4 Jul
1998
4 Jul
'98
9:40 a.m.
Packard Bell had a reputation for making computers with pulled and otherwise used parts.
They had a seemingly high failure rate.
However, recently NEC bought out Packard Bell and the quality and support improved
drastically. I, who would never buy one, bought one for my wife's CAD business.
That's what I'm using at the time. No Complaints...
Mike
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From: Jeff Kaneko
Sent: Friday, June 26, 1998 8:50 AM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: The Beatles
<Some Defence-Related stuff PB did in the 1950's SNIPed>
I just found a
discarded Packard Bell 486 (I almost left it because the
case looked like a 286's). I don't know why you all dislike those things
so much, this case is very good. Anyway, when the machine boots, the ROM
displays a "Packard Bell" graphic, complete with a 3-second fade-in (if
only people paid so much attention to _useful_ stuff). Underneath, it
displays, "America grew up listening to us. It still does." Now, this is
my question. What does this mean? When was this company founded, and
what was their original product?
Packard-Bell, as you see it, is simply not the company it used to be. As
with so many American company names, someone bought the name. I have no idea what happened to Packard-Bell. They may
still be around,
doing defense work, or they may have been swallowed up. The Packard-Bells
at CompUSA, however, are simply not related.
The way I seen it, P-B may have been a defence contractor during WWII
and later, but their main claim to fame was that for decades, they
were one of the biggest manufacturers of Broadcast radios, and
Television Sets.
I know for a fact they were making TV's (of the humongous console
variety in vogue at the time) in the early 70's because I remember an
inane TV commercial for it. In the 50's and 60's there were some
other major players that manufactured TV's (they actually *made* the
stuff): Admiral (my grandmother had one), Motorola, GE, RCA and
Zenith. Others were: Pilot, Curtis-Mathes (still around, I think),
Hofmann, Westinghouse and a whole bunch of other minor players.
Then the Japanese arrived (en force) in the mid 70's, and the next
thing we knew thousands of americans were out of work, and no
Televisions (or Computer monitors, for that matter) were made
domestically. Packard-Bell was one of these victims.
I don't know who is behind the resurrection of the P-B brandname. I
suspect they wanted to appeal to baby-boomers who fondly remember
watching 'Hopalong', 'Cisco' or 'Bonanza' on their parents'
Packard
Bell console TV.
Jeff
By the way, Packard-Bell has nothing to do with HP.
William Donzelli
william(a)ans.net
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