Slashdot Mirror
HP to Offer Custom Compaq Gaming PCs
PunkerTFC writes "Announced in the run-up to E3, Hewlett-Packard will offer custom built-to-order gaming machines under the Compaq brand, according to Reuters. The machines will be avalible in June or July and 'offer a range of options with standard, off-the-shelf components.' HP has been selling a Compaq gaming machine on a limited basis through a few select retailers already - apparently, 'Those pilot sales... convinced the company that it could compete in a market where well-known specialty manufacturers like Alienware, Voodoo and Falcon Northwest face increasing competition from mainstream players like Dell Inc'. The X Gaming machines will feature 'a standard chassis from CoolerMaster, known for its work in keeping system noise down while also decreasing heat, and red glowing lights in front and back what will make it stand out in the dark.'"
If you have the time, I highly recommend builing your own. Check out some of the popular tech sites and read the reviews.
A hot gaming system nowadays mostly consists of a $300 video card and whatever hardware will support it. Get the a AMD 64bit chip, a good mobo (Abit, Asus, etc.), some fast RAM (Corsair, etc) and your looking at a system under $1500 that will kick the snot out of their proposed $3K system.
Hecubas
I would be dramatically more likely to consider a PC sold under the HP brand than the Compaq brand, if I didn't understand that they were the same company now. Every compaq machine I have ever used and/or owned was crap except my laptop (Presario 1692) which was passable. By contrast, some of the HP Kayak machines were very nice, and most of the Vectras weren't all that bad.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I honestly couldn't point to the source that says this, but I remember them ultimately deciding that Compaq would be reintroduced as their "enthusiasts" brand, for people who tinkered a bit more with their PCs and demanded a bit more hardware (video editing folks, gamers, the guy who needs the new chip because it's new).
I suppose some market survey showed that Compaq owners did this more often than HP owners, or that people who were a bit more into hardware specs looked more favorably on the compaq name.
Toward the end of Compaq's stand-alone life, they were actually using some nice, deskpro-derived towers and were one of the first big-name companies to embrace the Athlon processor in their higher-range consumer equipment. They were also a big supporter of the Athlon/DDR combo during the P4A days when the only non-RDRAM chipset from intel supported PC133 SDRAM. Both of those things would indicate that, at least from a strategy standpoint, Compaq might have counted on their customers being slightly more informed on the hardware side of things than otherwise. Or it might just have been a gamble, who knows?
Again, I swear the first point about the enthusiast brand was from one of their official statements post-merger, where they started talking about what lines from each company would be dropped. Given those sorts of examples, though, I don't think it's too terribly far fetched.
I've had worse experience with Compaq than HP, (but come to think of it, I've had much more Compaq experience, so that may account for it...) Bios setup on it's own hard drive partition? BIOS that won't let you do a normal OS install, tries to force you into using the recovery/restore disk (not included with the system, order from Compaq)? RAM soldered to the motherboard? Cable Select hard drives? IDE cables with only one drive connection? All features of Compaq that I haven't had the misfortune of finding on an HP, or for the most part anywhere else.