What Happened to Packard Bell? Part 2 - The Decline and Exit

[@SILSKY]

My first internet pc was a Packard Bell. My parents gave it to me as a Christmas gift in 1995. Windows 95, AOL dial-up internet, lots of features and fun programs. It was actually a great pc for its time. I took it to college with me that year. Most students in 1995 didn't have access to their own pc so my dorm room was a popular place when friends needed to print papers, research the internet or just play games. I wish I still had that pc just for the sake of nostalgia.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

That's a great memory - thanks for sharing that. I wish I had my first PB from 93 too, no idea where that went now. I went to uni in 2000 so I remember renaming all the bots in Unreal Tournament to the names of my class mates and having loads of mates in my dorm room playing that game! Fun times

[@cbw56]

Excellent video!! I am one of those 90's kids that holds on fondly to the memories of Packard Bell... thank you so much for taking the time to create this!!

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Glad you enjoyed it! :D One of these days I am going to buy a copy of the San Diego Zoo Animals CD. That was a pack in that I remember blowing me away with it little FMV clips. Loved that first computer!

[@steinravnik8692]

Good video. As someone that worked on PC's at the time, PB also cut a ton of corners. I worked on one that had an 80 watt power supply (at a time when 250 watts was the standard). This caused numerous power supply failures, many times right after the warranty was up. They also had a complete lack of expansion slots. They integrated the modem and sound card onto the same card. If both went out like in a lightning storm, you had to choose which one to replace. The proprietary riser card design made it so that you could never upgrade to a newer motherboard (common practice at the time). Because of all this, they were a major PITA to work on, and I got to the point I would refuse to do so. To be fair, Compaq and others did some of this stuff too, but PB seemed to be the worst at cost cutting.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Thanks for chiming in. Putting in that low wattage PSU is pretty bad example of a huge corner being cut. Though I remember getting a vista machine from Amazon in 2007 with a 450w PSU that wasnt enough to drive the GPU under load too. Thankfully these days its incredibly easy to put together your own machine so you can get decent components for smaller prices, it was definitely different 20-30 years ago! Its still incredible that PB managed to get as big as they did so fast, a lot of startups always bootstrap to get a foothold in the market. But if they dont improve their quality and keep margins up they will always eventually go bust.

[@letsgonow5641]

Believe it or not i had my PB ( 1995 from Sears) for 7 years until it just became too obsolete. Gave it to my cousin who had it for another year before retiring it. Not once did we have a problem with it. I must of got real lucky lol..

[@kd7cwg]

I remember working on these. You could have 2 of the same model side by side, and the soundcard/modem combo would be different

[@MacCrafter707]

I worked at Packard Bell NEC during their shutdown. Was very sad. As a web developer, I ended up selling the stock at the company store that had opened up to the public. I worked at the Armory in Sacramento, starting out in the monitor refurbishing department and ending up in the web services selling to colleges.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Thanks for commenting. I imagine it must have been a really tough time. Working for any company that is slowly going to wall must suck when you're invested in it. Either way they burned brightly even if it was a relatively short time and definitely made a mark on people! I've accessed the Internet Archive old copies of the PB website - did you work on the front end?

[@MacCrafter707]

@@ByteSizeThoughts No - I worked on the school's page for university students to buy computers at discounted rates. I don't think we ever even launched. The big guys spent too much time agonizing over the how.

[@RediscoveringRetro]

Mate, I thoroughly enjoyed these. The editing was great. I didn't realise they operated on such tight margins, it's a risky strategy if there's nothing else to rely on. Loved seeing the adverts and specs, brought back memories of being in the computer shop as a kid when we bought our first PC. I think the advertising back then really created a sense of awe and wonder, although the tech being something we'd never seen before probably helped with that. Awesome job buddy!

