Thanks to Capellas' masterful fix of its Tandem acquisition, Compaq has become a force in supercomputing, a category revitalized by Sept. 11. (Think defense and security.) Compaq is also sneakily strong in storage, another sweet spot.
Information is also gathered on the kinds of products individuals purchase together (i.e. a PSP and a UMD in the same trip), and strategically located "POP" machines conveniently give detailed descriptions about scanned items to customers, while sneakily collecting data of its own for those oh-so-clever marketers behind the scenes.