Compaq – Ideas on Paper Napkins Make a Great Company

Lots of great ideas are written on paper napkins. That is exactly what happened when three men got together to create a portable personal computer manufacturing company. Leaving their jobs at Texas Instruments, Rod Camon, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto, each put up $1000 and put their ideas on a napkin in a Houston pie shop.

These ideas became reality in 1982. At the end of Compaq’s first year, its Initial Public Offering was over $67 million on the NASDAQ. They shipped over 53,000 portable computers, and set a record revenue of over $111 million during their first year. Just a few years later Compaq broke revenue records and was listed as the fastest company to make the Fortune 500 list. They were the first in the world for PC market shares in 1995, due to their product expansions and developments of several desktops, laptops, and pen based computers.

Many things happened over the next few years at Compaq. Events such as having great acknowledgments at Forbes Magazine, having agreements with Radio Shack, buying DEC, and the Alta Vista name. Products like iPAQ Pocket PC and iPAQ Home Internet Appliance were released, and the recognition for leader in wireless technology. Compaq also worked with the Walt Disney Co., Microsoft, Starbucks, and Yahoo. HP found the success of this company very attractive and merged with Compaq in 2002, creating an $87 billion global technology company.

Products that you will find the Compaq brand on are: notebooks, computers, handhelds, printers, digital cameras, televisions, and accessories. They have also blended some of products and their names with HP. These include: iPAQ GPS systems, PDA’s, and PDA phones.

Compaq is also known as one of the first companies to present the “Build to Order” option. This lets consumers choose from several options to make up the computer that suits their personal needs. Options that you may choose from are: operating systems, processor type and speed, display, memory, graphic cards, networking, hard drive, CD/DVD drive and many other accessories. These options are installed on the “base” model with default options pr -selected. Once you have stated your options, the computer is built and then shipped.

This is a great option for computers users with the experience to know what options they need to run their computer. If you have ever wanted something different than how computers are set up on store shelves, this option may be for you.