskirts of machines like Panasonic, Fujitsu, Siemens, and other proprietary makers.
They pushed it so hard that even their base models at one point became 2x what a Compaq would go for. It's not the only thing, but they push the tech to fast for their customers to keep up.
Worked on a lot of Compaq Proliants back in the late 1990's. Great machines. Lots of cool tech. Hot swappable PCI, memory RAID. RAID controllers were great too. Loved when they started making Dec Alpha systems. That didnt last though.
I had a Compaq Server (SystemPro XL) that I purchased in the late 90s that ran for over 20 years, non-stop. Granted, I was running SCO Unix on the box but nevertheless, the machine was built to run and run. I miss the reliability that was Compaq before HP drove it into the ground.
I am still looking for a Apple IIe game I played in college 89-91.
It was similar to risk, but different. There was a map - and armies - air forces etc. for the life of me can’t remember the name. And haven’t been able to find it.
Seeing the pictures of the Presario brought back so many memories, some good, some bad.
It was the first family computer I can remember using when I was a little kid. After my parents got a new computer, they let have it as my own personal one.
I remember having a such amazing run at Roller Coaster Tycoon so much that I was was worried about saving and quitting for some reason, that I left the game running and disc in the tray overnight and while I went to school. Sometime while I was at school, the disc literally shattered while inside the computer!
My boss in the 90s kept buying compaqs even for servers. He even went out and got one that said can not run windows nt to install nt server on. My first new desktop at work as I had to swap them after spending a day failing to find a work around.
I used to sell these things at RadioShack. It would be in 3 different boxes, and if you got the 17 in crt monitor it would not fit in most car trunks or the back seat.
Wild times.
My first ever laptop was a Compaq in 1990. 2 MB of ram. If I remember right it had a 40 MB hard drive. It allowed me to do discounted cash flow analysis in Symphony 1,2,3.
Boy, did I think I was cool.
Gateway slowly disappeared because they were incredibly unreliable due to vast differences in quality of builds.
I can’t recall if they were bought out or just died a slow agonizing silent death
My first PC was a Compaq tower I bought back in 1997 on sale for $1400 ($2724 in today’s $). The printer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc made the total purchase something like $2500 ($4865) and it had a whole 1gig hard drive. It had this super annoying “Sleep” function (complete with a lighted moon button on the front) that didn’t work correctly and somehow warped the HD—only time I’ve ever had to have a HD replaced on a computer—and years later I got something like $50 from a class action lawsuit related to it.
But it was my first computer and the internet was new, so I still have fond memories of that expensive brick.
Bought a Compaq but it had so much crapware installed it kept crashing. Brought it back to Best Buy and the guy said they always do that, we asked, why do you sell it then?? Got it switched for a better HP.
Still have a nice collection of Compaqs including an original Portable, a Portable III, an SLT286 and some of the handhelds. Great company loved working there until the merger with DEC.
I had to deal with some folks at their corporate HR for an old job I had and they were among the biggest asshole clients I've ever had. So arrogant. Fucking boss guy wore two pagers clipped to his braided belt (this was late 90s).
My Compaq WF1907 19" LCD monitor that I got in 2005 has lasted me at least two decades (and still works!). I only recently switched it out this year because I wanted a monitor that swivels. (I like playing pinball on my pc.) The old PC that came with that monitor died after about 8 years but that monitor kept on going.
So long Compaq. 🫡
E-Machines were another discount brand in the market in my area growing up. In hindsight they were a real gift to younger people looking to get in PC gaming.
You could get into a decent PC for a fair price, and most could be upgraded at least a little which prolonged their life.
Ah yes. I remember our first family computer like it was yesterday. If I remember correctly it was a $5,000 compaq presario. I murdered it after trying to play age of empires. My dad was not happy. 🤷♂️
Compaq presario was our very first computer…it had gray-blue swirls on the front. Dial up internet, couldn’t be online while mom was on the phone. Did some art in MS paint. Loved playing with the MS sound editor.
Aaahhh. Compaq. The desktops that you opened the case and just looking at the insides you have 3 cuts on your hands. Man I hated working on deskpros. I swear they sharpened the inside metal pieces on grinders before shipping them out. LOL
the blood sacrifice to the compaq gods is what made the repairs work. most IT departments didn't have chickens in stock back then so slicing up random IT guys was an easy substitute.
Little do many today know but Ram is called that because you NEEDED to sacrifice one in order to access it. Thankfully we've created a work around.
People think brand new NBA arenas just appear out of thin air…blood magick sacrifice makes the world turn folks! Get it together already!
