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IBM always had good software to support their hardware. HP ships 344mb printer drivers.

Both VMware and KVM are overkill. How many hosts have enough RAM to give each guest 1TB, much less 2TB? Wake me up when the hardware catches up to the point where those capabilities matter.

*poke*poke* It's your "hardware is ready" courtesy wake up call.

You can get some mid-range IBM blade centers, or some low end HP BladeSystem hardware, or really any of the many many systems that can easily handle that in a low end configuration.

If you need to get serious, you start loading rack cabinets with such gear, along with some SAN cards sprinkled throughout.

At that level of hardware, it would be extremely wasteful not to run something like VMware ESX. This is the target audience after all, not the geek with a lowly double digit count of CPUs in their spare bedroom.

Granted, it was extremely nice of them to release ESXi without vSphere for free for us lowly geeks who, like myself, might only have a couple 4 or 6 core home built systems, who don't need all those high end features (*drool* none the less), but when I'm at work running the "little big iron", I'm very thankful for vSphere and such solutions to manage my hardware with 36 GB ram per node and a 480 gb SAN.

HP FAQ

I've also reached the shipping queue status ("admin"), so it looks like I'll probably be getting a unit... ordered around 1PM Saturday.

They told me to call back Monday (today), but I didn't even bother. I read somewhere that they are looking to correct the problem in a more automated fashion, rather than on a per call basis.

I have read that it is still questionable whether they have the stock to fulfill the orders they took. My order was taken 8:30PM GMT, and it's still sitting in "processing" status. I'd hold off on accessories until you get a shipment email. I'm crossing my fingers that mine goes through...

Check out RedFlagDeals, as they have a thread going with people talking about what status their order numbers are in. You can also check your status here.

Good luck.

In case you're still reading this thread...

For compatibility, I think they had an emulator to run PA-RISC programs on Itanium. One of the incentives for starting an incompatible design was a project called Dynamo, which was like a Java JIT interpreter which analyses a program as it's running, and can optimise the most used parts. One surprise was that they could speed up a program by translating from PA-RISC to PA-RISC - the runtime optimisations in software were better than hardware (at the time).

A similar strategy was followed by Transmeta, interpreting 80x86 programs on custom VLIW CPUs. It failed partly due to Intel manipulation (basically giving a much better price to customers who never use a competing product), but partly from inconsistent performance - that matters less on a server, but more on a laptop, which was Transmeta's focus. Java is used mostly on servers, so the JIT and optimisation works well there.

I think continuing PA-RISC could have matched Itanium performance (if Itanium had not been delayed) eventually, but at the time it wasn't a sure thing. The real question was whether to put the dynamic optimisation in software or hardware, and a number of research projects hinted that software might be capable of far more than hardware (in addition to HP Dynamo, IBM's DAISY project did much the same thing, as well as Java JITs and Transmeta, and the Macintosh which just switched from 680x0 to PowerPC using emulation). Many people thought instruction sets would be irrelevant (Transmeta released several CPUs, all incompatible - no backwards compatibility barriers to newer, faster designs).

The idea is not dead though. Look up the Low Level Virtual Machine, or LLVM, which is used by Apple. One example is in the Macintosh OpenGL stack - rather than including a lot of branches to test for various settings, the LLVM optimiser basically strips out all those out when they don't change (or are handled by hardware), leaving behind simpler code for displaying windows and other graphics. Probably other things too, but that's all that's publicly announced. I suspect Apple is aiming for CPU independence eventually.

Advert w/ proper prices can be viewed here, which redirects you to the above link showing the incorrect price.

(Feb. 9, 2011) HP Launches 'Everybody On' Global Marketing Campaign: The 'Everybody On' campaign kicks off with a 60-second anthem TV spot featuring an instrumental version of Lou Reed's iconic song 'Walk on the Wild Side'...This year the GRAMMY Awards telecast will feature the new HP TouchPad, the first HP webOS tablet...

(Feb. 9, 2011) HP Launches 'Everybody On' Global Marketing Campaign: The 'Everybody On' campaign kicks off with a 60-second anthem TV spot featuring an instrumental version of Lou Reed's iconic song 'Walk on the Wild Side'...This year the GRAMMY Awards telecast will feature the new HP TouchPad, the first HP webOS tablet...

http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/webos/us/en/shopping-touchpad.html

Instead of secure by default, you have run by default in all 3 major environments... Linux, Windows, OSx

Time is running out for this insane approach to doing things... the various band-aids are now in play are rapidly losing their efficacy, and none address the basic issue: code can no longer be trusted.

