Everex ("Ever for Excellence!") is a defunct American manufacturer of desktop and notebook personal computers. It was established in 1983 and headquartered in

Fremont, California Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San Fra ...

. The company was founded by Steve Hui, John Lee and Wayne Cheung. In 1988, Everex was the leader in tape backup sales with half of the world market. On January 5, 1993 the company filed for bankruptcy and was purchased by

Formosa Plastics Group Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, ) is a titular Taiwanese conglomerate of diverse interests, including biotechnology, petrochemical processing and production of electronics components. The company was founded by Wang Yung-ching and his brother Wan ...

, hence becoming part of a multinational conglomerate alongside companies like

First International Computer First International Computer, Inc. (FIC; ) is a Taiwanese original equipment manufacturer and system integrator for automotive electronics and smart building controls. FIC provides design consultancy and supply chain management services for autom ...

, the world's leading motherboard manufacturer. On December 29, 2006 Everex Systems, Inc filed a voluntary petition for liquidation under Chapter 7, and in June 2008 NewMarket Technology has taken control of Everex.

History

In 1983, Everex shipped its first hard drive, tape backup and graphics products. Seven years later, with an ever expanding product line, annual revenues totaled over $436 million and the workforce topped 2,200 employees. In 1985, Everex began shipping personal computers under

private label A private label, also called a private brand or private-label brand, is a brand owned by a company, offered by that company alongside and competing with brands from other businesses. A private-label brand is almost always offered exclusively by th ...

s, such as the popular IBM-AT compatible System 1800. Three years later the STEP computer line launched, introducing cutting edge 286 and 386-based computing to a mass audience. In addition to computer systems, high-performance file servers and a UNIX-based operating system (ESIX), the company produced tape drives, graphics boards, data and fax modems, network boards, memory enhancement and desktop publishing products, controllers for disk and tape drivers, and monitors. * 1983 - Everex founded in Fremont, California * 1984 - First Everex hard disk drive shipped * 1986 - 286-Based STEP line of computers launched * 1987 - Everex IPO under NASDAQ "EVRX" * 1992 - Discussed a merger with

Northgate Computers __NOTOC__ Northgate Computer Systems, Inc., based in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, United States, was a mail-order personal computer company, founded in 1987 by Arthur "Art" Lazere. The 1990s were a golden era for mail-order PC business. Consumers w ...

but these talks failed. * 1993 - Everex files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. They sell their Esix brand to James River Group for $210,000 and their storage division to

Exabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

for $5.5M. * 1993 - Everex purchased by the

* 1998 - Everex launches FreeStyle, the world's first Windows CE PDA, but abandoned the line later in the year * 2007 - Everex launches its first 17" widescreen Vista notebook * 2007 - Everex launches low-cost green PC Impact GC3502 running gOS * 2007 - Everex announces plans for sub-$300 Linux notebooks * 2008 - Everex launches a series of low cost "green" systems, the CloudBook UMPC, the

gBook In the mid-2000s, Everex began selling several brands of green computers. These computers are targeted at users that only need access to web applications, versus Microsoft Windows-based applications (however, the company does sell Windows Vista-ins ...

notebook, and the gPC mini Mac mini-like desktop, all running the Ubuntu-based gOS Linux with the

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

desktop environment. Everex is later acquired by systems integrator Newmarket Technology. * 2009 - The US subsidiary of Everex closes its doors, while the Japanese and Taiwanese subsidiaries seem to remain unaffected.

References

External links

Everex Company History
Defunct computer companies based in California Companies based in Fremont, California Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Companies established in 1983 Defunct computer hardware companies

History

See also

References

External links