Post #193,816
2/9/05 3:28:08 PM
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Carly's gone at HP
[link|http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/09/technology/hp_fiorina/index.htm?cnn=yes|Fiorina out, HP stock soars]
What does this mean for the future at HP? Do you think they will spin off the printer business? They don't have much else these days.
She certainly is set with a $21.1 million severence package.
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Post #193,821
2/9/05 3:53:32 PM
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It's going to be tough at HP.
There's a lot of competition in printers and digital cameras. I think they need to find a new niche.
If I were running the show:
1) I'd spin off the PC business.
2) I'd get Hewlett back on the board.
3) I'd think really hard about what HP's people are good at and invest heavily in it to try to create a new market.
HP used to mean high quality instrumentation. Then it meant minicomputers. Then it meant laser printers. Then it meant PCs. I'm not sure what it means now, but the board needs to figure it out soon. I don't think they can support themselves on laser and inkjet printers and digital cameras.
The best thing, innovation-wise, is probably to split up HP and let the good people in each area find their new niche. As it stands, HP is a hodge-podge that doesn't do too much very well. The PC side of the business is a boat-anchor that is going to eat the rest of the company if they don't do something about it soon.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #193,828
2/9/05 5:44:32 PM
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HP is Dead.
The bit that made HP HP has long since gone and become Agilent.
They're a second-string printer maker now.
I just hope VMS gets sold to a company that knows what to do with it.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
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Post #193,829
2/9/05 5:52:33 PM
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Not to mention Alpha.
Fat chance of that, though.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca] [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
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Post #193,832
2/9/05 6:05:36 PM
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Intel's got Alpha.
[link|http://www.my-esm.com/digest/story/OEG20010626S0043|Here] - from 6/2001. Intel got Alpha when Compaq bought DEC.
HP used to have Itanium, but they mostly [link|http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/16/hp_intel_itanic_shift/|gave that back to Intel] too.
HP doesn't have too much of interest now. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #194,015
2/10/05 3:10:10 PM
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Not quite yet
There's more there than just PC's and printers. Other areas that are largely autonomous are doing fairly well.
The decisions to buy Compaq, go mano-a-womano with Dell and the HP iPod were puzzling decisions. But then what do I know? I'm just an IT geek.
lister
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Post #193,827
2/9/05 5:00:12 PM
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Only about three years too late.
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Post #193,833
2/9/05 6:18:52 PM
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They should have fined her
the $21 mil
So wrong.
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" --Mark Twain
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." --Albert Einstein
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." --George W. Bush
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Post #193,845
2/9/05 7:45:57 PM
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I have a cousin who works there...
I'll have to find out what she has to say about it.
I don't think that she liked Carly.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #193,846
2/9/05 7:47:25 PM
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Yeah, "Leave Me Alone" did it for me, too.
bcnu,
Mikem
Eine Leute. Eine Welt. Ein F\ufffdhrer.
(Just trying to be accepted in the New America)
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Post #193,850
2/9/05 8:00:48 PM
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Who did?
I'm sure that part of her problem was that she was a woman and many men, still, do not like having a woman boss. But I don't know how much of her failure was due to that and how much was due to her reputation of not listening. [link|http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=ai0au_TvS1qo&refer=news_index|Bloomberg]: ``The Compaq merger was a fiasco right from the start,'' said analyst Jason Maxwell at Los Angeles-based TCW Group Inc., which manages $100 billion and owns Hewlett-Packard shares. ``The premise was that they were going to gain some kind of scale that would allow them to get a better cost structure and gain market share, and that is just not true.''
[...]
The board lured Fiorina from Lucent with a pay package that included $65.6 million in shares. She became the first outsider to run the company since it was founded in 1938 and was charged with reviving sales growth and changing a culture that lagged behind in product development and production. She quickly won accolades for reinvigorating the sales force, overseeing the spinoff of the test-and-measurement unit and coordinating work between divisions.
``She's been a strong change agent,'' Sacconaghi said. ``She's been a cultural catalyst.''
