News release

Texas School District Awards Compaq Total Solution Contract

Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) announced today it has signed a five-year purchase agreement with a value estimated between $30 and $35 million to provide a complete end-to-end computing solution to the Richardson (Texas) Independent School District (RISD). RISD has more than 35,000 enrolled students on 60 campuses encompassing most of the city of Richardson, in addition to areas of the cities of Dallas and Garland.

"Customers want to reduce the risks and costs associated with IT, while at the same time being able to benefit from the advantages it offers," said Jim Weynand, Compaq vice president of Government & Education Markets. "Compaq is able to leverage its strengths in innovative, industry-leading technology coupled with its Global Services' management and support capabilities to deliver customers, like RISD, a total lifecycle solution. By reducing the complexity associated with managing an IT environment, RISD is able to focus on its core competency—delivering excellence in education."

Customer Satisfaction, Compaq Innovation

Compaq has been a hardware provider to RISD for the last four years, providing market-leading Compaq ProLiant™ industry-standard servers and high-performance Alpha servers. Because of the reliability and performance of Compaq technology, RISD gave Compaq the opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of a total lifecycle computing solution—part of the on-demand solutions in Compaq's Computing on Demand initiative. Computing on Demand is a collection of new solutions that gives customers a broad range of computing resources when they need them, where they need them, and at a predictable price and performance level. (See related news release, "Compaq Announces Computing on Demand.")

"Compaq is providing a complete lifecycle solution to reduce the complexity of managing 16,000 desktop and laptop systems throughout our schools and administrative offices," said Daniel New, executive director of technology program management for the Richardson (Texas) Independent School District. "Compaq installs fully integrated PC systems preloaded with our standard software image and provides ongoing maintenance, technical support, and a dedicated project manager. With one partner to oversee all this, we can focus on evaluating and delivering state of the art education-related technical services to the schools."

According to the new five-year product-service agreement, Compaq Global Services will conduct a technology refresh, directly installing and supporting 14,000 Compaq Deskpro workstations, 2,000 Compaq Armada laptops, and 350 Compaq ProLiant servers. Through the services component of the contract, Compaq Global Services will provide image loading, configuration, installation, break-fix and disposal services, on-site project and software management, disaster recovery, data warehousing, remedial maintenance, and many other services as RISD requests.

About Compaq

Compaq Computer Corporation, a Fortune Global 100 company, is a leading global provider of technology and solutions. Compaq designs, develops, manufactures, and markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, and communications products, commercial desktop and portable products, and consumer PCs that are sold in more than 200 countries. Information on Compaq and its products and services is available at http://www.compaq.com.