On Aug 27, 1993, Compaq unveiled its first Presario computer, a PC with a consumer-friendly price point from a company better known for making expensive business PCs. Compaq sold them at retail, at stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA. It became a mass-market monster that made life very difficult for other PC makers.
Presario: the Compaq brand at a consumer price point
Compaq Presarios were built to a price, so they weren’t the best all-around computers of their era. But they gave Compaq quality at a competitive price, and where they had to make compromises, they typically chose quality over performance.
My Compaq Presario 660, which I purchased new in August 1994, had a number of cost saving measures. Most noticeably, it used an AMD 486 SX2 CPU running at 66 MHz. This gave 66 MHz performance at a price comparable to an Intel DX2 running at 50 MHz. Since I didn’t do anything that used the DX2’s math co-processor, I appreciated the savings.
Another place they skimped was the CPU socket. They skipped the zero insertion force Pentium Overdrive compatible socket. Instead, they used the so-called low insertion force 486 socket that would not accept a Pentium Overdrive. The Pentium Overdrive was overrated, so I didn’t miss this, but even if you aren’t using a Pentium Overdrive, the ZIF socket makes swapping CPUs much easier. The low insertion force socket really requires the correct CPU lifter tool to avoid damaging the chip. “Low” is relative, too.
More irritating to me was the complete omission of any provision for Level 2 cache. They didn’t even put sockets on the motherboard for cache chips. Most other brands did.
And they did the same thing for video memory. What you got on the board was what you got forever. Other brands, priced both higher and lower than Compaq, sometimes included sockets to increase the video memory.
The Presario trade-off
Not every Presario cut the same corners that mine did. The Presario 425 and 433 cut different corners, including integrating a CRT. But an Acer or Packard Bell typically had better upgrade options, including the Overdrive socket and space for level 2 cache. The trade-off was with reliability. The likelihood of a catastrophic failure was higher with both of those, especially Packard Bell.
An IBM PS/1 was a better machine overall as well. The IBM usually had the upgrade socket and provisions for adding cache memory, if it didn’t come with cache memory from the factory. They didn’t always have memory sockets for additional video memory, especially at the low end, but their more expensive models frequently did. The IBMs cost a bit more, but in retrospect, they were worth it.
The Presario fell short of being the ideal PC, and as time moved on, Compaq took additional cost cutting measures that narrowed the difference between a Presario and any other brand of PC. With the Presario, Compaq wasn’t trying to make it as good as a Deskpro. They were trying to make it better than a Packard Bell. After HP acquired Compaq, HP continued using the Presario name on Compaq-branded PCs. Presarios aren’t necessarily beloved by vintage computing hobbyists today.
But a Presario was fine for what it was at the time: a dependable PC with a price comparable to lesser brands that was likely to give you 3 years of service with little or no trouble, at which point it would be obsolete anyway.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
I must say, there is something visually very appealing about the Presario. I never had one but looking at it gives me happy feelings.