i guess hp learned NOTHING from the Fiorina fiasco...
Posted on 08/12/2012 1:55:01 PM PDT by Hojczyk
Hewlett-Packard Co. appears to be at a point of no return. Either Meg Whitman fixes everything wrong with the company or we may see the end of H-P.
Thus we are about to witness the greatest comeback in history, which will set Whitman up as one of the greatest chief executives ever, or we’ll witness the incomprehensible.
The incomprehensible is the end of the progenitor of the entire Silicon Valley mythos. This is THE company that began in a garage and allowed other companies to begin in a garage, all in the Palo Alto- Menlo Park area.
Yes, like a monument to abject failure, Solyndra stands out on the road. All part of a dead love affair with all things green.
This is what happened to suck the energy out of Silicon Valley. Elsewhere most of the world’s lesser venture capitalists were throwing their funds into MEMs (micro-electrical-mechanical systems). The Silicon Valley boys were going after trendy “green” inventions.
Billions of dollars that could have been used to create the next generation of integrated circuits or a unique new real technology invention instead went into green dead-ends. This includes batteries and battery cars as well as solar with ideas such as Solyndra.
When the Chinese came in with older solar technology that was simply cheaper, none of our new ideas could compete, if they ever could. It was over instantly.
The green thing began with Obama and the emergence of numerous green funds, many looking for government handouts. The ludicrous appearance of Al Gore as a venture capitalist working with Kleiner, Perkins highlights the errors.
After witnessing what has happened in the last few years, especially with H-P, I do not have high hopes.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
>> When the Chinese came in with older solar technology that was simply cheaper, none of our new ideas could compete... It was over instantly... Al Gore as a venture capitalist working with Kleiner, Perkins highlights the errors.
heh.
This isn’t some wet-behind-the-ears pundit pontificating, either.
John Dvorak KNOWS.
Dvorak has been writing on technology since the early PC era of the 1980s. If he is based in the Bay area, he has seen quite a bit of the history of Silicon Valley.
Not sure what HP’s status is, but I just purchased a laptop from them that blows me away. It’s my second HP.
I don’t have to have the latest and greatest, but this is an amazing machine, and I’d recommend it others without hesitation. I’ve never had a problem with the HP it replaces either.
It was purchased through Costco’s web shopping resource.
The only downside, and even that was handled very smoothly, it shipped from Hong Kong.
I didn’t realize that was going to happen when I ordered it.
As I recall, Meg Whitman almost killed Hewlett Packard during her first stint there. So, now she’s supposed to rescue it?
The whole ‘green enery - green jobs’ thing has been just another instrument to suck the oxygen out of the American economy. The architects are all having a big laugh at our expense.
Dvorak, ass that he is, is occasionally right on the money. This is one of those times.
SV bump
Yikes !! I’m sitting at an H-P right now.
The article does drift away from the subject, but it really makes me wonder how any Lib techies could ever dream of another four years of Obama, and I know there’s a lot of Lib techies out there. Talk about slitting your own throat.
If you follow Moore's law 18 months rule on technology turnover think how many rounds of American re-investments "seed" capital have been sucked into "green smoke" dead ends ..
Add in the government weight drawing money down these holes and America technology lead evaporates in a blink of an eye...
Capital is the blood of an economy ...Americas economy dies when its Capital bleeds out ...and "green" is a bleeding wound
Carly killed HP.
“I don’t have to have the latest and greatest, but this is an amazing machine, and I’d recommend it others without hesitation.”
**
I wouldn’t... I was part of the original class lawsuit against HP in 2007 because their HP DV6 series were lemons due to faulty chips. When HP falls, I’ll be the first to celebrate.
I had heard that it didn’t turn out very good.
She sure ran with it when she wanted to be the Governess of California though.
Can anyone point me to a Dvorak column of - say - two years ago, in which he predicted that Solyndra would be a boondoggle.
I was there a couple of months ago, by the way. Stayed in Milpitas. Saw the giant Solyndra plant by the side of 880. It's not the only one, though. There's at least one more big Solyndra office building in Milpitas that's looking for a tenant. Along with what looked to me to be about 15% of all the office space in Silicon Valley (at least at the southern end of it) judging from the "Rent Me" signs I observed when driving around.
Amazing number of Chinese people there, that's for sure.
I’m sorry to hear that. Don’t blame you one bit either.
You know, it’s hard to think of a computer company going under that sells literally thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of them on the shopping networks.
Hope you’ve found a better company’s products to run with.
Take care.
Wasn’t just the DV6 series. It was the entire DV series period.
They all had faulty video. They would overheat, then break loose the solder joints from the motherboard.
HP’s fix. replace the motherboard with ANOTHER faulty motherboard. Un-frigginbelievable.
They paid out the ass on that one. And they should have.
i guess hp learned NOTHING from the Fiorina fiasco...
The purchase of EDS is hurting them. They took a huge write down. Leadership was in shambles with Mark Hurd’s exit.
One thing that is not mentioned enough is constant lawsuits. These CEOs hate each other: Ellison, Jobs, Whitman, Carly.
The HP name will never go away, but the prospect of growth will.
As for Solyndra, in the real world they would have to demonstrate scalability and cost for alot less than $500 million. When the government is paying, these limitations are removed.
When HP started in the 30’s their concepts of ideas and how to treat employees was brilliant and nearly unheard of.
It was a fantastic company to be part of....great products and fantastic employee relations.
They had no debt, extremely low turn over, exemplary HR staff that treated employees well.
Each building almost operated as a small company, great loyalty.
I knew people who had other opportunities but couldn’t bring themselves to take other jobs, that’s how much people loved working there.
When Carly was made CEO she killed them.
