Love their business laptops, good and reliable machines.
Have a MacBook Pro for work and a much, much preferred HP laptop when I can get away from the MacBook.
Why HP Fell
21–30 of 161 posts
Re: Why HP Fell
#22Perhaps HP’s biggest sin is how they ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC high quality workstations and servers, how they charged premiums for the hardware and the software, how one couldn’t get HP-UX, its compilers or even the mirroring software unless one was an approved HP “strategic partner”... while a busted-ass, barely good enough, cheap, intel-based PC tin bucket was eating their lunch.
Re: Why HP Fell
#23At school (1991-1994), we had HP and Sun workstations. The HP were nicknamed the toasters because they were hot. The Sun were beautiful beasts. After power failure, we regularly had problems with Sun, never with HP. When we were downloading games from the net, it was easy to compile them on Sun, but was always a nighmare on HP (non standard includes, libraries, ...). I think HP is excellent about hardware, but terrib…
When I was doing C in the early 2000's, our ANSI C code would cope with Aix, Linux, NT/2000 and Solaris. But on HP-UX 11 we still had a version of aCC that was a mix between ANSI and K&R, so it was the variant with more pre-processor logic.
That was solved in the newer versions of aCC. I had no issues compiling most contemporary code all the way ‘till 2014 when I finally retired my private HP-UX server infrastructure. For particularly badly written software, there was GCC on HP-UX.
Re: Why HP Fell
#24Love their business laptops, good and reliable machines.
As well as a live fleet of about 30 units, we have about 5 HP Probooks at work in different states of dismantlement; they fell apart or broke in various mechanical ways and are cannibalised to sustain the working ones. In my previous role we were a Dell shop and the XPS laptops were much more reliable by comparison.
They've been building laptops with failure prone fans since I bought one with Windows ME on it 15-16 years ago. Other manufacturers don't seem to have this problem.
Re: Why HP Fell
#25The story does not seem very convincing to me. The split between lab instruments and computers - may actually help fix the next problem. The disregard of consumer products - partially fixed later when they managed to sell large numbers of printers and not only business laptops. So maybe the big problems did start around Fiorina's time after all.
Also, past the LaserJet 5, their printers started taking a nosedive in quality. In my own experience at work, the 1000 didn't last long before it started spewing toner all over the page, and the 4550N, a gigantic color laser with extremely expensive consumables, did likewise. Don't get me started on their inkjets. Nothing like an all-in-one that won't even let you SCAN when it decides to "expire" a costly printhead.…
Ditto. I’ll never buy another HP product. They are now the purveyors of garbage computers and printers. The mid 90’s printers, scanners, and Apollo workstations were the pinnacle of quality. The 85xx line of test equipment was even beyond that. I don’t think something like those would even be attempted now.
The true HP is Keysight, though they have quality issues now.
The tile floors were to find small parts when dropped, and minimize dust and static electricity. The computer jockeys were in the wrong.
Re: Why HP Fell
#26Gassée's problem is that he sees everything through an Apple-tinted lens. There's almost no subject that he can't turn back to his comfort zone of talking about Apple.
Here we're promised an alternative account of why the conventional story of HP mismanagement is false, and end up with a lot of handwaving and 'Apple starting' as an inevitable explanation for HP's decline, despite Apple nearly going bankrupt in the intervening period.
Re: Why HP Fell
#27Does anyone know how to make the annoyingly large Medium top-bar, and "open in app" button (hovering over the article) on mobile go away without installing anything? Edit: found one solution: https://outline.com/SV3V7N
Create a "Clean Up" bookmarklet: javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()
I use such a bookmarklet on laptop/desktop, but how do I do it on mobile? I just tried in Firefox, but couldn't.
Re: Why HP Fell
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Create a "Clean Up" bookmarklet: javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()
I use such a bookmarklet on laptop/desktop, but how do I do it on mobile? I just tried in Firefox, but couldn't.
(Just spitballing, as I've a dumb phone...) Can't you copy the script, and change the url of an existing bookmark? Or sync your laptop's bookmarks with those of your smartphone?
Re: Why HP Fell
#29Does anyone know how to make the annoyingly large Medium top-bar, and "open in app" button (hovering over the article) on mobile go away without installing anything? Edit: found one solution: https://outline.com/SV3V7N
These are a scourge, and I believe some people have named them "dickbars." Two options for iOS:
1) Reader mode (which I use extensively)
2) Unobstruct [0] does not meet your "without installing", but does a great job nonetheless
[0] - https://medium.com/@tgaul/introducing-unobstruct-230e4e95cf5...
Re: Why HP Fell
#30Perhaps HP’s biggest sin is how they ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC high quality workstations and servers, how they charged premiums for the hardware and the software, how one couldn’t get HP-UX, its compilers or even the mirroring software unless one was an approved HP “strategic partner”... while a busted-ass, barely good enough, cheap, intel-based PC tin bucket was eating their lunch.
>ditched their super-cool, PA-RISC
HP had an interesting portfolio from their Digital and Tandem acquisitions also including the Alpha processor and of course Tandem's non-stop OS. I imagine the pairing of those two by porting non-stop to the Alpha or bringing non-stop's features into Ultrix might have at least kept them a niche player.
Having said that HP, Digital and Tandem weren't alone in losing marketshare to Linux on commodity hardware, or for that matter Linux on HP hardware itself. Imagine if HP had read the tea leaves and created Red Hat themselves instead of losing enterprise linux to someone else. HP is awash in lost opportunities.