Compact factors in finally compact products of topological spaces

We present instances of the following phenomenon: if a product of topological spaces satisfies some given compactness property then the factors satisfy a stronger compactness property, except possibly for a small number of factors. The first known result of this kind, a consequence of a theorem by A.H. Stone, asserts that if a product is regular and Lindelof then all but at most countably many factors are compact. We generalize this result to various forms of final compactness, and extend it to two-cardinal compactness. In addition, our results need no separation axiom. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.