Review of 'Open' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is the story of the first decade of Compaq, though the narrative goes from inception to eventual merger with HP. This is also the story of Compaq management, the group "Process" that they used to make decisions, with examples from key moments. It is a fairly quick read.
From their perspective, Compaq defined the business market that was originally "IBM compatible". Their dealer choices were very good, and as a company their performance and growth were stellar. A lot of success was gained from embracing the portable (luggable) market. One of the major highlights was bringing together the group that defined the Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) - driving IBM to abandon their compatibility-killer MicroChannel Architecture soon after.
Beyond their first decade, the narrative gets pretty thin. While much is made of working with Intel, pushing for the 386 and then the 486, no mention is made of upstart …
This is the story of the first decade of Compaq, though the narrative goes from inception to eventual merger with HP. This is also the story of Compaq management, the group "Process" that they used to make decisions, with examples from key moments. It is a fairly quick read.
From their perspective, Compaq defined the business market that was originally "IBM compatible". Their dealer choices were very good, and as a company their performance and growth were stellar. A lot of success was gained from embracing the portable (luggable) market. One of the major highlights was bringing together the group that defined the Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) - driving IBM to abandon their compatibility-killer MicroChannel Architecture soon after.
Beyond their first decade, the narrative gets pretty thin. While much is made of working with Intel, pushing for the 386 and then the 486, no mention is made of upstart AMD - because the early Compaq didn't use those. Very little is said of software, beyond an early mention of an agreement with Microsoft to make a "compatible DOS". (I still have a 5¼ floppy with Compaq DOS 3.3 in my archive). Nothing at all is said of Canion's forced resignation; the last chapter glosses over Compaq's second decade and ends with the HP merger.
I enjoyed this history quite a bit. The book ends with an epilogue, pointing out where Apple and later Android utilized Compaq's playbook to gain success. I added this to my reading list shortly after it was released 7 years ago, and am glad I finally got to sit down with it.