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Compaq Attempts to Muscle eMachines in Court
Anonymous Coward writes "Compaq is suing eMachines for patent infringement, but the real reason might be that
eMachines is invading their sub-$1000 market. Sounds too similar to the Packard Bell story. " (The Packard Bell reference is explained in the linked-to article in case you don't remember Compaq's similar suit against Packard Bell back in 1994.)
Who cares? I wouldn't buy either one of these companies machines...
????
The 'news story' doesn't give any real details, nor a URL to somewhere that does.
So what was copied?
A NOR gate? A mounting rail? A screw pattern? The box they ship in? Some software?
I will pay for shipping.
Unfortunately people don't learn from others mistakes, and we now have eMachines and the like. Ohwell haven't actually seen one yet, maybe they're not as bad as the previous sub-$1000 computers from CTX, Acer, Packard Bell etc.
The HSP micro modem included in the E Machine makes the LT WinModem look like a feat of engineering. I have yet to see one stay connected to our servers here for more than 10 minutes, and frankly they make my job in tech supprort a living hell, as explaining to an irate customer that they can't stay connected because the computer they just bought sucks isn't exactly a fun thing to do. May E Machines rot violently in hell.
I haven't seen inside any of those eMachines, but I can't imagine anything being that proprietary.
Is Compaq going to sue me too and make me pay royalties every time I put together a system?
"Compaq hasn't proven themselves to be abysmally stupid in the past,"
I guess you haven't used one of their desktops in a few years.
must be a slow news day, brotha
I picked up an E-Machine 300k almost a year ago for for $449/free shipping... and a $50 rebate.. Ok.. it took 7mos to get the rebate and the modem is pure shit... but other than that it does just fine.
;-)
E-boxes are not meant to be a really high end PC/Workstation... Just a decent mom and pop PC.
So if you go buy one just be sure to get a decent modem too.
Oh.. and yes Linux likes it just fine
This is pretty straightforward. Compaq's patent application clearly states "Method for installing margina^h^h^h^hvelous hardware in a desktop or tower form factor.". EMachines are totally in the wromg here. Go Compaq!
Would your friends exchange their *wunderbar* Emachines to my F8%4@ EMachine...
Bullshit..I do not how the these bastards sell some thing called a computer branded as "Emachi" and get away with it...Emachine you rot in Hell!!!!
I have two eMachines computers, they make great Linux boxes. The modems are unusable with Linux but otherwise I think they're a very good value. I have recommended them to friends that keep the pre-installed software and they too are satisfied. I don't have any Compaq computers.
Wow... Cool. Where and how do I get one of those keyboards? Sounds useful to me (already hit BackSpace 15 times just writing this! ARGH!). Plus, It'll get stupid people off my computer FAST! ;-)
>Without patents Microsoft would just copy EVERYTHING.
What are you talking about? Micro$oft DOES copy everything, patented or not! (Except when they just buy up the competition outright.)
you need no apostrophe.
theres my nickel.
In the 1960's you booted mainframe computers from 'tape', cassette tape, paper tape, or even 'cards', or throw several hundred switches. Often 2 step, boot microcode for the processor, then boot the OS after a steady tone.
Point being I can't see why such patents may be challengable under 'prior art'. I think the US patent office is in a sorry state. They should put older pre 1975 stuff on the web. Patent penmanship is a joke example:, load a program into memory from either spinning, rotating, or stationary media, either liquid, solid, gaseous, organic, molecular, magnetic, optical, radio, xray, or otherwise in the magnoelectric spectrum, sequentially, parallel, or randomly, unassisted, or assisted with extra hardware, directly or indirectly..
Dream stuff was already penned in the 60's, only patent attorneys have lost the ability to read. They only do a half baked search of online material, probably only US stuff too, as Europe was (still is) considered too far away.
Even the bod who got a patent on booting from a floppy - 8 inch, should be remembered. Before RAID was invented, folks were doing interisting stuff with magnetic drums.
I say you should have to put your hand on your heart, and say 'original' , and not get all legalese at a drop of a hat.
And don't forget, the first RAM was a mercury delay line, and a pair of transducers. Could be primed by running a stick down a binary encoded washboard. As for gaseous memory, well I think the patent folks know where to look.
Modern PC can boot on CD Roms.
But, you need modern motherboard and CDs must be bootable.
IMHO, booting on a CD in a PC sucks. It doesn't work well (I wasn't able to boot on the Win98 CD of a friend, we had to do a "bootable floppy disk in order to install win98)
Mac OS boot is really better and very intuitive...
It wasn't on their list.
