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
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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
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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
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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
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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. |
|
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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