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Thanks man - these took me way longer than I thought they would to put together! But very rewarding as I got to try out a few different things to improve my editing skills. I love looking at the old magazine adverts too, I try to pick up old magazines where I can and actually seeing the original RRP of games and components is really fun to look at! If I was to look into another company to do one of these, which one would you want to see? Depending on what info I could find I could try to create something :)

[@RediscoveringRetro]

@@ByteSizeThoughts Yeah I can imagine they did take a while longer. Well worth it though. I know it's not a PC company but Commodore has an amazing history, altho it has been told elsewhere many times, unlike Packard Bell which was a good choice. My first PC was an AST, not sure on their history. Maybe look at actual component manufacturers, or components themselves? Diamond Multimedia has produced a wide range of stuff like sounds cards, vid cards, modems etc. There's the Cyrix chips, or the Kyro video card tech, or other tech that succumbed to the competition. What ever you do, if you find it interesting I'm sure we will too 👍

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Let me give it some thought. Diamond Multimedia was on my short list as I find them quite fascinating, purely because I always wanted one of their Orchid Righteous voodoo cards :D

[@RediscoveringRetro]

@@ByteSizeThoughts Tbh as well, I enjoy seeing people play their favourite games. Your past videos of you're rally games etc are good fun. I like the personal aspect of stuff like that, what people played back then and why they like it etc. I'm definitely going to start doing a few videos this year. I'm slowly making space as I'm moving this year and my beige box is just looking at me with puppy dog eyes!

[@vibeuk2003]

My first computer was a Packard Bell... Brings back memories... BUT! They were terrible and would constantly break down every now and then. PC World in the U.K. would push these at you in their stores. My last Packard Bell was returned for a compact PC- which worked like a charm- and then I moved to Macs about 12 years ago and haven't looked back since

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

I got my first mac laptop in 2007 and was absolutely amazed by its build quality and the ease of the operating system after coming from XP. Still use mac as my laptop of choice though recently got back into Windows 10 a couple of years ago for gaming performance. Compaq certainly made better machines, and also didnt put a lot of bloatware on them but like you a PB was my first computer so I have an affection for them, Navigator and the pack in cd of 'The Animals - San Diego Zoo' :D

[@kd7cwg]

My first was a Packard bell pb8810. 8088 with 512k, a 360k floppy drive, and someone had added an 80mb IDE drive to it 😶

[@shaunt7175]

Nice video on a classic. My first time going to the buisness section of PC World with my father and we bought top line executive multi media with TV and FM tuner card with record function. Its was something like £3000. Remember flight sim, C&C and worms. Also force feed back sidewinder and the free game where you fight off aliens and control tanks. Classic days of PCs, thank you for the memories.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

That is awesome! Thanks for sharing your memories. I used to get so excited by all the 'free' software that came with these PC's back then. I still have very strange nostalgia for the San Diego Zoo 'The Animals' CD Rom :D

[@MrRobarino]

In 1995 Packard Bell spent a significant amount of time and money moving their main manufacturing facility from Southern California to an old army depot in Sacramento, CA. That could explain where their profits went that year. Their southern California facility was damaged by an earth-quake which forced them to move. They also did a merger with NEC and Group Bull around that same time and all three had different manufacturing and engineering processes that had to be blended together. After moving into the Army Depot, Packard Bell ended up with a very huge but inefficient manufacturing process and they used a quota system for many of the employees. Technicians and assembly line workers on the production line were given daily quotas they had to meet, so it became all about quantity and not quality.

[@geraldscott4302]

My first computer was a Packard Bell, bought from Circuit City, in 1995. I certainly did not consider it cheap. It had to be bought in 2 parts. The computer, keyboard, and mouse came together, then I had to buy the monitor separately. The monitor was a different brand. Altogether it was $1300, plus another $130 in sales tax. A lot of money in 1995. And the most expensive computer I've ever bought. There wasn't much to it, but it did have a CD drive, called "multimedia" back then. It had a 210MB hard drive, a 33 Mhz processor, and a 3 1/2" floppy drive. It came with Windows 3.1 and DOS. No modem, there was no internet in 1995, and I kind of wish it had stayed that way. I did not have any problems with it that I remember, considering what it was. It came with a chess game on CD which I was never able to beat, even though I was a pretty decent player. It also has a Mavis Beacon typing class on a CD. I had taken typing in high school, and was fairly good at it, but had to get used to the flat keyboard. I don't remember the constant errors and glitches of every computer I've had since. It has become obvious that the more complex computers get, the less reliable they are. Windows 3.1 was light years ahead of Windows 10 as far as reliability went. I don't know if it is newer more complex hardware or software (or both) that is responsible for the almost complete lack of reliability with todays computers. My current computer freezes up several times a day, and takes forever to open most programs, while that old Packard Bell never had those problems.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