I work for MicroCenter in Denver, CO as a service technician. I have seen more Compaq PC's in our shop than Emachines. I think the Emachine all the way around is a decent PC. Compaq may be using the patent infringment thing to stall Emachine's growth. Compaq cannot compete against such a company. Having seen both brands from under the hood and working on them, I have more respect Emachines for it's simplicity. I tell folks to stay away from Compaq. They seem to be too unstable.
They're not Texans. Rosen is a Yankee, Eckhart (sp?) is a German, most of the execs aren't from here. The low level people are, but there is a habit in Compaq of treating anyone with a southern or Texas accent as a moron.
They aren't Texans.
Compaq did a clean room bios with "clean engineers" who had never seen an IBM bios and "dirty engineers" who had. The clean engineers could only ask the dirty engineers questions with a small army of attorneys there and everything being tape recorded to make sure that the dirty engineers didn't give the clean engineers anything but hints. Compaq did this because they were expecting IBM to sue, and they did. IBM lost, as there was no theft of IP, as Compaq, with copious documentation and lots of tape recordings, was able to conclusively prove.
With a scsi cd-rom, all it took was the proper cd format, or boot image. (ie as long as macs have at least, el torrito or something has been around a bit as well)
For ide, only recently, with newer drives and newer motherboards (some older ones got it with a flashed bios) I recall my first one being a Pentium TX board in '97.
A friend bought an eMachine a few months back. It's one of the Celeron/333 models, with an ATI Rage of some sort, and a PNP Cirrus Logic sound card. I was wondering if anyone knew of sites with the XF86Config, and possibly the pnptools info file for configuring the sound. I know it's possible to set up X, since other people have done it. However, we've tried just about everything, and can't get it to sync. Since X is useless, we haven't toyed around with sound much yet, but it looks like it may also be problematic.
By the way, other than our inability to configure Linux on it, the machine works great. We haven't tried the modem (which everyone seems to complain about) since we have ethernet, though. I've never seen a 120 watt power supply before, and the machine is designed to be cheap, but it works fine for normal use.
We bought one 6 months ago. There were problems getting X to work on it, so we just left it in Win98, but otherwise it seems to work fine. The components are cheezy (120 watt power supply), but sufficent.
"Without patents Microsoft would just copy EVERYTHING. "
Well, hopefully they would copy something that WORKED instead of making their own proprietary crap... At least MS-Linux (shudder!) would be a damn sight better than their current "offering".
Then apparently you've only bought nine of 'em. I've had maybe 10% of the Barracudas I've gotten be bad out of the box.
Of course, I haven't had much problem with the drives once replaced, but once I actually had to RMA a drive, and the next one sent failed the burn test, too!
Even so, the good ones haven't failed me down the road...
Booting from the network just requires a NIC card with a Boot ROM.
I have seen PCs that were nothing more than dumb terminals, no HD, no FD, just a motherboard, video card, and NIC card with Boot ROM.
i'm an onsite technician... it's amazing how many emachine boxes we go out and replace. you don't actually FIX anything, you pull their harddrive and put it in the new case. thats how the bosses wants it.
whatever.
techforce sucks. best buy sucks. hp sucks. pb sucks. emachines suck.
in the for what it's worth department, emachines also offers machines with k6 and celeron processors.. my dad, for example, has the 333k, which has a 333mhz k6.
I don't think I'd use one as my primary machine, but as a low cost mid-range server running FreeBSD they'd be excellent. Just pop in a NIC and there you go.
Now if only you didn't have to pay the M$ tax...
Innovation train? You mean being able to boot off of the CD-ROM? For cryin' out loud, eMachines didn't even add that capability to their computer, it was built into the AMI BIOS that they purchased to use in their machine. What next, is Compaq going to sue me because I have an ASUS P2B motherboard in my machine that will boot off of CD-ROM?
I repeat: These eMachines are so generic that it's pitiful. They don't make a single component in their system with possibly the exception of the case, and every component in their system (except the case) is identical to that in millions of other computers sold every year by manufacturers large and small. It is obvious that this is just a blatant attempt by Compaq to destroy competition in the low-end computer market. I'm ashamed that a company that has paid so much attention to Linux in the past year or so has done such a thing. But oh, I forget, it was the Digital side of the company that paid attention to Linux, not the Texans in Houston...
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Now, in 1999, they are suing someone for allegedly cloning them.
--
Well I must be bored to rise to this, oh well.
CC"Pray arm me further by your reply" Winston Churchill
You can disable the stupid backspacebar;
Hold down (left, I think) ctrl+shift+alt and press teh backspacebar tvice. You should now have 2 spacebars... Just don't drink too much!
Jón
Either way, I'll stick to building my own with each component picked out by me, personally, with tender loving care.
