[mpa000]

Wrong. 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]

Sounds like Apple's current laptop strategy.

[yellowapple]

Counterpoint: 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).

[astrodust]

True, Compaq started to go down-market and that did dent their reputation.

HP had already been racing to the bottom for years, though.