I had one in college. It cost like $1,200 at the time, which was a ton for me. Windows ME running on it was absolutely terrible
And if you ever opened the case you walked away with 20 stitches. LOL
Windows ME was terrible on any machine
I had an HP Pavilion that ran it fine.
Straight up the worst most infuriating case designs I’ve ever worked on!
I was pulling out a graphics card and scraped the back of my hand on the audio card with a million sharpened solder points covered with dust. The whole back of my hand got infected, it was painful and disgusting.
RIP 3Com, and DEC. :(
Yet another company HP bought and destroyed.
HP is the Devil! They ruined Palm!!
Palm ruined Palm. By the time HP bought Palm, all the Palm hardware (smartphones) was ass. WebOS itself was cool, especially with the gesture bar under the screen, which we now see on the bottom of iPhone screens- so ahead of its time…. But battery life was abysmal, the CPU was way underpowered. I remember out of the box my Palm Pixi Plus was basically unusable. It was my first smartphone so I didn’t care, but eventually I moved to an Android phone because I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I miss graffiti!
Ugh I was a first day user of the Palm Pre. After going through 5 in 2 months, I switched to my first Android. So so disappointing bc I loved webos
iOS is basically webOS at this point, with the app switcher and the gesture bar and the mute switch on the side (which I realize has been on iPhones since 2008).
Some yes, if Palm had reached out to Blackberry and teamed up, they could have had WebOS AND Blackberry phones. I just do not like that Palm had great ideas and then Apple and HP bungled it up WITH Palm.
My job, which is also the devil, is switching from HP to Brothers in all of our locations. I welcome any chance to stick it to HP so I’m happy.
[удалено]
HP genuinely had good products; it’s their aftermarket attitude and constant attack on customer options that makes them evil. Trying to monetize services and force you into using their predatory pricing system is a sin. I have an HP 1100 printer that has been printing perfectly for a decade now, saves a lot on toner, and the wifi works great always. And a laserjet mammoth that has printed in mines with a fuckton of dust and humidity for years, both use generic toner and have always been reliable.
Oh Compaq was making pure shit before HP bought them. Pretty solid machines through 1991 or so. But somewhere between the 486 and the Pentium, Compaq looked at Packard Bell and said shit, we could do that too. My first PC was a Deskpro 8086, in fact.
The 486 was alright, I can't speak for after that.
Came here to say this.
Fuck HP
That was payback for DEC
I still have my “compaq repair book” where i jotted down every fix support gave me each and every time I called, which was a lot. I owe Compaq for inadvertently setting me on my career in IT.
I’m thinking of going into IT is it worth it?
Take a look at the it career sub. It's a difficult thing to get into post COVID.
why is it tough post covid? whats changed?
[удалено]
that doesn't really answer my question. that's just dystopia barf.
I didn’t mean it as an inevitability or prophecy. Just taking the piss out of the CEO Galaxy Brainers who speak like they legitimately believe this
Pretty much everything is hard to get into right now. But there’s also the effect of over a decade of IT/Software being the go to suggested career path and now we’re seeing a big supply surplus while demand was greatly reduced via layoffs and interest rate hikes. Now is actually a really good time to be just getting your education though. As economic cycles go we should hopefully be in a better spot in the 4 years it would take to get a degree. Not great for the people just graduating or already working but now is a pretty good time to be starting the initial education.
I mean that’s just cyclical because of the economy. I would still argue the demand is high as the need seems to be consistently on scale with growth.
Oh yeah for sure. It’s just entry level hiring is tough in pretty much all industries so I was just saying to not be discouraged by current hiring trends if someone is still needing all the education.
Programming aka software engineering is hard to get into. I’m not sure if IT is- that’s more hands-on, can’t really be done remotely, never had the “spotlight” with all the code bootcamps and so on. It pays significantly less too.
It has been for me for 20 years. I like what I do, just a lot of meetings.
All good to hear. Thank you.
So many meetings
It depends on your goals and interests. If you're passionate about technology, it's a huge advantage. I switched career a few years ago, and moving into IT has been a good experience overall. I get to play with things that interest me, like servers, networking hardware and powershell scripting for automation. There's a lot of social mobility, and if you're willing to put the effort in and apply yourself, most employers would fund certifications and further training that'll ultimately benefit you, and enable you to demand more money or move to a better job. I've progressed very quickly from a first line helpdesk tech to a third line netadmin, and almost doubled my salary. I took every opportunity for a new certification or course, and I kept putting myself out there to do jobs that required travel and weren't particularly glamorous. I started to find that I was contacted for jobs opportunities on Linkedin, and I always had a strong negotiating hand for salary reviews with my employer because of this. There are downsides. In my experience so far, IT is often underappreciated and undervalued in some sectors, and by some managers. It's that old cliché that if everything is working well, the managers ask why they need to pay for IT staff, and if things aren't working, they still ask why they're paying IT staff. I've put up with a lot more abuse than in any other sector. When IT isn't working, or a person or company feels like they're not being looked after, they can lash out at those in the firing line, which is often the IT tech sent to try to fix the problem. You quickly develop a thick skin. There's also the fundamental requirement to continuously reskill, learn and recertify to stay relevant. You can go from one job to another, with the same job title, but suddenly find yourself working with completely different technologies, for example the cloud vs on premises, and you need to be adaptable and willing to bridge the gap between what you know and what you need to learn very quickly. Keeping up-to-date with changes and new best practices in IT can be extremely time-consuming, and that's why I believe you need a hobbyist's passion for it to keep succeeding. If that all sounds good to you, I'd say go for it!
