At age 13 Michael Dell was already a successful businessman. From his parents' home in Houston, Dell ran a mail-order stamp trading business that, within a few months, grossed more than $2,000. At 16 he sold newspaper subscriptions and at 17 bought his first BMW. When Dell enrolled at the University of Texas in 1983, he was thoroughly bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.

Dell started college as a pre-med student but found time to establish a business selling random-access memory (RAM) chips and disk drives for IBM PCs. Dell bought products at cost from IBM dealers, who were required at the time to order from IBM large monthly quotas of PCs, which frequently exceeded demand. Dell resold his stock through newspapers and computer magazines at 10%-15% below retail.

By 1984 Dell's dormroom computer components business was grossing about $80,000 a month -- enough to persuade him to drop out of college. Soon he started making and selling IBM clones under the brand name PC's Limited. Dell sold his machines directly to consumers rather than through retail outlets, as most manufacturers did. By eliminating the retail markup, Dell could sell PCs at about 40% of the price of an IBM PC.

The company was plagued by management changes during the mid-1980s. Renamed Dell Computer, it added international sales offices in 1987. In 1988 the company started selling to larger customers, including government agencies. That year Dell went public.

The company tripped in 1990, reporting a 64% drop in profits. Sales were growing -- but so were costs, mostly because of efforts to design a PC using proprietary components and reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chips. Also, the company's warehouses were oversupplied. Within a year Dell turned itself around by cutting inventories and introducing new products.

Dell entered the retail arena by letting Soft Warehouse (later CompUSA) in 1990 and office supply chain Staples in 1991 sell its PCs at mail-order prices. Also that year Dell opened a plant in Ireland.

In 1992 Xerox agreed to sell Dell machines in Latin America. Dell opened subsidiaries in Japan and Australia the next year. The computer maker abandoned retail stores in 1994 to refocus on its mail-order origins. It also retooled its troubled notebook computer line and introduced servers.

In 1996 the company started selling PCs through its Web site. The next year Dell entered the market for workstations and strengthened its consumer business by separating it from its small-business unit and launching a leasing program for consumers. In 1998 the company stepped up manufacturing in the Americas and Europe and added a production and customer facility in China.

Dell began selling a $999 PC in 1999. (Dell phased out the WebPC line after just seven months due to slow sales.) That year the company made its first acquisition -- storage area network equipment maker ConvergeNet -- and opened a plant in Brazil. In 2000 Dell broadened its high-end network servers and Internet-related services offerings, and formed a division for its storage operations.

Faced with slumping PC sales in 2001, the company eliminated 1,700 jobs -- about 4% of its workforce. Later that year it expanded its storage offerings when it agreed to resell systems from EMC. Looking to grow its services unit, Dell acquired Microsoft software support specialist Plural in 2002.

The following year the company shortened its name to simply Dell Inc. Dell himself stepped down as CEO in 2004. Company president Kevin Rollins, Dell's hand-picked successor, filled the position; Dell remained chairman of the company.

The company diversified its PC offerings in 2005 with the launch of XPS, a line of high-end desktop and notebook PCs for gamers and others willing to pay premium prices for top performance. The following year Dell acquired high-performance PC specialist Alienware.

In 2006 the company added search giant Google to its list of server customers. Also that year, Dell responded to customer demand and rolled out select computers with chips from AMD. The following year the company began offering a version of Linux as an option on some of its consumer PCs.

In 2007 Rollins resigned as CEO and as a member of the board of directors, and Dell reassumed the top role. Rollins' resignation came as the company struggled with a number of difficult issues, most notably disappointing earnings and an SEC investigation into its finances. (Dell restated several years of financial results after an audit revealed accounting irregularities.) Immediately following the shakeup, Dell announced streamlining measures including a reduction in managers and the elimination of 2006 bonuses. The company cut its workforce by 10% over the next year.

The company began selling through retail stores in 2007. The company also acquired a number of software companies. Dell acquired ASAP Software, a volume software acquisition and deployment specialist, for $340 million in 2007. It also purchased ZING Systems, a developer of software used in portable music devices. Other 2007 acquisitions included SilverBack Technologies, a developer of network asset management software, and Everdream, a provider of remote desktop management software and services.

Also that year Dell moved to take full ownership of Dell Financial Services, a technology-leasing joint venture it formed with CIT Group in 1997; Dell paid $306 million for CIT's 30% stake.