Fortunately. a few brave souls have ventured into this area with projects oriented at fixing the situation properly.

In the Linux area, seccomp-nurse is a sandboxing framework based on SECCOMP. It is designed to run applications in a kind of jail (enforced by the kernel). It does not use ptrace() at all.

In the Windows area, Polaris (Principal Of Least Authority for Real Internet Security) is a package for Windows XP that demonstrates that we can do better at dealing with viruses than has been done so far. Polaris allows users to configure most applications so that they launch with only the rights they need to do the job the user wants done. This simple step, enforcing the Principle of Least Authority (POLA), gives so much protection from viruses that there is no need to pop up security dialog boxes or ask users to accept digital certificates. Further, there is little danger in launching email attachments, using macros in documents, or allowing scripting while browsing the web. Polaris demonstrates that we can build systems that are more secure, more functional, and easier to use.

So what remains is servers?

From what they've mentioned in their press releases and what's in their products and services page, what hardware remains is servers and storage, printers/scanners/all-in-ones and supplies for them, networking devices, and some other miscellanea (calculators, monitors, etc.).

What the heck software is HP shipping that hasn't to do with their own hardware?

I'm not sure - the stuff I've found on their software site doesn't do a great job of saying what platforms the software runs on, although some of the stuff for mail archiving on Microsoft Exchange seems to at least hint that it runs on Windows servers (some of which might be theirs, at least unless and until they spin off that group, but not all of which are necessarily theirs).

It's becoming more and more of a joke to keep the same name. Their business got nothing to do with Hewlett nor Packard.

William Hewlett was CEO until 1979, and David Packard was chairman of the board until 1993 (except for a couple of years when he was a deputy secretary of defense). That period includes a bunch of the "business computer" stuff (HP 3000, UNIX boxes) which HP haven't spoken of divesting. Dumping the PC business is hardly the action that kicks H&P to the curb; dumping the instrument business maybe, but not the PC business.

So what remains is servers?

From what they've mentioned in their press releases and what's in their products and services page, what hardware remains is servers and storage, printers/scanners/all-in-ones and supplies for them, networking devices, and some other miscellanea (calculators, monitors, etc.).

What the heck software is HP shipping that hasn't to do with their own hardware?

I'm not sure - the stuff I've found on their software site doesn't do a great job of saying what platforms the software runs on, although some of the stuff for mail archiving on Microsoft Exchange seems to at least hint that it runs on Windows servers (some of which might be theirs, at least unless and until they spin off that group, but not all of which are necessarily theirs).

It's becoming more and more of a joke to keep the same name. Their business got nothing to do with Hewlett nor Packard.

William Hewlett was CEO until 1979, and David Packard was chairman of the board until 1993 (except for a couple of years when he was a deputy secretary of defense). That period includes a bunch of the "business computer" stuff (HP 3000, UNIX boxes) which HP haven't spoken of divesting. Dumping the PC business is hardly the action that kicks H&P to the curb; dumping the instrument business maybe, but not the PC business.

Where in the physorg.com link does it say they're going to stop making phones and tablets? It does say they are expanding where webOS can play (which has been talked about for a while), but I didn't see anything about stopping production on TouchPads & whatever they call their phones now. What am I missing?

You're missing the HP press release, which says

HP will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. The devices have not met internal milestones and financial targets. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

The software group in HP is actually responsible for their Performance Suite of Enterprise software, including market-leading PPM, Quality, Performance, Security, and Operations applications. WebOS was part of the PC business, and by no means core to the business.

Although I am surprised they are ditching WebOS devices so soon after investing a heap into advertising and just launching the Pal Pre 3 in Europe.

Their http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html is really great product. It's small, need almost no cooling, uses little power just like any random Atom system, but support ECC memory, has a really nice case, ip kvm and full server support by HP and is cheap! I would really miss this system.

HP has a software business? Besides bloatware on a new HP PC?

Seriously, name 5 software titles HP makes that a random computer user might know

Why should they care about what a random computer user might know? http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software/enterprise-software.html#tab=2

They were just awarded a huge NASA contract to provide HARDWARE and desktop support (the old Lockheed ODIN contract)... Seems odd. http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110428a.html
Since they are replacing all the Dells at NASA with HP (at HP's request when they started the contract) - why would they now be looking to get out of hardware?