The day she was fired, the employees celebrated, but her firing happened to late, they were already dead.
Rated one of the worst companies to work for. I used to work for Digital Equipment Corp and HP killed everything that was good. Itanium, Alpha, OSF/1, the list is huge. They shipped all of VMS engineering to India, know a LOT of people that got effected by that.
HP-SUX!
I had one HP laptop about five years ago with design-based technical problems and a hideous experience with their customer service. I vowed never to get another product from them.
No, it’s Carly who was at HP previously.
Meg actually had a pretty good long-time run building ebay—which made her a billionaire.
I think you’re confusing her with Carly Fiorina.
No, that was Carly Fiorina. Whitman almost killed eBay.
“I had one HP laptop about five years ago with design-based technical problems and a hideous experience with their customer service. I vowed never to get another product from them.”
As did many others, including myself who tells any PC client contemplating a new laptop purchase: “Whatever you do, don’t buy an HP.” So, crapola laptops is one of the many reasons HP is dying. (The earlier post about Carly killing HP is right on, too.)
HP has made some of the worst laptops ever for a big company that supposedly makes quality products. I’ve used a few HP laptops in various contexts, and as a PC technician I’ve seen a multitude of prematurely dead or dying HP laptops come into my shop - a great many more than other brands.
Almost every PC company has an occasional lemon, but with HP, it’s an occasional laptop model that lasts longer than three years without going kaput.
I wish more Americans understood that.
You know what gets me, it’s when I have a great experience with anything, a computer, a restaurant, a baby sitter... you get the picture, I recommend them and the person I recommend them to has a terrible experience.
I’ve done this with my folks, friends, business associates...
It’s a real pain.
Sorry you had a bad experience too.
I know I’ve had outrageous bad service at some businesses, and everyone else I know has a great experience with them.
Strange...
Indeed Noumenon! "My dinner with IBM" was a prescient Dvorak column in the early 90's.
I was always more of a Robert X. Cringely fan.
.
Back in the 1990’s, I was wanting to get on with HP in Ft. Collins when I was still living in Indiana but never got in. I lay a lot of blame on Carly Fiorina and also Mark Hurd. IMHO, how long before Mark Hurd destroys Oracle and also bought out Sun Microsystems.
I have a friend working for EDS in California and Mark Hurd did a number on them when they were bought out like pay cuts but they sure didn’t relax the rules like dress codes and inflexible hours.
I had a different friend work for HP during the Carly debacle and the atmosphere was so bad that you had to be careful what you said or you were called to task for daring to criticize or question the executive “leadership”.
But ... but ... this little confection is CEO of Yahoo!
You are perhaps thinking of Carly Fiorina who almost destroyed HP after almost destroying Lucent.
HP's Carly Fiorina era is finally over...good riddance (from Aug, 2011)
I had five (5) HP products within arm’s reach on my desk. Then, I got the middle finger from HP’s customer service rep. Never again will the HP logo sit on my desk.
They should have kept the awesome TouchPad tablet, released the 7” version they already had, and promoted WebOS to the 4 million devices they fire-sale sold last year.
Indeed Noumenon! “My dinner with IBM” was a prescient Dvorak column in the early 90’s.
I was always more of a Robert X. Cringely fan.
________________
Name from the past...God, is Cringely still alive?
I had five (5) HP products within arm’s reach on my desk. Then, I got the middle finger from HP’s customer service rep. Never again will the HP logo sit on my desk.
I will NEVER buy another HP product. All the HP laptops I owned ran super hot and had loads of problems and then they blamed Microsoft and Microsoft blamed them when the updates and the HP audio couldn’t work together and no one in the Philippines gave a flying flip and said they could fix it remotely or would immediately refund my money which they couldn’t fix it remotely and they didn’t refund my money immediately. I did get my money just not immediately.
Nope, I need a laptop that will last 10 years, so I researched the issue and chose lenovo
I don’t think Meg was ever at HP before. You’re thinking of Carly Fiorina.
“HP’s fix. replace the motherboard with ANOTHER faulty motherboard. Un-frigginbelievable.
They paid out the ass on that one. And they should have.”
*
You know the history, bud. After that, I never had one HP product nor will ever buy one.
My understanding is that the Cringely column in InfoWorld was a composite of the editors.
The book “Accidental Empires” by Cringely is a must read for an accurate view of the valley and Microsoft back in the day.
Now, time for me to boot up my 80286 based PS/2! :-)
Silicon Valley succumbed to the siren of free government money.
But at least we have Facebook.
That’s okay—I made that HP purchase long before you recommended them here! ;-)
Ironically,shortly after Carly Fiorina took over HP, she received an award at a manor international conference on technology management. I was in the audience in Portland, OR when the award was given.
Just goes to show that you shouldn't be too quick to make awards.
Alive and IBM's worst nightmare. I subscribe to Cringely's RSS feed. :) (And own a couple of his classic videos)
LOL! What's this? I'm still using a DV6000 I bought back then and never heard of this.
Their lower price laptops specialize in (1) broken ribbon cables between computer and screen (2) broken power supply wire/plug. This is NOT high-tech stuff, folks! It’s planned failure.
Two of my kids had each of those happen. Gets a bit old. My daughter’s Asus is smooth sailing so far.
My work laptops (high end) are solid. Never had a mechanical or electrical failure.
I’m still waiting for them to figure out decent software for their printers. At least the ones I’ve had. It’s stone-age irritating.
Well, in a while it will be HPC. China.
Yep
that’s a decent deal
Used to work for a contractor packaging their ink cartridges 5 years ago.
I could not believe the waste and inefficiency.
Bureaucracy gone wild.
Plant’s closed down now and it’s done in Mexico.
OTOH love their desktops, great value.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.