Someone’s apparently been counting all the personal computers that have rolled off Compaq Computer Corp’s production lines in its 15-year history, and on Monday, the counter finally reached 30 million, by far the largest from any personal computer company, with 7 million of them shipped in 1996. Last November, Compaq said it had sold its one millionth server. To mark the occasion, it’s been comparing the differences between the original Compaq PC, launched in 1983, and the current Compaq Deskpro 6000. On-line storage capacity has increased more than 1,000 times to 12Gb from 10Mb, memory capacity is up 125-fold to 64Mb from 512Kb, core processor speed has been increased 42 times, to 200MHz from 4.77MHz, and disk transfer speed has increased four-fold to 20Mbps from 5Mbps. Compaq shipped its 500,000th personal computer in 1985, and reached one million in November 1987.