[ Um, a catalyst is something that lowers the energy barrier in a chemical reaction. Good choice of word, apparently. ]
[...]
``What they need is good leadership,'' Hewlett, 60, said in an interview today from Palo Alto. ``She found a big splashy move like a merger to distract people from the fact that she wasn't really able to get the job done.''
[...] She made lots of enemies, as is expected when major change is implemented. But her execution was lacking too. It'll be interesting to hear your cousin's reaction. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #194,011
2/10/05 3:02:53 PM
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Lots of happy employees
It was quite the reaction when the announcement came down.
lister
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Post #193,851
2/9/05 8:04:04 PM
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Maybe now I'll get a driver for my scanner
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #193,858
2/9/05 8:51:05 PM
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Well, good for Carley.
She already got the big bucks, and now as HP goes down the tubes, as it surely must, she can point and say, "See, if they'd kept me this wouldn't have happened".
Absorbing Compaq was a desparation measure to eliminate a competitor and save the PC business. Unfortunately the move was futile, because the market, as IBM clearly saw, has room for only two leading manufacturers. Dell is in second place by a very wide margin, and "White Box" is in first place.
Now "White Box" is moving up rapidly in the low end server market and entering the notebook market. The handwriting is on the wall - Dell and "White Box".
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #193,863
2/9/05 9:29:27 PM
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I noticed in a recent HP catalog that they're selling ...
plasma TVs now. Dell's doing it too, I see.
Hmm. Gateway did it first. Now Gateway's a shell of its former self. Hmmm.
I don't see TVs being a big growth market the way PCs were in the 1990s. A TV doesn't get faster every 18 months. If someone shells out $3k for a big TV, they're probably not going to do it again in 2-3 years.
I'm not sure what's going to happen to Dell. I still remember, while it seems like almost nobody else in the PC press does, that Dell had lots of trouble with their first big push into notebooks. They're not infallible. They're protected, to some extent, by their premiere relationship with Intel. At the moment. But if IBM's deal with Lenovo goes through, it's hard to not foresee Dell being under a lot of pressure on PC pricing and quality. If IBM does a good job on transitioning service and support, then there will be few reasons for businesses not to consider a Lenovo PC or Thinkpad as good as an IBM, only cheaper.
And if the Cell takes off, where will Dell be?
So the hardware business is going to get more difficult for Dell. They don't have a niche in music or movie subscriptions, but could always buy one I guess (but that window is closing).
HP, on the other hand, still has a lot of very smart people who can create new products and make new markets. They've got a chance, but I agree, not in the x86 PC business, IMO.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #193,867
2/9/05 9:46:04 PM
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As Peter put it...
HP are now very second-string in printers. Which is a shame, in a way, because they once had great products. The LaserJet II, for instance, was a defining piece of kit. I realized the other day that HP is now selling ordinary printer paper. Well, I guess it makes sense, really, but it looks a little too much like a company not selling enough blades to subsides their razors...
HP should frighten the industry and leave the PC business quickly. They'd have to sell off the maintanence, though. More importantly, I think they need to leave the low-end printer market to Canon and Epson. HP have been in third place for years.
Maybe they just need to go back to instrumentation.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #193,882
2/9/05 10:24:26 PM
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The HP II was a great printer . . .
. . because they had no competition.
Canon made the print engines but was forbidden by contract from making an HP compatible. Canon still sold a bunch of printers (cheaper than HP) that needed special drivers, and people had endless problems with the drivers and lack of software support.
This spoiled the market for all other laser printers, all of which were HP compatible because they weren't restricted by contract. HP could ask any price for their printers because the customers wouldn't buy anything else. I will never forgive HP for being the only vendor ever to force me to buy "grey market".
When Canon developed the high resolution engine used in the HP Laserjet 4, they showed it to HP and said, "If you don't let us off the compatibility clause, we will not sell this engine to you, but we will sell it to everyone else". Without an up-to-date engine, HP was out of the printer business, so they caved, and that's when they had to start to compete.
