eMachines founder to buy Packard Bell from NEC
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted Sep 8th 2006 11:58AM
posted Sep 8th 2006 11:58AM
You know how some things go out of fashion here in the US, but they continue to live on in Europe? We're talking about things like Speedos, very colorful shirts and house music. In the computer biz, add Packard Bell to that list. As we reminded you back in late June, Packard Bell withdrew from the American market in 1999, but has remained successful in Europe under the direction of NEC. Well, yesterday, the company announced that its sale of its beloved subsidiary to eMachines founder Lap Shun Hui should be complete by the end of the month. No word on how much LSH offered for PackBell (The Wall Street Journal quoted estimates of as much as $87 million) but the head of the company, Aymar de Lencquesaing told The New York Times that its annual revenue last year was about $1.9 billion and added the company is "slightly profitable." Lap Shun Hui also offered to buy Gateway for $450 million, but was turned down by that company's board of directions. We guess Mr. Hui doesn't take well to rejection -- either way, we expect to spot him bumping to house music in an Amsterdam nightclub any day now.
Pack Bell! Ha-ha, that brings back some memories. What's next, CompuAdd? Zeos? 5 1/4" floppies?
Wow, Packard Bell. I had no idea they were still around.
Also, I guess you could say eMachines is in a bit of a buy-out frenzy these days.
this is in my opinion the crappiest name in the computer world.
the only reason why they have done well is by selling to equally crap but commercially successful places like pcworld, currys, and comet, etc. And they in turn sell what they hae to those people who are completely oblivious to what a computer is or what it can do.
Lets hope mr goody-two-hui's can make something of that crap.
Yeah...memories. I ran Win95 when it first came out on a PB DX266 with 8 megs of RAM and 500 megs of HD...then compressed that to a gig. It was surprisingly reliable, but I think I only tolerated the slowness for a year.
That's funny - I've always considered eMachines the Packard Bell of today.
I'm writing this on a Packard Bell laptop. Nothing to write home about but not a bad computer by any means, though the battery is so dead after a year and a half that it won't even boot without being plugged.
house music is not dead, it is very much alive!
Ugh.. Packard Bell. The WORST support calls when I worked for PSINet came from Packard Bell customers. They had the crappiest winmodems. (and that's saying something!)
And if I remember correctly, some weird dial-up software that was always the problem.
Hell ISN'T other people. It's other people running a Packard-Bell on Windows 3.1 who need your help.
God, I rember when I had a Packard Bell in 1992. It was a major peice of shit. never worked right, and spent a few hundred $$$ calling microsoft support because packard bell kept telling us it was the software. Last summer I shot it up with my spud gun. may it rot in hell.
Anyone remember the old packard bell mouse? God, it was bad.
http://www.ioffer.com/img/1106467200/_i/5339974/t_1.jpg
lucky for you my european ass is too busy shakin' to house music to flame your unusually banal one.