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Why HP Fell

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Re: Why HP Fell

#131

Post by throwawayhp »

As someone who was with HP since before the Compaq merger, and having drifted to a spin off, I do miss the old company. The “HP Way” was given importance at least in many of the groups I worked in. The rules of the garage [1], open door policy, skip level meetings, etc., were known even to new employees.

The culture fostered by the managers of those times (later displaced and kicked out steadily after the Compaq merger and the disastrous EDS acquisition) was what kept people around while the CEOs were busy burning the company down. That culture is still intact in some small pockets.

Top management since the times of Carly, Mark (a one trick person who couldn’t do anything other than cut costs by selling and cutting everything), Leo and then Meg were mostly clueless on running such a large company that had the capability to create integrated solutions — HP had PCs, laptops, printers, printing solutions, PDAs, phones (briefly), tablets (briefly), software, services, security tools, networking devices, storage devices, servers with PA-RISC/Itanium running HP-UX to servers with x86 running Windows/Linux)...I’m sure I’m missing many more product areas of HP since Carly’s time and later.

I still dream that HP could do better as one company with many products in different areas. But management styles that worship Wall Street and look only at their bonuses can’t handle that.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_the_garage

Re: Why HP Fell

#132

Post by linker3000 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #44

I was always surprised they let Microsoft come in and commoditise their business, why wasn't there an HP operating system to compete with Windows?

HP tried a bizarre 'one weird trick' with NewWave:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_NewWave

I remember being trained up to support the product, wondering all the time WTF was the gameplan - a 'Windows' within Windows.

Re: Why HP Fell

#133

Post by axaxs »

agumonkey wrote: post #57
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…

similarly Sony was the semi god of electronics but fell so hard on software

They've been getting better lately, at least where I've used Sony as I realize their portfolio is huge. The PS4 software is quite nice and very stable - leaps ahead of what xbox has done. Sony is also a huge contributor to Android and has one of the nicest phone OS's on the market.

Re: Why HP Fell

#134

Post by agumonkey »

axaxs wrote: post #133
agumonkey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similarly Sony was the semi god of electronics but fell so hard on software

They've been getting better lately, at least where I've used Sony as I realize their portfolio is huge. The PS4 software is quite nice and very stable - leaps ahead of what xbox has done. Sony is also a huge contributor to Android and has one of the nicest phone OS's on the market.

true, the ps3/ps4 had good UX/kernel

I stopped following their smartphone efforts though

Re: Why HP Fell

#135

Post by poulsbohemian »

The Mercury and other software acquisitions were so poorly handled. There was solid software there, plenty of good engineers and consultants, but R&D was underfunded. Sales turned into a revolving door, customer support had no training, and partners (who actually understood the products, customers, and had the expertise) were mistrusted. Sad all the way around.

Re: Why HP Fell

#136

Post by Zelphyr »

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.

Back in the mid-90's I had an HP 486 PC and printer (can't remember the model number) that both worked pretty well, all things considered.

Now we have an all-in-one HP printer/fax/scanner/copier that gets me closer to that scene in Office Space than any device I've ever owned. The obscenely overpriced cartridges don't last. It takes forever to warm up. The list goes on and I'll never own another HP product again.

Re: Why HP Fell

#137

Post by muro »

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…

Don't like their notebooks, but workstations are excellent. Had z420, 620, 3x 440, all no issues. The active cooling on RAM is a bit weird though :)

Re: Why HP Fell

#138

Post by clutchdude »

PaulHoule wrote: post #78

All of the big computer manufacturers in the 1970s faced challenges in the transition from minicomputers to microcomputers. Probably Digital Equipment Corporation was the saddest case. A review circa 1980 of minicomputer development at DEC indicated their belief (probably shared by many in the industry) that there was not going to be room for such a diversity of architectures as there were in the minicomputer age and…

>got bought by a European bastion of stagnation

Which then got bought by Nokia, a Nordic bastion of...something.

Re: Why HP Fell

#139

Post by ams6110 »

mpol wrote: post #93
ams6110 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes but the drivers they have don't work on current MacOS. Mac OS X (Tiger) v10.4 is the latest.

Re: Why HP Fell

#140

Post by romwell »

clutchdude wrote: post #138
PaulHoule wrote: post #78

All of the big computer manufacturers in the 1970s faced challenges in the transition from minicomputers to microcomputers. Probably Digital Equipment Corporation was the saddest case. A review circa 1980 of minicomputer development at DEC indicated their belief (probably shared by many in the industry) that there was not going to be room for such a diversity of architectures as there were in the minicomputer age and…

>got bought by a European bastion of stagnation Which then got bought by Nokia, a Nordic bastion of...something.

Bastion of sisu[1], it seems, given the perseverance of the people in the mobile division and their success at resurrecting the brand at HMD Global.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisu

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