Acer gobbles up 75% of Packard Bell
By Paul Miller 
posted January 31st 2008 11:10AM
posted January 31st 2008 11:10AM
posted January 31st 2008 11:10AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Call me ignorant, but what/who in the world is Packard Bell? I seriously can't remember ever hearing of them.
you're ignorant.
they made crappy 486 and pentium machines in the us, and still make crappy machines in europe.
Ohhhh yeah... Packard Hell... now I remember.
mmmm
packard bell was my first computer before i started building them yall remember good ol windows 3.1 it would come on and say packard bell and the packard bell navigator and had a little clown on the setup and kidspace also that was the $hyt i wish i could relive the 90's everything was better even the cartoons
oh yeah yall remember ski free
Ski Free was awesome! I always thought thats where South Park got their idea for Scuzzlebut from, the snow creature that comes out of nowhere at like 200 mph and eats you alive.
Ski Free was amazing!
When you got going really fast you could do those crazy jumps where you would fly down half the mountain.
PB was my first REAL computer. I had a 286 my cousin had given me to play with (in a world of 486s) and when I caught a real interest my Mom got be a PB Pentium 90, mid-class at the time, a year or so before Win 95 was released. Oh those were the days. I LOVED PB Nav.
i miss ski free... can i download it anywhere? that frikkin snow monster was scary as hell back then.
Should read: "Acer gobbles up 75% of Packard Bell... and then pukes it's guts out 30 minutes later."
I'm a tad confused here, can someone explain to me what just happened?
Packard bell was going under, and Gateway (essentially) bought them.
Now Acer is buying Packard Bell, therefore making Gateway an assload of money...
Or is Acer buying Gateway...
Or is Dell buying Acer???
Srlsly, i got lost along the way...
Acer bought Gateway
The picture explains it better than words ever could.
ahhhhh... a cow with teeth, sharp teeth!?!?!?!!!!!
Did I magically travel back in time to 10 years ago when this was relevant?
Hooray! A crap company buys another crap company who buys another crap company. It's Crap Cubed. That's a full eight times as much crap as you could get from just one of these companies.
|_O|_
I'm surprised by this. Primarily in that I had no idea that Packard Bell still existed and that anyone would want to buy it.
Well Compaq was 100 times worse than PB and HP bought them, so I don't think this is unbelievable at all. And yes, plenty people buy it...over in Europe. They seem to be pretty solid machines and amongst quite a few 'avoid packard bell' reviews and user feedback you may google, are quite a few people that really love their PBs.
Don't diss the compaqs- I owned two, one was a windows 95 and the one I'm typing on is xp/vista/ubuntu. The first one worked great till it was outdated and this one, a few sticks of RAM and video card later, is still working great, despite everything I've done that should've destroyed it.
Acer (to Packard Bell): NOM NOM NOM!
My friend had the sweet Packard Bell, I had the mega-crappy Tandy 1000.
I used to sell Packard Bell computers.
Yes, I'm sorry.
Out of all the computers from PB we sold, about 75% came back as faulty, missing items, damaged, or just fuckin' useless.
Here's how I imagine the board meeting at Acer:
Exec #1: "Hey guys! I just bought us Packard Bell!"
Exec #2: "Packard Bell? For Christ's sake, what the hell for?"
Exec #3: "And where's our box of Krispy Kremes? We sent you out to get Krispy Kremes and you come back with Packard fucking Bell?"
Exec #2: "...and no Krispy Kreme donuts?"
Exec #1: "Well, on my way to Krispy Kreme this man came up to me on the street and offered me Packard Bell. It was a real bargain!"
Exec #3: "Waitaminute-- You didn't use the Krispy Kreme money to buy Packard Bell, did you?"
Exec #1: "Well, yeah. I did! I thought it was a great way to spend it! I thought you'd LIKE having Packard Bell instead of some donuts."
Exec #2: "Jesus' balls in a handbasket! You wasted our Krispy Kreme budget on Packard Bell? I can't eat Packard Bell! I can't dunk Packard Bell in my coffee, can I?"
Exec #1: "But I thought--"
Exec #3: "We sent you to perform a simple errand: Get Krispy Kreme donuts for the board. You couldn't even handle THAT?"
Exec #1: "I'm sorry guys. I figured this would be better than Krispy Kreme!"
Exec #2: "Well, you figured wrong. You made your bed, now you lie in it. You get to head up Packard Bell and deal with what you've done."
Exec #1: "Awww... I thought maybe we could run it together."
Exec #2: "No way. You bought it. You get to deal with it. And when you make that shitbox company turn a profit again, you can use the money to BUY US SOME GODDAMN KRISPY KREME, YOU MORON!"
Exec #1: [mopes... shuffles away with the keys to Packard Bell clutched in his hands]
lol.
lol. whoo... i havent laughed like this in a while. thanks guys.