and $1300 in 1995 was a serious amount of money. Computers relatively have become more affordable but are much more widely used compared to almost 30 years ago. Unfortunately the complexity has skyrocketed with the advancement of technology. Back then the restrictive hardware meant that programmers had to be really careful with how they used the limited resources. Now we have much more computing power so its easier to brute force applications, though I imagine that if too many are running at one time then they interfere with each other :) Either way, thank you for putting in such a detailed reply - I dont think I ever beat the ChessMaster games either but I fondly remember when computer manufacturers would bundle in tonnes of 'free' software :D

[@alessandrol2032]

Great video, no I should say mini documentary. I was one of the workers of PB in the Netherlands, on my first work experience :-) so I have seen the rise and fall of what, sad to say was a series of bad management decisions .. of course at the time we (the workers, or at least young employers) we did not see the big picture. I have learned a lot from it and I still have good memories.. to bad it ended badly as it did.. laid off also in Europe.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Thanks for sharing! A lot of people wouldve worked very hard - getting a company off the ground and become a top player is very difficult. A lot of companies have a rapid rise and fall.

[@bloqk16]

When *Byte Size Thoughts* mentioned about the 1990s being a time when technology was innovative and changing *"at a ridiculously rapid pace,"* _that was phrasing it very well!_ I worked for a civil engineering (CE) company during that decade and was well-acquainted with the IT department in that organization; where they were periodically obtaining new desktop PCs, and phasing-out year-old units, because of the rising advances made with Intel CPU speeds and the affordability of RAM; as well as CE software apps constantly being upgraded, placing more demands on the desktop PCs performance. Before I left the company I bought a company discarded desktop PC for less than $100; where 18 months prior the company bought that newly built unit from a PC builder for $2.5K; as in that year-and-a-half, the CPU speed had gotten too slow and outdated for current CE work.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

I honestly dont know how companies did it back then, especially if they needed computers for their business (CAD design etc) without going bankrupt. Even so, it was really an exciting time thats been unmatched since. I'm still using my 2015 macbook and it will probably keep going for another few years until Apple make it so that the OS wont run on it to force an upgrade. :) Thanks for sharing the memories with us!

[@geraldscott4302]

Back in those days, it was called "data processing", not IT.

[@bloqk16]

@@geraldscott4302 In the mid-1990s until I left that civil engineering firm in 2000, the department responsible for the utilization, monitoring, and maintenance of the PCs; the servers; and the computer network, was referred to as the _Information Technology_ department or *IT* for short. I have a keepsake copy of the phone directory of that company from 1999 listing the staff and departments phone numbers extensions; with a listing showing the phone number extension of the _Information Technology_ department.

[@geraldscott4302]

@@bloqk16 Maybe so, but where I worked back then, which was a municipal government, it was called "data processing" until around 2005, when they went to IT. Just like "personal" went to HR for human resources, and where I worked, "mechanical maintenance" changed to fleet services. I considered the new names just a bunch of politically correct nonsense.

[@MakateRapulana]

my first computer .. i still use a Packard Bell

[@matthewpaulargall9102]

Enjoyable set of videos!

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Glad you like them!

[@stevenj2380]

I looked down on newbies who went for Packard Bell. Or later on, went online with AOL. PCs were new to me as well until 'fall 1994, bought an IBM Thinkpad 500 subnotebook last sale and was given a home-assembled middling PC as first 'desktop. I was jealous of friends with computers and not not wanting to be left out went all-in hard to to learn about DOS, Windows, hardware and anything I could install to boost performance. And get online at the end of 1994 downloading what I needed to connect with Win 3.1 and 3.11, with ProComm plus comms software to get on a BBS and various Unix ish terminal services, before there was Win 95.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Computers were so new back then the software was amazing. I remember first seeing Indy 500 and Prince of Persia and being incredibly impressed. And the whole messing about with DOS was a fun challenge. I was a little too young for the BBS era but I was there for the initial online multiplayer and instant messaging. I also remember moving over from Altavista and Lycos and going to Google - little knowing what they would turn into. A fun time to have grown up through for sure!

