Photo courtesy of Mario Nagano of www.ztop.com.brText and photos by Alex Davies

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of touring HP’s Houston Labs, where they put their commercial hardware through the wringer to test its durability and quality. This large facility was the former headquarters of Compaq before the merger with HP, and it was interesting to see the relics of the former company everywhere we went. Many of the engineers we spoke to on the tour were former Compaq employees who have been working in these labs for years.

One of the mantras that we heard during the tour is that they “freeze it, bake it, shake it, break it”, and as we walked around the facility, we really did see HP’s engineers  subject desktops, notebooks and tablets to all manners of torture – the job wasn’t done until the product broke.  Hit jump for our report on HP's Houston Labs.