This feature has been around for a while now. I am guessing it was around before AGP become widely available. We now need PC machines to boot off the network, a feature comming soon with Mac OS X, I believe, and was available for many a Unix system for a long time.
The 1994 lawsuit against Packard Bell brought to light what most of us who had been doing computer support had known for a long time...
Packard Bell used crappy components in their computers.
The lawsuit brought this out in public, made the public aware of how crappy Packard Bell was... and as an end result I no longer immediately respond to every problem computer question with "You bought a Packard Bell didn't you?"
Unfortunately people don't learn from others mistakes, and we now have eMachines and the like. Ohwell haven't actually seen one yet, maybe they're not as bad as the previous sub-$1000 computers from CTX, Acer, Packard Bell etc.
Well, eMachines ain't gonna get outta this one alive. Not that they don't make *CRAP* systems. (CYRIX PROCESSORS?! STILL!? Gods.) But they're going to take one HELL of a PR beating.
I'm no fan of Cyrix and their processors, but I think you're counting emachines out a little early. So far, we don't even know that there's any substance to these claims. The things COmpaq suggests as infringing sound like everyone under the sun has infringed that.
One that stands out in my mind is 5,724,226: Housing Access Door Construction for a Portable Computer Docking Station. I didn't think emachines made either portables or docking stations.
IIRC, there's a door on the front that covers the front USB and joystick ports. Very nifty.
Looking over the rest of the patents... this is bullshit. Compaq doesn't have a leg to stand on. But a lot of cash.
Don't let the sh*tty consumer Presarios shape your opinion of Compaq hardware. The business class Deskpros (except for the EP - I *hate* that thing) and the Proliants are pretty nice.
Yes, I have gotten one of those. One. It went back. Typically those arn't shipped out unless it's requested, though. Is your sysadmin a BOFH?
(For those in other threads who were saying a Bar Association might be a good group to form for the high tech industry, see What License? or, Why you can sue your doctor but not your lawyer.)
Fuck Slashdot
Anyway, there's stupid and there's abysmally stupid. I know we see a lot of it in general, and the technical world is no exception, but we still need to distinguish between the two. Judgment call, arguably, on whether Compaq qualifies as abysmal when there are so many more worthy contenders, most of whom can be identified by cruising alt.sysadmin.recovery, as well as grepping for the F-word in the Linux source.
Fuck Slashdot
Some PCs can boot off the network. IBM supports or defines somemthing called the "Preboot Execution Environment" so that they can "netboot" a special version of OS/2. I suspect that this technique is IBM-specific and has nothing to do with standards such as Open Firmware.
For what my wife wanted, it's perfect. Quicken, solitaire, web surfing and email.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Man, haven't you ever played with one of those keyboards with the "backspace bar"?
Those came with a LOT of deskpros. Imagine looking up at your screen and seeing that you'd accidentally erased a large number of your letters.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
A few points as you enlighten yon Mac user...
A new PC can probably boot from a CD, depending on its BIOS. Not all PC's can, however; booting from a CD-ROM drive isn't always supported in older machines' BIOS. With those older machines, just running Linux or a *BSD won't help you boot from a CD if your BIOS won't allow it.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
If you can't compete, use patents and lawyers. Lots of them.
I'm so glad to see once again that patents and IP encourage innovation... [cough].
People like us should be careful of attacking the IP system. Patents are the reason a lot of companies fund R&D, thus giving us half a change to make a decent wage. Without patents Microsoft would just copy EVERYTHING.
As fast as news travels these days it'll be interesting to see if this backlashes on Compaq. They don't really need to alienate consumers with a bully image right now.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
I just happened to buy one of these little
eMachine beauties this last weekend. I was a little
skeptical at first, but for $550 I got a 400MHz
Celeron with 128k on chip cache, 5x DVD (with
software decoding - which works fine, BTW), a
6.4GB hard drive, 4MB ATI Rage Pro AGP 2x,
and 32MB 66MHz RAM. And the
manual and the website both claim it runs Linux -
I'll have to try that out this weekend. I also had
no problem installing a 2940UW with a couple gigs of MP3's and a zip drive.
As an MP3 stereo system, I'd say it's a pretty
good deal. I'm happy.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
Lots of people, i assume, otherwise the companys wouldn't be in exsistance.
some people don't know how easy it really is to build a computer
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
What the HELL!?
What, Compaq patented BIOS passwording with a pretty logo?
It's a petty lawsuit. Welcome to the PC OEM world. Undercut the competition, and should the competition be several hundred times larger than you, yet you're gaining on their market, you get sued.