And for all those that *need" garbage collection in C++ there is still this: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/ Just saying...

Examples? Maybe I have just lucked out, but none of the printers I've bought (or even looked at purchasing) in the last 10 or 12 years have lacked PostScript support, and I've bought low-end, consumer-grade printers.

Well, the specs on the HP OfficeJet 4500 only mention HP's PCL, not PostScript (and they do mention it, as well as HP PCL, for the HP DesignJet T2300). The HP DeskJet 1000 specs also don't mention PostScript. Epson doesn't mention PostScript as a language for the Epson Artisan 725 All-in-One Printer - Arctic Edition. Maybe you've just blown off the lowest-end printers.

Examples? Maybe I have just lucked out, but none of the printers I've bought (or even looked at purchasing) in the last 10 or 12 years have lacked PostScript support, and I've bought low-end, consumer-grade printers.

Well, the specs on the HP OfficeJet 4500 only mention HP's PCL, not PostScript (and they do mention it, as well as HP PCL, for the HP DesignJet T2300). The HP DeskJet 1000 specs also don't mention PostScript. Epson doesn't mention PostScript as a language for the Epson Artisan 725 All-in-One Printer - Arctic Edition. Maybe you've just blown off the lowest-end printers.

Examples? Maybe I have just lucked out, but none of the printers I've bought (or even looked at purchasing) in the last 10 or 12 years have lacked PostScript support, and I've bought low-end, consumer-grade printers.

Well, the specs on the HP OfficeJet 4500 only mention HP's PCL, not PostScript (and they do mention it, as well as HP PCL, for the HP DesignJet T2300). The HP DeskJet 1000 specs also don't mention PostScript. Epson doesn't mention PostScript as a language for the Epson Artisan 725 All-in-One Printer - Arctic Edition. Maybe you've just blown off the lowest-end printers.

Here we have what could be self fulfilling prophecy...If all programmers think it impossible to implement secure systems, thus nobody tries.

Fortunately. a few brave souls have ventured into this area..

In the Linux area, seccomp-nurse is a sandboxing framework based on SECCOMP. It is designed to run applications in a kind of jail (enforced by the kernel). It does not use ptrace() at all.

In the Windows area, Polaris (Principal Of Least Authority for Real Internet Security) is a package for Windows XP that demonstrates that we can do better at dealing with viruses than has been done so far. Polaris allows users to configure most applications so that they launch with only the rights they need to do the job the user wants done. This simple step, enforcing the Principle of Least Authority (POLA), gives so much protection from viruses that there is no need to pop up security dialog boxes or ask users to accept digital certificates. Further, there is little danger in launching email attachments, using macros in documents, or allowing scripting while browsing the web. Polaris demonstrates that we can build systems that are more secure, more functional, and easier to use.

These systems are still in the early stages, but show the starting points for bringing Capability Based Security to the masses.

I'm not a good enough programmer to do these projects justice, but I think bringing them even a tiny bit of attention might help.

From this article, and others like it, it seems as if white spaces spectrum will improve communication across the U.S., making weak signals and dropped calls a thing of the past. http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/How-Enterprise-Mobile-Communications-Can-Benefit-from-White/ba-p/131 Here's hoping for widespread adoption.

Well, just with the difference that Apple apparently wants their batteries (resp. its microcontroller) to be updateable.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-75738.html http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=0&prodSeriesId=316682&prodNameId=316684&swEnvOID=1093&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=PSG_I20759-104642

Firmware in a battery
Smart batteries are used by Apple, Lenovo, HP/Compaq, and other companies.

There are lots of them - and have been for good long time. I have one of these, that I got when a local hospital was selling off the old generation of computers and upgrading to these. These things are freaking amazing - usable in full sunlgiht, nearly indestructible, great battery life (plus hot-swappable batteries), but they do cost $2000+, which is why you never see them, except in hospitals or government contracted job-sites, or on sci-fi tv shows.

