Posted on 02/09/2005 5:25:29 AM PST by Max Combined
Anticipating this reaction, I purposely wrote in parenthesis (Note: This is not positive comment).
DEC was fading, I'll agree. Tandem was not fading fast. In fact Tandem sales went up after Compaq bought them while Compaq's core PC business went down. Of course Compaq wanted to run a company with tremendous innovation like a PC chop shop, so in the long run they have not retained leadership, but I believe that Tandem stuff (HP NonStop) is still a big revenue and profit generator for HP. Not sure you can say that about Compaq stuff.
Yeah I agree it would have been better for Compaq not to buy those companies. It would have been better for those Companies (at least Tandem) not to be bought, particularly by a Texas PC maker who didn't have any background in high end computing, software or database.
Still Compaq did the deal, treated the acquired employees poorly. So there is a bit of "turn about is fair play" with the HP thing.
booked
We'll have to see if
everybody's still cheering
three years down the road . . .
My impression is
the anti-Carly people
hate her because she
kept HP intact,
preventing biz-ness vultures
fragmenting the firm
and milking profits
from product sectors before
selling them away
and making "HP"
just a brand label to put
on random products.
Let's see, in three years,
if HP's a company,
or just a brand name.
;-)
I don't have women employees, but my wife and daughters do that too. They waste way too much time and energy on analyzing something that more often than not, meant nothing.
That sounds like a component of fascism.
Came roaring out of the gate this morning after the announcement. Up 11% so far.
As one of Carly's many victims, I would have labeled it, "YAHOOOOOO!!!!! NEWS!"
Got an email this AM from a friend who was another of her victims with just a single line - "Ding dong the witch is dead!"
Dell has been kicking HP's a$$ for several years and even Gateway has been gaining market share in the PC business, probably at HP's expense. I would bet that there's a deeper problem at HP than who is the CEO--HP has become a soft, politically correct SF Bay Area company with too much management energy focused on preventing any discrimination, sexism, or excessive male agression in the workplace. People who want to develop new products, start up and new business and get rich don't want to work for a bureaucracy like HP. The computer industry has changed too and there's much tougher price competition than in the 90's. So all the excess regulation and expense of doing business in California also is huring HP's competitiveness. Simply put, Dell is winning and HP is losing the game.
Yup. You paid a bit more for them sometime, but in my experience, their equipment was better engineered. I still have an old "Test and Measurement" catalog around here somewhere. The sheer number of products they had was astounding. For several years I lusted after an atomic clock in there. Didn't really have any great need for it, but I thought it would be cool to be able to say, "yeah, that's the atomic clock over there on the shelf". :-)
Long overdue.. wish her the best.
Now can we get rid of Eisner?
Neither did I. Glad she is gone.
HAHAHAHAHAHA... Kinda how I felt about Bernie Ebbers for quite some time.
I agree completely. My lab is chock full of Hp test equipment. I even have an Hp Cesium atomic clock. :-)
I had been fiddling with computers some. Mini computers and some of the first PC type machines running CP/M and whatnot. Which was to the disappointment of my dad who kept telling me "son, you can't make money fiddling with those things!"
So, I looked at that sign and thought that I had never seen computers meet with each other so I pulled into the driveway in the front of the Galleria hotel behind the sign I'd just read.
This was real fancy hotel and the fellow out front with a French foreign legion like outfit looks at my old Oldsmobile and then he looks at me and sees a young kid then he just looks away. Since I expected he would not be running around and opening my door then escorting me through those whirly gig doors behind him I hit the gas towards the parking lot next doot. And left Mr. Fancypants coughing and looking like he wanted to give me a special gesture. I wonder if he still has that outfit? He needs to put it on ebay because Michael Jackson needs clothes for court and I bet Jackson would pay a pretty penny for that outfit, put it on, then spin around then yell "Shamon!" or some other word nobody understands then scream out "he! he! he!".
So I park my car and then walk right in the spinning front door past Mr. Give-me-a-tip-dammit like I own the place and follow the signs to the "Computer Meeting".
I find a room full of chairs and the chairs were full of folks. I figured I was in the wrong room because I knew engineer types that were messing with computers back then and the folks in that room looked like they just came off the TV set or had been playing golf or tennis. But I did see a couple of guys in front that had that pocket protector look about them. They were with a fellow that was talking fast and excited about stuff like "revenue projections" and "market demand" and whatnot. He said right off that his name was Ben Rosen.
The woman in the room had all these diamonds on all over and they had hairdoos that look like they had one big piece of hair because not even little tiny hairs could escape whatever glue they had put on to stick all that stuff together. All the men had Texas Timexes on. Some were pretty gaudy with blue and purple faces. I sure wanted one of those things.
I was about to get up because I did not belong in that gang and I thought that once that Rosen fellow stared right at me with the look people get when they are surprised gum gets stuck to their heel. Plus, I had figured out I was in an invitation only gathering and the sign out front was there so these people's limo drivers could find the right place.
Just as I was lifting my backend up off the chair this Rosen guy reaches back behind a pedastal looking thing with a skirt on it and grabs something, picks it up, and plops it down in front of everyone on the pedastal. I looked at it and I fell right back down in my chair. I knew what it was and I wanted one of them worse than one of the fancy watches. The thing he had his hand on was about the size of a little suitcase. Mr. Rosen points to the two fellows behind him and says something like "they used to work for TI" and they had built this thing. I could tell that the fancy folks did not know what it was but I did. It was a computer. And you could pick it up by it's handle.
I hung around for a few minutes and heard that they were going to build the thing and that they were working on naming a new company and that Mr. Rosen thought those folks should put some money up because he was sure they had a great idea and that these things were going to be very popular.
Most of the women were looking bored. One did turn around and winked at me, I think. Or, maybe she had some of that hair glue in her eye. I don't get many winks like that anymore. But I did back then.
Anyway, a lot of people started taking out their checkbooks. Except me because I knew I had less in the bank than most of those folks had cash in their pockets. But I would have sold my old Oldsmobile or swapped it for one of those computers you could lug around.
I heard several folks giggle and leave because I guess they thought computers were worthless like my dad did back then. I wonder how they felt a few years later? I don't feel too bad because I didn't have a penny to give Mr. Rosen at the time. Which would not have mattered anyway because Mr. Rosen and those fellows that used to work for TI did OK without any money I could have offered. Well, actully, they did better than OK. They did private jets and houses in Aspen damn good!
The rest, as they say, is history. And with the leaving of Fiorina a door closes a little bit more that was opened by Ben Rosen and a small goup of folks in that hotel so many years ago.
You just dropped that bit of information to make me jealous didn't you? :-) I don't think I like you anymore.
LOL, and with the accusations against Bill Cosby throwing a wet blanket on Black History Month, my entire academic/celebratory calendar has suffered a massive blow.
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