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Why HP Fell

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Re: Why HP Fell

#91

Post by guest2143 »

technobabble wrote: post #79
sk5t wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Technically the HP division for oscilloscopes and ee equipment still lives on via Siglent/Agilent/whatever name they're calling it now. Does anybody know why their test instruments division was spun off in the 90's? Was it to cut down on bureaucracy, or to "reinvent" the company for the digital age, or something else?

Spinning it off was part of the deal with Carly coming on board. :/

Re: Why HP Fell

#92

Post by mark-r »

My introduction to programming was around 1973, with a Teletype connected via modem to an HP 2000C minicomputer. I've always had a soft spot for HP.

Re: Why HP Fell

#93

Post by mpol »

ams6110 wrote: post #69
opencl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't do a lot of photo printing I'd highly recommend getting a laser printer. Far more reliable than inkjets, never dry out, and the toner is cheap. I got an $80 black and white Brother nearly a decade ago and it still works fine. These days you can get color laser machines under $200 and the toner remains far cheaper than ink cartridges. The other way to avoid paying through the nose for tiny ink cartridges…

I second the laser printer for people who only print occasionally. I have a cheap Samsung ML-1710 laser printer. Bought it for under $100. Unfortunately neither Apple nor Foomatic include drivers for it any longer so it's become a doorstop. If anyone knows where to find a working driver from a reputable source I'd love to know. Edit: Apparently splix driver works for this one. https://www.openprinting.org/driver/spli…

Samsung gives out drivers for download. A simple search found it:

https://driver-samsung.com/samsung-printer-ml-1710-drivers/

I own a ML-1660 for now 7 years and the drivers still work fine for me. Just no duplex printing, which is a shame.

Re: Why HP Fell

#94

Post by joezydeco »

madengr wrote: post #25
flyinghamster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dro…

Except the computer jockeys probably wanted carpeting to cut down on the noise.

It's insanely hard to concentrate in an open-office bullpen with every surface being a hard noise-reflective one.

Re: Why HP Fell

#95

Post by mikestew »

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've gone both ways. Pre-90s, HP in my head brought to mind solid pieces of equipment with good engineering. You could back over a HP-41CV with your car, and it would still work (or at least I wouldn't be surprised; never tried). I'd blindly buy a piece of HP kit if the specs said it would do the job.

Then over the years my mental image gradually changed. HP printers weren't reliable workhorses over the complete product line anymore. Then the Windows drivers got bad. Then the inkjet cartridge bullshit. They effectively quit making calculators. Then Carly, then...and now I'm in your boat, where the HP label is equivalent to "made in China, and not the good China, the bad China that uses slave labor and cuts every corner it can find". I now actively avoid HP products.

Re: Why HP Fell

#96

Post by babypuncher »

My HP Zbook at work is the worst laptop I've ever used.

Most of the time, telling it to shut down doesn't do anything except kick you back to the login screen (seems like a bug with ACPI, not Windows).

Behavior with the Thunderbolt dock is abysmal. Simply plugging it in does not work. In order to get my monitors and peripherals working through the dock consistently, I have to boot the machine while disconnected, log in to Windows, put the machine to sleep, connect the dock, then power it back on using the power button on the dock.

The fans run loud enough wile idling that I have to keep this thing tucked under my desk so that it's not blasting in my left ear.

HP didn't fall because of bad luck, or failing to adapt to a changing market. HP fell because they make worthless crap.

Re: Why HP Fell

#97

Post by forapurpose »

paulcarroty wrote: post #5

Love their business laptops, good and reliable machines.

Agreed. It's hard to find data, but based on knowledge of many IT departments, HP corporate-line machines (not the consumer line and not necessarily the small business line) are among the highest quality pieces of computer equipment I know of. So often when I've had to dig in, I found smart, careful engineering down to the smallest details. Also, they publish extensive, detailed, easy-to-find, and accurate specs, which is unfortunately rare.

The results are that they last forever, well past when the user would like something newer and shinier. There's a 12 year old laptop not far away that, after maybe 5-6 years of heavy use, is in perfect condition other than one USB port (IIRC).

Re: Why HP Fell

#98

Post by mikestew »

mark-r wrote: post #88
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.

Ah, yes, the floating point bug that set the FP error handing to "software" instead of "hardware". Of course, no one thought to inform the application software side of the house, so you were one divide-by-zero away from an application crash because the FPU said "not my problem anymore". You could fix it with a liberal sprinkling of _fpreset(), assuming your language/environment allowed that option.

To be fair, HP wasn't the only one that had that bug. My SWAG is that there was some common library that a lot of drivers used, including HP, that fiddled with the FPU and never set it back.

Re: Why HP Fell

#99

Post by reportingsjr »

technobabble wrote: post #79
sk5t wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Technically the HP division for oscilloscopes and ee equipment still lives on via Siglent/Agilent/whatever name they're calling it now. Does anybody know why their test instruments division was spun off in the 90's? Was it to cut down on bureaucracy, or to "reinvent" the company for the digital age, or something else?

Siglent is a Chinese test equipment company.

Agilent is HP's life science division (test equipment for biology folks) and the electronic test equipment division is now called keysight.

As far as I'm aware these two were spun out since the growth wasn't as good as the consumer electronics division.

Re: Why HP Fell

#100

Post by mrpippy »

technobabble wrote: post #79
sk5t wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Technically the HP division for oscilloscopes and ee equipment still lives on via Siglent/Agilent/whatever name they're calling it now. Does anybody know why their test instruments division was spun off in the 90's? Was it to cut down on bureaucracy, or to "reinvent" the company for the digital age, or something else?

The test equipment and medical/chemical diagnostics business was spun off into Agilent in 1999, and Agilent then spun out the test equipment a few years ago. Keysight Technologies is now where they live on.
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