Compaq Brand Licensing

https://www.compaq.com/#licensing

by fzliu • 4 years ago

37 42 4 years ago

oneplane• 4 years ago

Ouch, from the giant they were, reduced to some meaningless tech brand to be stuck on all sorts of random crap. I get that HP (pre-split) didn't have much use for Compaq after a while, but a lot of the consumer stuff seems to have a bunch of compaq infrastructure under the hood. Even the SoftPaq name still pops up constantly.

tomcam• 4 years ago

Random crap? Their licensing fees must be literally in the dozens or even hundreds of dollars!

10729287• 4 years ago

Can't wait to see kids wandering with the 90s logo on their t-shirt.

martyvis2• 4 years ago

Except that current logo isn't the 90's one. (I would expect that they wouldn't want you to use that old but cool one)

emptyparadise• 4 years ago

Another great American brand reduced to a logo on a crappy Android tablet.

chasil3• 4 years ago

For RCA (mentioned above), this happened due to bad management.

The company ignored its core competence in electronics and semiconductors, and attempted to become a conglomerate.

In the end stages, it was known as "Rugs, Chickens, and Automobiles" (RCA).

The one good thing that RCA did at this end was to train the engineers behind TSMC, UMC and Mediatek.

https://www.eetimes.com/rca-taiwan-workers-victory-too-littl...

avian2• 4 years ago

Are there any good books that cover what happened with US companies like HP, Compaq, RCA, ... ? How and why they went from producing top-notch professional equipment to selling off their core engineering departments and reduce themselves to brands for cheap consumer stuff?

netsharc• 4 years ago

Do brands expire? If I saw a Compaq tablet in the store I'd think "Yuck, that's a 90's brand, I wonder how crappy the tablet will be!".

I guess not, the brand Mercedes Benz is almost a hundred years old but is still desirable...

projektfu2• 4 years ago

Yes, but I was pleased with Gateway laptop I bought as a gift. It was a good price with good specs and construction, even though I knew it was not related to Gateway (Gateway 2000 for those who remember) at all.

bluedino• 4 years ago

People like my grandmother, who retired a long time ago remember Compaq as being the "best computers"

She worked in accounting so that's probably what she used every day, and might have had a bad experience with some other (also now-defunct) brand.

watersb• 4 years ago

Ironically, the parent HP is the brand licensing I remember...

On this day of looking forward to new Apple products, and looking back (Steve Jobs archive on the HN front page at the moment) let us not forget one more thing:

iPod•HP - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod%2BHP

codetrotter• 4 years ago

Steve Jobs archive on the HN front page at the moment

For anyone else looking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32760695

martyvis2• 4 years ago

I was an employee of HP then (still at HPE, a result of the split). I recall when these products came out and Carly was promoting it, Apple's market cap was around $6B and HP's was 10 times that at around $60B. Some of us were thinking it would be cool if Carly did a deal with Steve and buy Apple. I'm not sure if the culture clash would have worked. But within 10 years the stock numbers were reversed and we were not in so great a position being split up.

unwind• 4 years ago

Uh not a native speaker, but the very first sentence of that blurb:

Brand Licensing provides the permission to trademarks, under defined conditions.

Really doesn't read well to me, feels like they omitted a verb, like it should be "the permission to USE trademarks" or something. Being permitted to a trademark feels very chopped-off.

mike_d• 4 years ago

That is how lawyers speak in the United States, not normal people.

comex• 4 years ago

I’ve read my fair share of American legalese, and I haven’t seen either the phrase “permission to trademarks”, or the odd usage of the definite article. Combine that with the phrase “Tablets in USA” lower down (few Americans put the A in USA, and even if they did, it would have “the” before it), and I’m guessing it’s written by someone from another country. Not that it matters.

neilv4• 4 years ago

Compaq did a nice luggable IBM PC compatible, then the first 80386 desktop IBM PC compatible (before IBM had a 386 PC), and many subsequent things.

Compaq, DEC, HP... all great companies that became not what they used to be.

