One of the Margin's favourite topics is garages in Silicon Valley or, to be more precise, garages in the city of Palo Alto, where garages are cultural icons. Yes, yes, we know: so what, you say, this is California, where hot tubs, carrot juice and even Larry Ellison are revered objects. But in Palo Alto, several famous garages have become shrines, because those garages are where technology multinational companies were born. So resonant with significance are Palo Alto garages that (as reported earlier by the Margin) they can be let for $10,000 a month to foolish dot.coms with first-round funding to burn.

So we were pleased to see that Hewlett-Packard coughed up $1.7 million for the tiny garage where revered founders David Hewlett and William Packard invented H-P in 1938. Of course, the garage comes with its own small house as well, in case H-P wants to store some extra stuff.

After blowing $18 billion in the same week for Pricewater houseCooper's consulting arm as well, Hewlett-Packard must have thought the garage was a real bargain.

And speaking of that sale, we're waiting to see whether company CEO Carly Fiorina will decide to name the division H-P-P-W-C, or HewlettPackardPricewaterhouseCoopers. If the latter, they'll have one hell of a website URL.