Submitted or created by: Richard Ward …
It was almost Christmas in 1996 and the only thing I wanted was my first computer. Back then, the idea of having your own machine at home wasn’t as common as it is now. Most people either used one at work, had limited access at school, or maybe a friend’s family had one sitting in their living room. Computers were still expensive, often thought of as luxuries rather than household necessities. For me, as a teenager in the mid-90s, owning a computer was more than just wanting a gadget—it was like asking for a ticket to the future.
Of course, what I thought I was getting and what I actually unwrapped under the Christmas tree weren’t the same thing.
Instead of a real PC, I received a Brother Word Processor. At the time, I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or grateful. On one hand, it wasn’t the kind of computer that could run Quake or Command & Conquer, and it definitely wasn’t something that could get me online with AOL. On the other hand, it had a keyboard, a small two- or three-color monitor, and a way for me to practice typing. For my parents, this was the safe bet: affordable, educational, and not nearly as overwhelming as a Windows 95 machine.
Typing on that Brother machine was both frustrating and oddly satisfying. Frustrating because I was still pecking away at the keys, barely able to string together a full sentence without looking down. Satisfying because, for the first time, I was learning how words could flow faster when you trained your fingers. That little word processor didn’t have flashy games, but it forced me to practice. Over time, I stopped relying on hunt-and-peck and started typing with real rhythm. I didn’t know it then, but those hours spent hammering on that chunky keyboard would pay off for the rest of my life.
Still, the dream of owning a “real” computer never went away. Every issue of PC Magazine, every flyer from electronics stores, every time I saw a Windows desktop in a movie—it all kept that fire burning.
The Price of a Dream
About six months later, when PC prices started to fall, I finally had my shot. By then, computers had already started becoming slightly more affordable compared to the early 90s, when a decent machine could easily cost over $3,000. My chance came at a place called Computer City, a big-box electronics retailer that was trying to compete with giants like CompUSA.
Walking into Computer City was like walking into the future. The smell of new electronics hit you the moment you stepped inside. Rows of monitors displayed colorful Windows 95 desktops. Salespeople hovered near the aisles, ready to convince you that the machine you were looking at was the fastest, the most powerful, and the best deal you could get that week. There were racks of boxed software—everything from Microsoft Office to Encarta encyclopedias, from Quicken to CorelDRAW. For a teenager obsessed with technology, this was like stepping into Disneyland.
I still remember the moment I first laid eyes on the Compaq Presario that would become mine. It sat on display with a glossy price tag that read close to $2,700. By today’s standards, that sounds insane—spending nearly three grand on a machine with specs that wouldn’t even rival the cheapest smartphone in a discount bin today. But in 1997, that kind of purchase felt like bringing home a Ferrari.
Computer City had prices so low that they couldn’t sustain their business model. Within a year, they were gone, swallowed up by CompUSA and later absorbed by TigerDirect. It was a sign of the times—PC retail was brutally competitive, and only the strongest survived. But I didn’t care about the corporate future of Computer City. All I cared about was that cardboard box with COMPAQ written on it, being loaded into the trunk of the car.
The Compaq Presario Arrives
When I finally got it home, setting it up was an event. These machines came packed with towers, monitors, keyboards, mice, stacks of manuals, driver disks, and setup CDs. Plugging everything in took over an hour, not because it was complicated but because I treated every step like a ritual. Connecting the mouse and keyboard through their old PS/2 ports felt like unlocking a secret world. Snapping in the monitor cable with its chunky blue connector made me feel like a technician.
Finally, when the power button clicked for the first time and that Compaq logo flashed across the CRT screen, I felt like I had entered a new era of my life.
Here’s what that expensive box of circuits and silicon gave me:
– CPU: A 200MHz Intel Pentium MMX. At the time, MMX was marketed as this massive leap in multimedia performance. Commercials bragged about how it would make games faster, videos smoother, and graphics more realistic. The truth? It was mostly marketing fluff, but it still felt powerful compared to anything else I had touched.
– Memory: 32MB SDRAM. Today you can’t even run a modern operating system with that much RAM, but in 1997, 32MB was enough to make you feel like your system could handle just about anything.
– Hard Drive: A 4.3GB monster. At least it felt like a monster then. I remember thinking, “I’ll never fill this up.” Within a year, I was already worrying about storage space as MP3s, games, and scanned images started eating it alive.
– Graphics: An S3 ViRGE with 2MB of EDO 3D graphics memory. This card had a reputation in the gaming community—it was technically a “3D accelerator,” but it was so weak that people nicknamed it the “3D decelerator.” Still, it let me dabble in early 3D graphics, and that was good enough for me.
– Drives: A 16X CD-ROM, an Iomega Zip drive that could hold 100MB per disk, and the classic 3.5” floppy drive. Each had its place. The CD-ROM was for games and software, the Zip drive was for backing up files, and the floppy was still used for transferring small documents or booting into DOS utilities.
– Network: A 33.6K dial-up modem. Back then, being online meant tying up your family’s phone line, listening to the screeching handshake tones, and waiting as a single webpage loaded line by line. Even so, it felt like magic.
– Expansion: Two 16-bit ISA slots, two PCI slots, one combo PCI/ISA slot, and a Compaq-reserve modem slot. These were the arteries of potential. Upgrades could change the entire life of your machine.
– Interfaces: A wild collection of ports—USB (which almost no one used yet), serial, parallel, joystick/MIDI, RJ11 phone jacks, and all the basic audio jacks. Today we complain about dongles and adapters, but back then, connectivity was like a game of puzzle pieces.
It was the kind of system you could build memories on, and that’s exactly what I did.
Software Starter Pack
The hardware was only part of the story. What really defined the experience was the software bundle that came preloaded. In those days, buying a PC often meant receiving a small library of programs right out of the box.