It's been downhill since then, but it takes a long time for a monopoly like that to fall. The decline has been helped along by small dealers as pissed off at them as I was and by big dealers pissed that magins for HP product approached 0 (but not as a limit).
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #193,903
2/10/05 12:25:30 AM
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So who's #1 in the laser business?
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Post #193,907
2/10/05 1:17:56 AM
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Canon/Brother/Epson/Oce/Oki/$ANYONE_ELSE
When it took me 28 days to get an engineer to an HP LJ9000 with 4x4 cover, I knew that something was amiss.
We use Oc\ufffd printers for real work.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
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Post #193,958
2/10/05 9:56:16 AM
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Oce' - me too
Have you played with the Prisma spooling software? Suweeeeeet!
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Post #193,967
2/10/05 10:31:40 AM
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Nope
But not 15 feet away from me is a 2070 network copier :-)
There's two of these in the building plus a pair of 3165s.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
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Post #194,082
2/10/05 11:40:14 PM
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We got lots
Here's the list:
QTY Model
--- ----------------------------------------------------------
10 \t \tOce VarioStream 7650 Print System with QCDS for MICR Toner
18 \t\tOce Pagestream 466 with QCDS for MICR Toner
6 \t\tOce Pagestream 372 Print System with QCDS for MICR Toner
3 \t\tOce Pagestream 88 Print System
1 \t\tOce Pagestream 2140 Print System
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Post #193,923
2/10/05 3:54:31 AM
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HP is still the big seller . .
. . and last time I looked by a pretty good margin, but the profitable part of the business is selling overpriced inkjet cartridges for very low end printers and suing anyone who refills or makes clones. They still sell the most laser printers, but that distinction is fading fast.
Lexmark (formerly IBM Selectric division) is #2. Dell has entered the printer business with the intent of undermining the others on consumable pricing, and theirs are all manufactured by Lexmark.
Lexmark gained fame by suing a company that bypassed their ink cartridge "blow on empty" chips under the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), but as a legal expert pointed out, for due diligence they just had to try it and see if it worked.
For color printing at significant speed, Xerox seems to have it. I haven't seen a laser speed color printer that wasn't a Xerox for at least 5 years. The printers (solid ink) were Techtronics. Good thing Xerox took over because Techtronics was pulling a Banyan, making it as impossible as possible to qualify to sell their product.
For low end dot printers, don't under any circumstances buy a Panasonic (difficulty getting repaired). Okidata and Epson do well for low and midrange.
A bit higher up, I (and Rose) love our Datasouth Documax (there's one hiding under the counter at most airline ticket offices I understand). I have several clients I've sold a couple of them to each (dual track, ours is single track). For multipart forms, though, you have to tell them to go slower on the feed or they'll rip '4m to shreds. Unlike most dot printers you can tell them that sort of stuff.
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #193,928
2/10/05 4:16:57 AM
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Surely "Tektronix"?
And the Phaser printers rocked.
Minolta make some serious kit in the colour laser business, as do Konica.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
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Post #193,930
2/10/05 4:20:36 AM
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Re: Surely "Tektronix"?
They're still called "Phasers". Put one on a client's network a couple of days ago (they wore the first one out).
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
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Post #193,949
2/10/05 9:46:28 AM
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That's redundant
Minolta make some serious kit in the colour laser business, as do Konica. Konica and Minolta joined together some time ago. They've been selling printers under the combined name "Konica Minolta" ~~~)-Steven----
"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.
He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country..."
