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Dell computers was founded by Michael Saul Dell. He
was born on February 23, 1965 in Houston, Texas, USA.
He is the son of an orthodontist and grew up in a
well-to-do Jewish family.
He had his first encounter with a computer at the age
of 15 when he broke down a brand new Apple II computer
and rebuilt it, just to see if he could.
Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston, Texas,
where he did not excel scholastically. Reportedly one of
his teachers, still currently teaching there, commented
to him that he "would probably never go anywhere in
life."
After graduating high school, he attended the
University of Texas at Austin intending to become a
physician. While at the university, he started a
computer company called PC's Limited [sic] in his
dormitory room.
The company became successful enough that, with the
help of an additional loan from his grandparents, Dell
dropped out of college at the age of 19 to run the
business full-time.
In
1987, PC's Limited changed its name to Dell Computer
Corporation.
Over time, and despite a number of setbacks
(including laptops that caught on fire in 1993,
temporarily losing the consumer market to Gateway in the
mid 1990's, and others), Dell survived to become the
most profitable PC manufacturer in the world, with sales
of US$ 49 billion and profits of US$ 3 billion in 2004.
In 2003, shareholders voted to rename the corporation
Dell, Inc., in order to acknowledge Dell's prospective
and ongoing product line expansion.
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