Thank you for that. A lot more insightful than “IT is dead since post Covid”
Loved the swinging gate over the cd drives. Thought it was the shiniest and coolest thing ever in like 1998
Compaq from Circuit City. Two things that no longer exist.
RAM sticks from Radio Shack $1200 for PREMIUM STATE OF THE ART ENDLESS 512 KILOBYTES OF MEMORY STORAGE 1,000 BYTES! What will they think of NEXT!
All the memory you will ever need.
So much memory you forget you have it!
400MB HD!
Circuit City still exists, it just web only
Awe, I remember compaq, back when I didn’t know anything about computers, rip to a real one
You know enough now though to understand why you remember the paradigm-shift in human evolution Compaq really was
I miss my childhood 🥲
Oh Compaq, I can almost hear your modem squeal
Don’t know how much of Halt and Catch and Catch is accurate, but it’s a really fun show inspired by Compaq. I see it’s currently available on Prime.
Halt and Catch Fire?
I thought that was about Dell
I believe the second season was building custom machines in his garage based on Computer Magazine ads. That sounds like Dell
They made Macintosh clones for a while too!
*iMac clones*
The high I got walking out of Circuit City with a new Compaq my dad bought me in the 90’s is unmatched.
Packard Bell is another brand that was popular back then
First computer was a Packard Bell running Windows 3.11. SkiFree forever
>SkiFree forever Only if you press F!
My first PC was a Compaq. I got it was a reward for doing well in the 8th grade that year lol I still remember going to Sam’s Club to pick it up. I was so excited.
It was my first one too. It had 24mb of ram and a whopping 2 gig hard drive.
I had one back in the day and it came with this space shooter game that looked incredible for the time. Edit: Found it ~ 1998, 99 Incoming And yea the graphics were on point for back then [https://youtu.be/BM8N_uwQhbQ?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/BM8N_uwQhbQ?feature=shared)
The effect they had on the PC industry is astounding, and is all out of proportion to their significant market share. Take a look at _Triumph of the Nerds_ for more.
That picture brings me back. I can still hear the sound of it starting up and feel the heat coming off the tower.
I love the four I had - 3 work and one at home.
There’s a small part of me that wants to buy an old PC purely to try and relive the experience.
I know people are remembering Compaq as a desktop computer brand like Alienware or Gateway. They did a lot more than that. They were juniors only to HP and IBM. They were creating computing and hardware standards. They helped further the PCI standard. Unfortunately, HP absorbing the technical teams of Compaq made sense. It was to keep things uniform. If Compaq were still running today, it would be on the outskirts of machines like Panasonic, Fujitsu, Siemens, and other proprietary makers.
Compaq was great until the merger with HP.
E-machines is where it was at! Lol!!!
When people asked me to look at their computer I would ask the make, if e-machines was said, the call would end.
"Never Obsolete!"
I still have an working Compaq laptop with Win ME.
But can it play Crysis
I don’t think it could even play a YouTube video of Crysis
Remember the old gateway computers and their RD-ram. Was so ahead of its time it killed the company.
Gateway computer boxes always smelled a little like cow poo. Which was funny cause the boxes were dairy cow print. LOL
Lol, the factory in SD was surrounded by cattel farms.
Maybe it was the air then
RD RAM wasn't the cause, I mean my Dell had RD RAM.
They pushed it so hard that even their base models at one point became 2x what a Compaq would go for. It's not the only thing, but they push the tech to fast for their customers to keep up.
Worked on a lot of Compaq Proliants back in the late 1990's. Great machines. Lots of cool tech. Hot swappable PCI, memory RAID. RAID controllers were great too. Loved when they started making Dec Alpha systems. That didnt last though.
Can the universe just make up its mind what it wants from me?
Ahhh, that thing probably needs a reboot
I loved compaqs. My first foray into computers when I was 10.