[@stevenj2380]

@@ByteSizeThoughts first computer experience mid 70s college required 1 credit programming course Architecture school. Punched cards. Entered college the first year when they really stopped using slide rules and calculators HP or Ti we're affordable thing. Bye thanks.

[@someguy872]

I used to have a Packard Bell as my first pc back in 2011 if i remember correctly. Good days of Battlefield :)

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

The best! I used to really enjoy battlefield - felt different to COD back then :D

[@Martin_Skywatcher]

Hewlett Packard also dissapeared from the home pc market at some point. I tried googling it but I could not make out as the why and when exactly. You might not have the time or interest to cover HP's personal computers, but I would be very much interested. I had a NEC pc at some point too by the way. 😄

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

You know I don't think I ever owned an HP myself though always used them in schools or work. Even for laptops I think back then I had Dell's. I will take a look into it, I was thinking of creating more videos in this series but they take a realllly long time to put together :D

[@JackRusselMan]

Compaq computes is what I grew up on we had 2 and if they still was made by Compaq I would still be buying those.

[@m9078jk3]

I've found a couple of interesting USA Packard Bell models that have MPEG (1) video decoder chips build right on the motherboard. These were Pre MMX Pentium systems and they are quite capable of running Video CD's or Phillips CD-i movie CD's full screen. One model is a Packard Bell Platinum 65 (Pentium @ 166 Mhz) which also has a TV Tuner card built into it. I have a few CD-i movies which are quite interesting to view as they predate the much better quality DVD standard. The movies that I have are some Star Wars and Star Trek movies and some James Bond Movies with Sean Connery portraying James Bond. I purchased them used at eBay

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

I still remember seeing my first FMV as part of the San Diego Zoo 'The Animals' pack in software that came with my Packard Bell. The video and sound blew me away (even though the video was in a very small window). I imagine video CD's or CD-i wouldve looked very impressive (though as you said, DVD's supplanted it thoroughly a few years later). Interesting that they built it into the motherboard directly for those models though!

[@lazymations1778]

This made me cry , i picked up a 2008 packard bell 2days ago

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

No need to cry - the current PC industry has come on leaps and bounds since then!

[@kevinwillett3654]

Why doesn’t this have a million views?

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Glad you enjoyed it Kevin!

[@randomrickreviewsrrr4662]

Cool post!

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Thanks!

[@billgateskilledmyuncle23]

I would rather have a Packard Bell with used parts than to have a brand new Dell in today's world. I work in it and I have opened up their products fresh out of the box that were broken. They have gone completely to crap. Should their markets share ever began to plummet, they will be the next one you'll be making a video about.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

I feel today its either a race to the bottom with companies like Dell or its super expensive gear like Apple. Lets see if Dell declines but I feel they have a good strangle hold on both the consumer and corporate market at the moment - hard for a competitor to dislodge them apart from IBM or Samsung or some other similarly sized corp

[@wilm3864]

My 486DX2/66 from Packard Hell came with a 2400 baud modem. Umm, it was fully capable of using a faster modem, and far faster modems were widely available. To make it worse, the modem was hard wired to the mother board, and so that COM port was forever occupied. No way to assign it to another peripheral.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

It seems that it was the luck of the draw on which model you got from them from what Ive seen online. Some of them they cheaped out and took shortcuts. For anyone beyond a basic user, hardware limitations like that wouldve driven you crazy! Thanks for watching and commenting Wil

[@EddieStarr]

Create More , Thank You :)

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Thanks for the words of encouragement 🙂

[@kevinedward6132]

In an alternate reality Packard Bell rules the tech world like Taco Bell does food in demolition man. 😂

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

ha, too funny :D. Can you imagine the chaos!

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

ha, too funny :D. Can you imagine the chaos!

[@michaelturner4457]

Crappard Hell as I used to call them.

[@ByteSizeThoughts]

Ha, yes you either love them or hate them. I love mine but whenever I open it up to add a card or something I always end up somehow cutting my finger on the case! :D

[@ronkol28]

israelis. dont be so surprised

[@MrRobarino]

Why are you making this about racism? You idiot.