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Computerworld - ... in and around Boise, Idaho. Dont let the soaring mountains, wild rivers, dense forests and high desert fool you into thinking that Boisians spend all their time skiing, hiking, kayaking, fly fishing, camping, hunting, biking and generally goofing off. They spend a bit of their lives indoors toying with some pretty interesting technology at both local companies and renowned multinationals. Take Hewlett-Packard. In 1973, the granddaddy of high-tech companies planted roots in the Treasure Valley, home to state capital Boise. Today, HP runs one of the worlds most sophisticated testing labs there. Its purpose is to ensure that HPs printer division  the companys most profitable  retains its dominant market share, which it achieved through a reputation for reliability and performance, not low prices. According to Dave Novak, manager of Laser­Jet hardware test operations, HP tests more than 300 types of paper in its devices, running through enough sheets every month to dwarf the Empire State Building. (They all get recycled, of course.) Given the diversity of paper content from around the globe  some is made from grass instead of wood pulp, for example  and the myriad configurations possible with each printer, the lab has to be prepared to test up to 6 million variables, Novak says. HP even built a massive $4 million chamber just to certify that its printers pass the radio frequency interference regulations for every nation it ships products to. As a result, Novak brags, HPs printers are the most reliable IT product ever seen.

Small is not ...
... a bad word in Boise.

Dreaming of building the next HP in Idaho doesnt rank high on the lists of many IT entrepreneurs in the Treasure Valley. Just ask Ryan Woodings, founder of MetaGeek LLC in Nampa. He designed the Wi-Spy USB dongle and software to replace bulky and pricey spectrum analyzers. The tool can be used on any Windows computer to detect traffic in the 2.8 GHz band so network engineers can better troubleshoot and manage Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other services operating in that spectrum. Woodings plans to ship a unit for the 5.8 GHz band in Q4. Traditional spectrum analyzers weigh a couple dozen pounds and can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The 2.8-GHz Wi-Spy dongles weigh next to nothing and cost $199 or $399, depending on the model. And Woodings is scrambling to keep up with demand. But he dreads a megasize MetaGeek. I dont want a big company, he says. It wouldnt be fun anymore.
Bradley Wiskirchen, CEO of Boise-based Keynetics Inc., which pulls in revenue of more than $200 million by specializing in risk control systems for e-commerce, currently employs only 70 people. He intends to hold his workforce to under 100, even if it means selling off business units, as he did last year. And in 1999, Treetop Tech Corp., also in Boise, topped out at 168 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies in the U.S. But a family health crisis convinced Jason Crawforth, chairman and founder of the software development company, that he wanted Treetop to be a lifestyle business and not just a big company. Therefore, he scaled back his operation to the point where he says he now knows the names of all his employees and their kids.