Consumers were fed up with high prices for IBM, Compaq and other brand-name PCs sold through dealers so they opted to purchase their computers from a catalog.

This was a revolutionary idea at the time, because people wouldn't be able to see or touch their computer before buying it.

Aside from Dell and Gateway, popular brands of mail-order PCs were Northgate and Zeos.

After Northgate went out of business, Creative Vision Technologies picked up the line of keyboards, marketing them under the Avant brand.

[22] However, CVT was acquired by Ideal System Solutions in 2011 and the product is no longer listed.