Well, eMachines ain't gonna get outta this one alive. Not that they don't make *CRAP* systems. (CYRIX PROCESSORS?! STILL!? Gods.) But they're going to take one HELL of a PR beating.
Rest In Peace, eMachines.
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
your company here.
shelby != ford
But the method that pc's use to boot from a CD is at best a hack. What it basicly boils down to is taking an image of a bootable floppy diskette and modifying a small bit of it and then writing it out to the CD. When the system boots from the CD the CD "replaces" the floppy and becomes a:\ the floppy becomes b:\ .
"An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will" Wicca Rede
One that stands out in my mind is 5,724,226: Housing Access Door Construction for a Portable Computer Docking Station. I didn't think emachines made either portables or docking stations.
The other patents cover a variety of generic PC stuff, including one that looks a lot like the infamous XOR cursor patent. IMHO, Compaq is casting a pretty wide net here, throwing any of its patents marginally related to generic PC hardware at emachines. They wouldn't dare do this to a bigger player without expecting countersuits for violating that company's patent portfolio. I guess they think that emachines doesn't have any patent portfolio of their own.
Prediction: this will get settled out of court for "an undisclosed sum." It's entirely FUD.
Cool. Hey, there was another company that I saw on HSN, aand their rep looked JUST LIKE Bill Gates. Well, anyway, it was right after the Pentium Tres (3, for non-spanish speakers) was released, and they were trying to show everyone how fast the Pentium III was, so, they started loading webpages, (off the hard drive, BTW) and talking about how fast the pentium three was making their internet connection. Obviously they thought we were a bunch of clueless idiots. Oh well, anyway, all Wintel OEMs produce crap "internet" computers because the buzzword status sells a lot of machines, which happen to be made from ass-crack parts, which are built in third-world sweatshops for minimal costs.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I care. I wouldn't buy a Compaq since they sell proprietary crap, and especially after they were stupid enough to stop internet sales of Comnpaq computers to keep the store prices higher. But I don't know anything about eMachines, and have no reason to think they're a bad company...if Compaq wants to self-destruct that's fine, but they're even worse assholes than I thought if they try to drag others down with them.
Apparently, when one computer maker comes up with a new revolutionary idea, they cross license it to other manufacturers and the other manufacturers do the same. Apparently, emachines was taking a free ride on the innovation train run by the other manufacturers
(From MSNBC)
From Yahoo
The technology in question, including selectable resolution monitor systems and a system designed to boot from CD-ROM or tape, is basic to PC systems.
(They also mention that the result of the earlier PB lawsuits that Compaq filed was the PB had to pay Compaq for 5 years of Patent royalties. The other sources don't mention that)
Information for your digestion on the matter
SP
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
Emachines are definitely not targetted at people who can build their own systems. It's for the "little people" who don't need a powerhouse, just something to do their homework and check their Juno email with :)
Sure, they're pieces of crap, but you pay for what you get.
Compaq's screen resolution patent might be one of their few serious ones. It was filed in 1982, but not approved until '86 so it still is valid for a few years.
I owned an original Compaq portable and it had the innovative ability to work in both IBM compatible video modes -- monochrome and CGA -- with a special keyboard combination to switch between the two. The key combination changed the scan rate of the monitor, not just the resolution. I'm not sure that they invented this, but I hadn't seen it before and it gave the Compaq a huge advantage over the IBM PC.
NEC came out with a multiscan monitor much later.
Most of the other patents are garbage IMHO. Very obvious solutions to anyone "trained in that field".
I care because:
In conclusion.. I hate my computer!
Insert mind here.
Pardon me for asking.. I'm a full-time Mac user (hey, no flames pls) so excuse my ignorance.. how long have desktop PCs had the ability to boot from anything other than their floppy drive (well, at least without a major hack to their startup sequence script)? I know most Macintoshes can boot from a CD by holding down "C" for a few seconds after powerup/restart.
-----
Linux user: if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
they use a Samsung CD-ROM drive. The hard drive is a Seagate. I have never seen a Seagate hard drive fail.
Time to send a note home to Compaq's parents...This is just another example of a company that can't compete outside of the court room. Gimme a break.
Besides, I don't know anyone who'd buy computers from any of the companies listed above...And I've yet to see a manufacturer than can build a better computer for less money than I can build one myself. Sub-$1000 or not.
F.
Oh look, you have an equal or better product than us, you are in our market, you our eating our cash. We can do 1 or 2 things.
1) develop a better product, put an extra %200 percent in, and give it all we got, to push our product into a fine tuned piece of art.
2) or pay some lawyer to sue your punk ass.
My lawyer is going to eat you to shreads, Bitch...