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If you've got a pre-built PC today, it's probably sporting a brand name

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like Acer, Dell, HP, or Lenovo.

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But there used to be plenty of other challengers that just kind of disappeared.

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So we're back with the second installment in our something part series, where are they now?

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Looking at the desktop computer companies of yesteryear,

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starting with one of the industry's oldest heavy hitters,

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Tandy. Originally a leather company that got its start all the way back in 1919,

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Tandy became successful enough over the next few decades to eventually buy Radio Shack in 1963,

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paving the way for them to come out with the TRS-AD Model 1 in 1977.

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The Model 1 was one of the very first home computers that was widely available on the market,

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with Tandy ultimately selling over 100,000 of them,

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catapulting the company to a whopping 60% share

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of the microcomputer market. The TRS-AD wasn't IBM compatible though,

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after all, the IBM PC hadn't been invented yet,

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so the popularity of Tandy computers declined

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after the IBM PC hit the scene. But the company did find a niche for itself,

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making PC-compatibles, which proved quite popular for some time.

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As the years went on though, cost-cutting by its competitors forced Tandy

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to sell its computer business to AST,

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which itself adopted a losing strategy of selling high-cost PCs when other companies

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were trying to do it as cheaply as possible. AST was eventually bought by Samsung,

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and then closed down, relegating Tandy to the dustbin of history.

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Let's change gears then to one of the cost-cutting competitors, Compac,

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which focused on making IBM-compatibles from early on in its history.

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Their business model was to take IBM's systems

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and then make them better in some way, like they did with the Compac portable in 1982,

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and the Desk Pro in 1984, which wasn't as visually striking as the portable,

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but was quite a bit faster than IBM's offerings at the time.

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This kind of innovation made Compac a dominant force by the late 80s,

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but it was forced to change its strategy to focus more on cost

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as the PC industry was rapidly becoming based around building commodity machines

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using inexpensive components produced elsewhere.

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This led to Compac releasing the Presario line in 1993,

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which quickly became a fixture at Big Box electronic stores.

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Although this made Compac quite successful again through the late 1990s,

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the company started to gain a reputation for unacceptably poor quality,

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and they were shipping way too many of these hyper-commoditized PCs.

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Combined with the fact that Compac was now being undercut by companies like Dell

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that sold directly to customers instead of relying on retail middlemen

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that sold at their own markup, the company was suddenly in deep trouble

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and was eventually sold to HP in 2002.

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The Compac brand lived on for a while though, as one of HP's budget brands

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with the name getting sold again to an Argentinian company in 2015,

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and then quietly disappearing altogether a few years later.

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Next up is Gateway, another company that helped contribute to Compac's demise

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through selling its PCs directly to consumers online,

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over the phone, or even in its own retail stores.

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Gateway's low cost and distinctive cow pattern boxes

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made their computers very recognizable, and they even came out with the first all-in-one PC

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from a major brand name that cost less than $1,000.

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By 2004, Gateway had captured about one fourth

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of the PC market in the US, but they missed a huge opportunity

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because they were very late getting into the laptop market

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at a time when a major shift towards portable computing was occurring.

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Instead, Gateway tried to get into the business of consumer electronics like TVs,

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but they didn't end up making much money off that venture, and combined with the fact that they weren't as aggressive

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trying to sell their PCs to large businesses compared to Dell,

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they were really struggling by the year 2007 when they were bought by Acer.

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Today, Gateway is still around as a low-cost Acer brand

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that can be found in some brick-and-mortar electronics stores.

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A company that had a similar fate to Gateway was Packard Bell,

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another mainstay on store shelves during the 1990s.

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The company actually dates all the way back to 1933

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and originally manufactured radios, getting into the computer business in 1957

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when they began manufacturing specialized computers for science and industry,

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and then into the home PC business in 1986

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after a change in ownership. Packard Bell quickly made deals

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with large department and big box stores, and thanks to a manufacturing process that emphasized speed,

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they quickly flooded the market with product. By 1995, over half the PCs on sale at Sears,

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yes, Sears sold PCs, were Packard Bells,

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and their popularity was bolstered further by a shell program

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similar to Microsoft Bob called Packard Bell Navigator, which dumbed down the interface for novice PC users,

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of which there were, of course, many at the time. Remember, PCs were pretty new.

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However, the company quickly gained a reputation for poor quality and corner cutting,

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and also turned off consumers when they found out that they were using used parts in their machines

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without properly disclosing the practice. The company was in enough trouble

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that it merged with NEC the very next year,

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but the brand never recovered from its poor reputation in the US,

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and Packard Bell disappeared from the US market in 2000.

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With that said, they didn't have the same public image problems in Europe

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and other parts of the world where their PCs can still be found as an ace or sub-brand,

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although they are becoming increasingly hard to find,

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like a Tinder account that isn't trying to catfish you. So thanks for watching, guys.

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