There was the one that sold "business" systems - those were expensive, and tested, and worked well. (For being propritary, requring mostly compaq expansions, etc. etc. etc.).

Their servers, for instance, were *good*. Desktops from that side of things were quite usable, and didn't have the "cheap" shortcuts that Dell's and Gateways had. (For instance, I had a Dell 200 MMX desktop - with 256k L2 cache. You *couldn't buy* a motherboard on the DIY market without 512k when 200 MMX were out.)

Then there's the stuff you see in Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, I'd presume....

That's out there, cheap and fast. Packard Bell gave them the impetus - cut out QA. Shift that to the customer, overall you save money. (Consumer IBM's had the same problem, I don't know if they fixed it).

So if you're used to seeing the junk for the mass market, you get the wrong impression for their much more expensive stuff.

Addison