Fujitsu, Acer, HP, Dell, or Lenovo all have Windows tablet offerings. They just tend to be full-fledged computers, rather than toys, and so carry a higher price. Windows 7 with gestures / flicks works quite well as a tablet OS, but it is helpful to have the active digitizer with stylus, regardless of whether you also have a iPad style touchscreen.

naw, you are thinking of support for the old 6.2 and 7.3-2 on Alpha only, which HP say supported at least through end of 2012 (may go longer)

The current version 8.4 for both alpha and integrity just came out middle of last year, and though no end dates even announced yet, typical is 5 years support plus 5 more extended engineering support available.

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/pdf/openvms_roadmaps.pdf

(among other things, my employer requires me to be an Hp certified Integrity Application Integration Specialist (AIS), so we can sell the damn things)

Both of my netbooks seem to be alive and kicking. Oh, I get it, "dead" as in, I cannot buy any netbooks!

Yeah, it's "dead".

Just don't put HP in charge of coming up with a standard! They have a horrible track record at this! I've had two HP notebooks, a ZD7000 and a DV9000, and both of them developed power connector issues within two years. This is well documented. One would think that there ought to be a cable or charger of some sort that would allow you to charge via USB, since that works for most mobile phones and small devices, but maybe the USB spec can't handle the amount of power necessary to power the whole computer.

You might want to go look at the actual numbers. And by the way, most ipods are computing devices - they run the same OS as the iPhone/iPad.

Apple - PCs,iPods, iPads, iPhones - $20Billion
HP - Servers&Network, PCs - $15Billion

http://images.apple.com/pr/pdf/q211data_sum.pdf
http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1564466&highlight=

I started seeing arbitrariness with the first Apple II Mac keyboards a decade ago. Then again with their iMac's USB keyboard, and once more with the tiny keyboards that are sold separately for Mac minis of netbook netbook proportions. Speaking of netbooks, they have begun to mess with the Windows world in the way you mention, removing programmer keys like squiggly, backtick, pipe and backslash. Some netbooks I saw recently do away with PgUp and PgDn. My Toshiba laptop made it hard to play games that treat logical button groupings as related actions; I have a ROW with Home / End / Ins / Del next to F12, and then I have a COLUMN sticking PgUp / PgDn right under ENTER. That decision has made it into HP keyboard bundled with my new PC.

The trend is saying this "you get subpar materials from us OEM in more ways than just quality. please go out and fork another $30 if you want a real keyboard layout." We also got an uncomfortable neutral-handed mouse that I didn't bother to unpack. All that is what you get for sub $1000 PC cost-cutting. The problem is that us geeks will be encountering that more and more as more users get in the habit of buying supercheap PC's that have components we never stoop down to get voluntarily. Rough ride ahead.

In UNIX-land, no it isn't.

Sorry, but shipping code beats standards based theory, and pretty much every *nix vendor ships dc with the OS.

Oracle (nee Sun) Solaris, IBM AIX, HP HP/UX, SGI IRIX, Apple MacOS X, SCO Openserver, SuSE Enterprise Linux (dc listed on bc page), FreeBSD, OpenBSD ...

You also appear to missed a few things about the Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7 / IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 standard - it is in essence a floor, not a ceiling - vendors can ship more tools if they care to. Also, the discussion on bc notes that some implementations of bc are built on top of dc, and that is OK, as long as the behavior of bc is correct.

It is worth noting that dc was one of the earliest programs to run in Unix, making it in while Unix was still written in assembly language. If for some reason it was to be not only omitted, but actually excluded by the standard, it would still be found in the vast majority of shipping systems for years to come until said vendor decided to migrate their Unix system to the current standard, a process that often takes years.

So yes, for the vast majority of people using Unix, an RPN calculator is often only as far away as a shell prompt.

A 24-port 10/100 with 2 port 10Gb will be a killer product when it emerges, is standardised, and cheap enough. Hell, I could use it NOW.

The future is here! 10GBASE-T was standardized over 5 years ago, and fiber variants before that. Every major manufacturer's midrange fixed-config edge switch lineup has a 24/48 port 10/100/1000 switch with dual 10Gb uplinks.

Just a few examples:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6406/index.html
http://www.extremenetworks.com/products/summit-x350.aspx
http://www.brocade.com/products/all/switches/product-details/fastiron-gs-series/index.page
http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product.asp?sku=3981100&mfg_part=J9146A&pagemode=ca

Printers? Haven't seen any but one or two low-end consumer models. All professional installs I've seen use good old Ethernet.

