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Why HP Fell

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Re: Why HP Fell

#81

Post by bsder »

As much maligned as COMPAQ's acquisition of DEC was, you have to remember that DEC's enterprise side was still printing cash to the tune of something like a billion dollars a year.

Intel, for example, ran every single fab line on VMS at the time. There were other customers with similar requirements and monetary outlays when they needed something reliable.

Considering this, you have a business that you can simply milk for cash profit for 10-20 years as it slowly winds down.

The fact that HP couldn't figure this out is a gigantic failure of management at the board and CEO level.

Re: Why HP Fell

#82

Post by acdha »

Annatar wrote: post #22

Perhaps 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.

The interesting thing is that a single executive had a large share in killing both HP and SGI as major players. Richard Belluzzo was the guy who decided that HP should switch from HP UX on PA-RISC to Windows NT on Itanium, and then moved to SGI to preside over the decision to turn SGI into a Windows reseller and gave the SGI 3D graphics team — which at the time had a legendary reputation — to nVidia along with their patent portfolio.

Re: Why HP Fell

#83

Post by indigodaddy »

ahartmetz wrote: post #9

The 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.

Does whatever form of "HP" still actually manufacture laptops, or is the name just licensed out now? Haven't followed or looked at HP laptops in forever..

Re: Why HP Fell

#84

Post by throw2016 »

It would be tempting to blame Carly Fiorina and she exemplifies the cult of CEO, short term thinking, no solutions beyond wall street focused cost cutting, financial engineering and layoffs, no accountability and exiting with golden parachutes with no damage to their finances or reputation. This while the company loses long term viability, sheds talent, focus, and burns,

Robert Nardelli, former Homedepot CEO is also a similar instance of CEOs making bad decisions with little push back and accountability and exiting with reputation and big bucks. Neoliberalism and a fawning media and 'economists' propping up whatever narratives vested interests push has to shoulder the blame.

No company can survive short termism and a string of wall street focused CEOs. HPs decline hastened under her 'reign'. They folded from hardware, were content to sit on printer revenues and DRM and focus on 'services'. None of these have scope for innovation.

Re: Why HP Fell

#85

Post by indigodaddy »

timfoden wrote: post #77
Scarblac wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a brand of printer that doesn't sell the printer at a loss and then has you pay through the nose for tiny cartridges of ink? I made the mistake of buying a Canon once and now I'm looking for a new printer.

I asked myself the same sort of question a couple of years ago and ended up buying an Epson L355. This printer has ink tanks on the side that you refill, and tubes going to the print head. The ink refills are way cheaper than normal "attached-to-the-print-head" ones on a price-to-volume-of-ink basis. Also there's no way for the printer to tell whether or not Epson branded ink was used. The only problems I have with i…

I've had an Epson Workforce 845 for many many years and it's been an excellent printer, and I buy the aftermarket ink usually. Even though I use it nominally, I don't think it's an ink hog like the other big names..

Re: Why HP Fell

#86

Post by rrauenza »

pvg wrote: post #65
reacweb wrote: post #10

At 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…

it was easy to compile them on Sun The Sun machines were much more common and a lot of software was tested/built on SunOS.

In the 90's and early 2000's Sun machines were pretty much the default for developing new software during the dot com boom. I was told this was due partly because Sun sold a lot of hardware on credit (and then this crashed when the dot com boom crashed.)

I worked at HP during this time helping software vendors port to HP-UX. I also spent some time on the side compiling open source projects for fun on HP-UX and then pushing the required patches back to the project's owner.

Anyone remember Pointcast?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast_(dotcom)

I was assigned to them briefly.

Re: Why HP Fell

#87

Post by mdellavo »

Along with board and ceo problems, the they were fighting a battle on two fronts for computer sales. The kush high end server market was undercut by the rise of linux while they floundered with Intel on IA64. All the other proprietary unixes fell in this time too. Meanwhile Dell was undercutting them for consumer PC sales.

Re: Why HP Fell

#88

Post by mark-r »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #66

I dont know about HP before the late 90s, but I have been working in some form of tech for 15 years now, and I have developed an aversion to any HP product. Seeing that logo fills me with dread and anxiety. Early on it was dealing with printer drivers, and explaining to users that you don't need the full install to use the device. Then it was painfully navigating HPSM. Then test driving the HP Stackable Switches whic…

I had to track down a bug in an application once. It turned out the bug only happened after you printed to an HP printer - the driver changed a critical floating point flag in the processor and never restored it.

Re: Why HP Fell

#89

Post by schrodingersket »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #66

I dont know about HP before the late 90s, but I have been working in some form of tech for 15 years now, and I have developed an aversion to any HP product. Seeing that logo fills me with dread and anxiety. Early on it was dealing with printer drivers, and explaining to users that you don't need the full install to use the device. Then it was painfully navigating HPSM. Then test driving the HP Stackable Switches whic…

As someone who despises printers (that scene from Office Space was one of the most cathartic moments of my life), I mostly agree. Except that the x360 I have running Linux is by far the most satisfying instrument for work I've ever owned, by far. I hate what they've done with pretty much any other line of branding they have, but that bit of hardware was damn well done.

Re: Why HP Fell

#90

Post by mark-r »

sk5t wrote: post #68
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #66

I dont know about HP before the late 90s, but I have been working in some form of tech for 15 years now, and I have developed an aversion to any HP product. Seeing that logo fills me with dread and anxiety. Early on it was dealing with printer drivers, and explaining to users that you don't need the full install to use the device. Then it was painfully navigating HPSM. Then test driving the HP Stackable Switches whic…

You'd have to go back to the early-mid 90s for bulletproof printers that never complained and did not require (or even encourage) installation of horrible software. HP also made good oscilloscopes, gas chromatographs, and the like, but of course those weren't shiny enough to keep on making.

The original HP Laserjets (up through at least the III) were indestructible marvels. I also had a Deskjet 720c that was nearly perfect, I used it until the drive belt shredded after many years of good service.
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