(IBM's eventual 386 PC was the PS/2 Model 80, using an MCA bus for expansion instead of 8/18-bit PC ISA, so it was maybe less PC-compatible than the Compaq.)

tssva• 4 years ago

The old HP and DEC I mourn but Compaq I don't. Compared to HP and DEC Compaq's period of "greatness" was a flash in the pan. By the time they bought DEC in 1998 they were already a shell of what they had been. Their servers had been a mess for years and their service techs were not great. DEC service techs were fantastic, and it was a real step down in quality when Compaq service techs started coming out for support calls.

hakfoo• 4 years ago

I feel like Compaq was evolutionary, and DEC was revolutionary.

Their great coups are more about timing than anything else, I'd say.

By showing up shortly after the very first generation of "PC Compatibles", they managed to miss the tendency to build something "better but not compatible", and had a chance to plan a strategy for when IBM's lawyers came calling.

Getting a 386 to market was inevitable; if they didn't do it, someone else would. Without Compaq, the PS/2 Model 80 might have been the first 386 PC, but it would still have had a hard time fighting off cheaper and more versatile ISA-bus clones.

Maybe I'm still resentful of the mid-late 90s days, when the dream was a standard AT chassis and power supply and its reliable upgrade path, rather than manufacturers like Compaq with their zany form factors.

neilv4• 4 years ago

Later Compaq innovations... iPAQs were used as Linux handheld computers, a couple decades ago. Some people would like to get back to something like that, with modern hardware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ

type0• 4 years ago

Gemini PDA has relatively modern hardware

neilv4• 4 years ago

Looks like they also have a 5G device now: https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/devices

(Although they offer 24 internationalized keyboard options, I don't know how thoroughly the "Astro Slide" brand was researched for global markets: in the US, it's similar to a major brand of adult intimate products.)

Brajeshwar• 4 years ago

Pocket PC Devices, especially the Compaq iPAQ changed the course of my career. I have nostalgic moments of my life. Recently, I added some phrases so I can read back later in life - https://brajeshwar.com/2022/ipaq/

Animats• 4 years ago

Compaq, Westinghouse, Zenith, RCA... All those once big names are now licensed out.

nielsbot• 4 years ago

Kodak, Polaroid

teh_klev• 4 years ago

Kodak is still a functioning company making stuff.

throw_m239339• 4 years ago

Philips as well AFAIK.

https://www.philips.com/a-w/about/innovation/ips/brand-licen...

Basically these are meaningless companies riding on their past fame any manufacturer can slap their logo on any product for a fee. What a scam...

More and more people will eventually notice like I did, people aren't stupid. When the exact same generic product is sold 10 times more under a known brand than under some obscure one, one will realize that paying more doesn't yield better quality.

Tsiklon• 4 years ago

I wonder many references to compaq still exist in HPE’s product lineup - Proliant and Softpaq (to a lesser extent) are still prominent

ppljudge• 4 years ago

It’s interesting how we get attached to brands. They are just fitting their purpose (generate profit) and we still care about them

porbelm• 4 years ago

Awesome that the "TVs in India" site compaq.tv has an SSL certificate that expired A YEAR AGO

aliqot• 4 years ago

SSL is overrated

thallium205• 4 years ago

"Tablets in USA" brings you to a "Shop Now" page that also has a certificate error and then if you ignore it brings you to a 403 forbidden.

noisy_boy• 4 years ago

I used to drool on Compaq Presario adverts - they looked the coolest and totally out of my reach at the time. I think there is a market for using the brand with some innovative stuff.

actionfromafar• 4 years ago

Yeah... I had one of the Mac-like-things with a built in monitor. It was very cute and I actually liked it, but it was dog slow. Upgrade the memory from 4 megabytes to 16 and put a 1000 - megabyte hard drive in it eventually.

cptnapalm• 4 years ago

I wonder if you can get a brand license for DEC. Then the PiDP-11 could be an "real" DEC.

Compaq Brand Licensing

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