Printers typically sit in the exact same spot they have always sat and already have a wired port. It is becoming extremely common that I see these types of wireless laser printers deployed in the small/medium business environment and I've even seen them starting to come into the enterprise environment at an increased rate. I've even seen one of these connected to a UPS that gave it 4 hours battery life that they just carted around a law office to wherever they needed to print. Printers are wireless now, whether laser or not, and that is not an uncommon thing anymore and will be even more common in the future.

Video surveillance? Sane deal. Heck, most of these just use composite over coax.

Whoa...you are so off base here and you don't even know it. I started my career (8 years ago so this isn't new) in CCTV over IP deployments working on Dept. of Homeland Security projects for 6 different major ports (two of the most major ports in the world). EVERY ONE OF THEM had 90% of the camera resources either across miles-long wireless bridge links or performing a point-to-multipoint style IP video bridging. We're talking up to 500 cameras at each port. We're also talking about unlicensed wireless spectrum (wireless A) so this is not some special wireless that no one has access to. When you want to deploy cameras across a space covering 30 or so miles, wireless is a bit necessary if you don't want to spend millions on fiber runs to net you no real benefit.

HVAC? Low bandwidth at best, and I haven't seen an in-use system that actually uses WiFi.

Low bandwidth you're right about...while I don't typically see wireless for HVAC because ethernet is almost wired upon device installation, I am fully expecting to see things like this in the future. The one that stands out that I have seen is in a studio environment where stage temperatures need regular control from a remote site. There is an iLON interface that connects to a WAP so that customers can manage their temperatures from off-site using a secured public portal.

Electric meters? Really low bandwidth, and the better systems I've seen send /very/ low speed data back up the power lines.

So, no, WiFi isn't everywhere. It's just a good add-on for portable devices and stuff that doesn't care about high latency.

Every SmartMeter program in the country uses wireless to monitor meter usage. There are hundreds or thousands of wireless mesh gateways distributed throughout your entire city that you have no idea about and the device they attach to your power meter is a wireless AP. The better systems you've seen transmit nowhere near as much data and are the ones that were in use before most municipal water and power organizations began moving to wireless mesh monitoring. Wireless is also used for municipal water and power organizations to monitor the levels of reservoirs, PLCs for pump stations, etc. Just because they don't use much bandwidth on an individual device basis for these periodic checks doesn't mean that they don't use wireless or that accumulated bandwidth is not significant. If you haven't seen an in-use system, maybe you don't live in a major city?


Qualifications: I've worked as a senior level network engineer for 8 years now with over 3 of those years dedicated solely to wireless deployments. Because of my company's primary focus as a managed services provider and IT project engineering/deployment firm I have also been lucky enough to have worked with over 1200 different companies and have directly experienced the uh....unique..... nature (this is a very, very nice way of putting it) of each's underlying wired/wireless network concerns.

How non-technical, and after how thorough of a look?

I'll just leave these here...

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-297432.html
http://gigaom.com/2008/08/31/dont-like-the-iphone-check-out-these-touchscreen-phones/
http://www.gsmarena.com/newscomm-769.php
http://www.telecomasia.net/node/5199
http://www.google.com/search?q=SPH-1300&hl=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=jjfATeTDOIL30gHT_tXuBA&ved=0CC4QsAQ&biw=1680&bih=947
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=ET&p_theme=et&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EEF6B3EB0A8C768&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
http://cgi.ebay.com/SPRINT-PCS-PALM-OS-WIRELESS-PHONE-SPH-1300-DUAL-BAND-/180613037497
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2000-09-25/news/18143226_1_cell-phone-palm-os
http://www.geardiary.com/2006/11/30/the-palm-treo-700p-palm-os-smartphone-review/
http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=1690
http://www.gizmag.com/go/2306/
http://www.google.com/search?q=sony+p900
http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/10/13/lg.debuts.new.prada.phone/
http://www.esato.com/phones/compare.php?phone=433&cp=439
http://gizmodo.com/#!190670/cect-a1000-touchscreen-phone-with-1000-hours-standby
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/at-t-8525/4505-6452_7-32133413.html?tag=lia;rcol

these aren't phones, but what the hell... they could still be mistaken for an iPhone at a glance...

http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/prodserv/handheld.html
http://www.suddenlink.net/pages/curtismc/palms.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_III

Get the HP Slate. I just got mine and I absolutely love it.

