In the technology world, if a company doesn't continue to be a trendsetter, sooner or later it's left in the dust.

That truism proved to be the downfall of Palm, the former industry leader that long ago created the Personal Digital Assistant category with its Palm Pilot.

Pioneering Palm failed to innovate, and its PDA was duly outsmartphoned by the BlackBerry, the iPhone and the Droid. Palm's recent late entries into the smartphone category, Pre and Pixi, have had only lukewarm results.

It was therefore inevitable that Palm would seek a buyer. Rumors swirled that interested parties would likely be other smartphone manufacturers -- maybe HTC, Nokia, or RIM, the maker of BlackBerry. But lo and behold, it was Hewlett-Packard that came out of nowhere to announce its acquisition yesterday of Palm for a cool $1 billion in cash.

On the surface, HP's purchase looks very risky.Continue reading...

In a move that can only be described as deja vu all over again, computer giant HP is introducing a new line of computers under the name Compaq.

How can we forget Compaq? Once the high-flying chief competitor to the IBM PC, Compaq lost focus in the late 1990s after a series of acquisitions, and stumbled for years until being acquired by HP in 2002. Ever since, Compaq has been somewhat of a stealth brand that one could easily assume HP had permanently sent to the brand graveyard.

But just in time for Halloween, Compaq has risen from the grave. In conjunction with the October 22 release of Microsoft's Windows 7, HP is bringing out a series of low-priced Compaq computers targeting small businesses. John Cook, an HP marketing VP, told InformationWeek: "Compaq is still a multi-billion dollar brand and some folks don't know it's HP!"Continue reading...