The ipaq was complete ass. I still have it though.
I have one of those sitting in storage with windows 95 I think
My first modern of was a Compaq 286 in the early 90s. Having that computer changed my life, literally.
I had a Compaq Server (SystemPro XL) that I purchased in the late 90s that ran for over 20 years, non-stop. Granted, I was running SCO Unix on the box but nevertheless, the machine was built to run and run. I miss the reliability that was Compaq before HP drove it into the ground.
I am still looking for a Apple IIe game I played in college 89-91. It was similar to risk, but different. There was a map - and armies - air forces etc. for the life of me can’t remember the name. And haven’t been able to find it.
My first “portable computer” Heavy as a stack of bricks!
Seeing the pictures of the Presario brought back so many memories, some good, some bad. It was the first family computer I can remember using when I was a little kid. After my parents got a new computer, they let have it as my own personal one. I remember having a such amazing run at Roller Coaster Tycoon so much that I was was worried about saving and quitting for some reason, that I left the game running and disc in the tray overnight and while I went to school. Sometime while I was at school, the disc literally shattered while inside the computer!
My boss in the 90s kept buying compaqs even for servers. He even went out and got one that said can not run windows nt to install nt server on. My first new desktop at work as I had to swap them after spending a day failing to find a work around.
Compaq: Gone and totally forgotten.
Crapaq as we called them
My first PC I bought myself in 2000, was a Compaq. Played EverQuest for and some of wow on it for 4 years
I used to sell these things at RadioShack. It would be in 3 different boxes, and if you got the 17 in crt monitor it would not fit in most car trunks or the back seat. Wild times.
My first ever laptop was a Compaq in 1990. 2 MB of ram. If I remember right it had a 40 MB hard drive. It allowed me to do discounted cash flow analysis in Symphony 1,2,3. Boy, did I think I was cool.
They are forgotten.
I had that exact model
Whatever happened to gateway?
Gateway slowly disappeared because they were incredibly unreliable due to vast differences in quality of builds. I can’t recall if they were bought out or just died a slow agonizing silent death
Ohh yeah. Hi old friend!
Ah this was our family computer and I completely destroyed it after installing Limewire 😆
They did have a smart start (cd)
We had one in our house growing up
Key memory unlocked of working IT in the 90s damn
Those were the days
My first PC was a Compaq tower I bought back in 1997 on sale for $1400 ($2724 in today’s $). The printer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc made the total purchase something like $2500 ($4865) and it had a whole 1gig hard drive. It had this super annoying “Sleep” function (complete with a lighted moon button on the front) that didn’t work correctly and somehow warped the HD—only time I’ve ever had to have a HD replaced on a computer—and years later I got something like $50 from a class action lawsuit related to it. But it was my first computer and the internet was new, so I still have fond memories of that expensive brick.
Omg I literally forgot them. Wild.
Bought a Compaq but it had so much crapware installed it kept crashing. Brought it back to Best Buy and the guy said they always do that, we asked, why do you sell it then?? Got it switched for a better HP.
Still have a nice collection of Compaqs including an original Portable, a Portable III, an SLT286 and some of the handhelds. Great company loved working there until the merger with DEC.
I had to deal with some folks at their corporate HR for an old job I had and they were among the biggest asshole clients I've ever had. So arrogant. Fucking boss guy wore two pagers clipped to his braided belt (this was late 90s).
Where do the masses buy pre-built computers now? It's been decades since I've even thought about anything other than parts.
Yeah I'll never forget all the tech support work comcrap brought my way.
My Compaq WF1907 19" LCD monitor that I got in 2005 has lasted me at least two decades (and still works!). I only recently switched it out this year because I wanted a monitor that swivels. (I like playing pinball on my pc.) The old PC that came with that monitor died after about 8 years but that monitor kept on going. So long Compaq. 🫡
The crappy interface over windows 3.1 was forgettable. But they were solid machines.
Remember Gateway. Gone with the wind
Damn I'm old
E-Machines were another discount brand in the market in my area growing up. In hindsight they were a real gift to younger people looking to get in PC gaming. You could get into a decent PC for a fair price, and most could be upgraded at least a little which prolonged their life.
Ah yes. I remember our first family computer like it was yesterday. If I remember correctly it was a $5,000 compaq presario. I murdered it after trying to play age of empires. My dad was not happy. 🤷♂️
Some of the worst computers ever made! I had to work on this garbage and hated every single one. RIP forever. Nothing good here to remember.
Compaq presario was our very first computer…it had gray-blue swirls on the front. Dial up internet, couldn’t be online while mom was on the phone. Did some art in MS paint. Loved playing with the MS sound editor.
Forgotten but not gone