General George S. Patton
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Post #193,955
2/10/05 9:50:01 AM
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It's been a while :-)
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
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Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
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Post #193,934
2/10/05 7:09:18 AM
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That's a loaded question. :-)
However, I was thinking of the inkjet market. Mind you, I haven't seen a HP LaserJet I could respect since the original LJ4.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #193,898
2/9/05 11:13:25 PM
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But they will get better
A TV doesn't get faster every 18 months. The Plasmas they're selling are currently 852x480 and 1024x768. HD resolutions are 1280x720 and 1920x1080. Darrell Spice, Jr. [link|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ArtisticOverpass|Artistic Overpass]\n[link|http://www.spiceware.org/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #193,899
2/9/05 11:25:08 PM
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I was hoping you'd comment. :-)
How's your set treating you? Do you think you'd be in the market for a higher-resolution set at the same price you paid (with the [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=10357|same financing] ;-)) this year or next? Or is your set "good enough"?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #193,954
2/10/05 9:49:40 AM
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I won't get as big of an improvement.
Newer projection sets in the same price range now have 9" tubes and resolve the full 1920x1080(2,073,600 pixels). Mine has 7" project tubes and resolves around 1400x1080(1,512,000). Upgrading wouldn't give me quite the same bang-for-the-buck image improvement as going from 852x480(408,960) or 1024x768(786,432).
Darrell Spice, Jr. [link|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ArtisticOverpass|Artistic Overpass]\n[link|http://www.spiceware.org/|SpiceWare] - We don't do Windows, it's too much of a chore
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Post #193,875
2/9/05 10:18:11 PM
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they are selling a boat load of thunderdomes
I love her dearly, far beyond any creature I've ever known, and I can prove it, for never once in almost seventy years of married life have I taken her by the throat. Mind you, it's been a near thing once or twice.
George Macdonald Frasier
Clearwater highschool marching band [link|http://www.chstornadoband.org/|http://www.chstornadoband.org/]
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Post #193,909
2/10/05 1:20:52 AM
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A boat. Singular. Rowing.
Who wants HP-UX? No-one. It's a horrible proposition: "Runs on a stillborn processor! Won't scale as far or as well as AIX or Solaris! Not as good as OVMS[0]! Buy it today!"
[0] True of any UNIX, actually.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
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Post #193,935
2/10/05 7:11:43 AM
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The only good thing about HP-UX...
... was the virtual disk subsystem and it's straightforward command system. And even then I don't think it was unique.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #193,939
2/10/05 8:40:55 AM
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Not any more...
The Virtual Disk setup is far out classed by anything IBM or SUN has to offer... Come to think of it, Linux LVM and EVMS are both equal to flexibility and command simplicity.
The only thing I like about HP-UX anymore is the ability to use nearly *ANYTHING* in the way of Programs and Utilities with TONS-O-COMPILE-TIME issues that can't be fixed easily. This is not a good enough reason to goto HP-UX but a good enough one to stay.
I haven't seen much in the way of conversions TO HPUX, although the Hardware *IS* still good (PA-RISC) though as Peter pointed out, it isn't as flexible in configurations/changes as IBM (Power4/5) and Sun (Sparc64) chassis/accessories/sub-systems etc...
-- [link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg], [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Miltary Intelligence"] No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
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Post #193,956
2/10/05 9:51:00 AM
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PA-RISC == deader than corduroy.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
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Post #194,055
2/10/05 8:06:09 PM
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Carriers are still ordering a ton of them.
replacing Suns with thunderdomes.
regards,
daemon
I love her dearly, far beyond any creature I've ever known, and I can prove it, for never once in almost seventy years of married life have I taken her by the throat. Mind you, it's been a near thing once or twice.
George Macdonald Frasier
Clearwater highschool marching band [link|http://www.chstornadoband.org/|http://www.chstornadoband.org/]
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Post #194,079
2/10/05 11:28:37 PM
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HP is dead. Long live HP.
[link|http://dangillmor.typepad.com/dan_gillmor_on_grassroots/|Dan Gillmor]: An industry wag suggested a scenario to me after HP bought Compaq:
1) HP sells the printer business to Agilent, itself a spinoff of the old HP.
2) HP, hanging onto the computer business, renames itself Compaq.
3) Agilent, which has now reassembled the businesses that comprised the heart -- and soul -- of the old HP, renames itself Hewlett-Packard.
Makes sense to me, anyway. It does have a certain logic to it. But I wonder what Agilent would think of the idea. Cheers, Scott.
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