My Compaq Desktop came loaded with:
– Microsoft Windows 95, the reigning king of consumer operating systems
– Compaq SmartQ, their own little utility suite that promised “optimization”
– Compaq Phone Center, which turned your computer into a speakerphone and fax hub
– Compaq Multimedia, basically a gateway for the CD-ROM demos and sound features
– Microsoft Works, a budget version of Office for word processing and spreadsheets
– CorelDRAW 5, my first real exposure to graphic design software
– Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia 1996, which felt futuristic compared to flipping through a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica volumes
– Quicken Special Edition Multimedia, because even in the 90s, they wanted you to manage your finances digitally
– PGA Tour 96, which became my accidental intro to golf
– Yukon Trail, the educational game that taught history while you played
– America Online trial disks, because AOL was practically unavoidable in the 90s
– GNN, Netscape Navigator, and CompuServe trials—competing services all fighting to get you online
– Pod and Ultimate Human Body 2, software designed to show off Intel’s MMX “multimedia” capabilities
– PointCast Network, which streamed news and information to your desktop when you weren’t using it
– SurfWatch, one of the early parental-control and internet-filtering tools
– QuickRestore CD, which let you wipe everything and start fresh if things got messy
Each program had its quirks. CorelDRAW opened my eyes to creativity on a screen. Yukon Trail showed me that games could teach as much as they entertained. AOL introduced me to the world of chatrooms, buddy lists, and the sound of “You’ve Got Mail.”
But there was one catch—if you needed help figuring out how to use any of it, you had to deal with Compaq’s support model.
The Cost of Support
Today, if you run into trouble, you can open YouTube, Google your question, or scroll through forums. Back then, your options were limited. Either you figured it out yourself through trial and error, or you called support.
Compaq’s 24/7 hotline was legendary. They promised that help was always available, but here’s the kicker: while hardware issues under warranty were free, everything else cost $2 a minute. That’s $120 an hour billed to your family’s phone bill.
For a teenager trying to learn computers, that was motivation to figure things out myself. I couldn’t exactly rack up a $200 phone bill because I didn’t understand how to set up a printer. So I read the manuals, I experimented, I tinkered. That Compaq forced me to become self-taught, because the alternative was burning through money faster than a long-distance phone call to Europe.
And that’s where the real education began.
A History of Compaq
Today, Compaq as a brand is long gone, a relic you might stumble across in an eBay listing or on the sticker of an old beige tower. But in the 80s and 90s, Compaq was a giant.
Compaq started in 1982, founded by three former Texas Instruments executives: Rod Canion, Jim Harris, and Bill Murto. The name “Compaq” itself came from a blend of “Compatibility” and “Quality.” That wasn’t just clever marketing either—it was the company’s mission. Back then, IBM was the dominant player in personal computers. Their IBM PCs were considered the standard, but they were expensive. If you wanted to compete, you had to make something that could run the same software and use the same peripherals, without stepping on IBM’s legal toes.
That’s where Compaq came in. Their first product was the Compaq Portable, released in 1983. It was a luggable PC—think of a sewing machine-sized case with a built-in screen and a handle. It wasn’t light by any modern definition, but compared to the massive IBM systems, it was revolutionary. Most importantly, it was fully IBM-compatible. That meant you could run the same DOS software without paying IBM prices.
The gamble worked. The Compaq Portable was a hit, and the company exploded onto the scene. Within a few years, Compaq was setting records as the fastest company to ever reach a billion dollars in sales. They weren’t just building PCs—they were challenging the dominance of IBM itself.
By the late 80s and early 90s, Compaq had solidified its reputation as a top-tier PC maker. Their machines were known for quality, reliability, and performance. In fact, in 1986, they introduced the world’s first PC based on Intel’s brand-new 386 processor—beating IBM to the punch. That move cemented their role as an innovator, not just an imitator.
The 90s were the golden era for Compaq. Their Presario line, introduced in 1993, was aimed squarely at consumers. These were the machines that found their way into living rooms, dorm rooms, and small offices across America. If you grew up in that era, there’s a good chance your family, a neighbor, or a school lab had a Presario humming away. They weren’t just selling computers—they were selling the promise of multimedia, of CD-ROMs, of being connected to the internet for the first time.
But success in the tech industry is never guaranteed. By the late 90s, competition was heating up. Dell was on the rise, perfecting the direct-to-consumer model that cut out the middleman and let customers customize PCs to their liking. Gateway and HP were also pushing hard, each carving out their share of the market. Meanwhile, margins were shrinking. The PC business was becoming a brutal race to the bottom, and even giants could stumble.
Compaq’s troubles began to show after their 1998 acquisition of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). On paper, this looked like a smart move—DEC had valuable enterprise technology and expertise. In reality, it was a messy, expensive merger that distracted Compaq from its core business. Internal struggles, management shakeups, and culture clashes weakened the company just as the competition was getting stronger.
By the early 2000s, Compaq’s consumer appeal had started to fade. Their once-premium image was replaced by cheaper, more generic machines that struggled to stand out. Dell was eating into their market share, and HP was looming as a direct rival. In 2002, after years of decline, Compaq was officially acquired by Hewlett-Packard in a $25 billion merger. For a while, the Compaq name lived on as a sub-brand under HP, slapped onto budget systems. But by the early 2010s, HP quietly phased it out.
And just like that, a company that once threatened IBM, that pioneered the portable PC, that helped put a computer in millions of homes, was gone.
Looking back, the story of Compaq feels almost poetic. They rose by being bold, by challenging giants, by making technology more accessible. They fell because the same industry they helped shape became too cutthroat to survive without constant reinvention. Today, Compaq exists only as a memory, a logo on old towers, and in the stories of people like me who spent countless hours behind the glow of a Presario monitor.