The battery life isn't the best, but it is a *real* computer that can be used for *actual* work. Windows 7, Flash, Bluetooth, 2 cameras, SD card slot, 64GB SSD, nice carrying case, USB ports, HDMI out, & a tilted stand. IMO it's truly an iPad killer. Apples to apples, the HP slate does more than either the iPad or the Xoom. No need to purchase apps, it's fully capable out of the box.

Sure it's not as thin as the iPad, but who really cares about that? The slate is small and lightweight.

Unless the stuff is made by HP the equipment barely makes it past the warranty period before it develops hardware failure. (I am one of the suckers complaining on that forum.) Every single piece of technology made by HP that I have ever owned has failed miserably within 2-3 years of use.

I actually have a (relatively) recent HP laptop from my company - an EliteBook 8530p. It's a pretty solid machine, stable and performs pretty well. The build quality is good, although it's mostly plastic.

e.g. Did you know you cannot simply replace the HP buildin wireless with a pci-express card version because the wireless needs to be on a bios whitelist.

Since when, HP has offered and developed alternative OS's since they started making computers

Sure but I don't know if you want to hold up MPE as a shining example of computing...

Just kidding, HP has a great a storied history behind it and it's nice to see them trying to make something of a comeback as a company that Matters.

What the heck? My link got messed up. It should be to:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdf

Link

Oops, looks like the http:/// got left off in my original post. Sorry.

What the heck? My link got messed up. It should be to:
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdf

Link

Oops, looks like the http:/// got left off in my original post. Sorry.

Don't forget 2-letter ones like HP. Too bad that they discontinued the HP15C. :(

No, the iPad Is Not Killing Microsoft's Business

On the corporate side, probably not... yet.

On the consumer side? It's already eaten heavily into netbooks, where Microsoft had finally managed to gain some sort of majority.

In the tablet market, which Microsoft had pretty much all to itself for the past *10* years? Microsoft will be lucky to even become relevant in tablets again, what with Android coming into the picture there (nearly the rest of the tablet market belongs to Android-powered tablets). This is in spite of the fact that you can buy an HP Slate 500 right now with Windows 7 on it.

Six months is too early to proclaim the death of anybody, but if the iPod and iPhone are any indication, Microsoft is going to remain toast in the tablet realm for a very long time. It may even have one hell of a fight on its hands just to keep hold of consumer PCs and laptops as time passes and tablets make even deeper inroads.

Incidentally, the big hopes that the pro-Microsoft crowd have pinned on WP7 are beginning to fade. The Kinect is even shaping up to become a passing fad (so far, the only data on Kinect we have is during the past Christmas shopping season - a perfect time to sell toys, you know... and the Wii is *still* out-selling the thing by almost a factor of two).

Is Microsoft going to die or go broke? Probably not in this decade. However, I can very easily see Microsoft being slowly forced to cede the entire consumer market, (save for maybe the XBox) to the competition. Microsoft will likely end up being a corporate/enterprise software house, and probably spin off or sell the whole XBox side of things (after all, they have yet to realize ROI on it, and the next gen is likely due in 2-3 years). They're probably going to lose the mobile realm to Apple and Google. They've already (IMHO) lost the tablet market to Apple and Google. After that, the rest starts moving inward, as people realize that they really don't need Windows for much at home anymore.

Check out this jewel I found in the HP forum a few days ago:

Ok. So just wanted everyone to know that if you have children be very careful not to let them within at least 500 ft. of your computer! Apparently HP does not cover "those kinds of accidents" in their warranty!!!!!!! My 4 yr. old daughter scratched the screen up pretty badly.

I am furious..I have spent close to $700.00 on my computer and have only had it for about 4 months now. I was told through HP customer service that I would have to buy a new monitor which is not very costly.... my question is, if it is not very costly to me, then why doesn't the warranty cover it??? hmm... oh well I guess. But to top it all off, I purchased an extra 2 year warranty through walmart..(an extra $49.00). Surprise, surprise they will not cover it either! what a joke...

Unless they make it right, the next computer product I buy will most definitely not be an HP product. And I will also be sure to let everyone that I see know that also!!!!

Madam, I'll help you spread your message about how terrible HP is for not repairing the damage your kid did to your monitor.

HP Labs managed to recover the instruction manual that was written on the side of the machine, so the archaeologists are more or
less certain they know the purpose of each internal gear, as well as the dials and indicators.

High resolution image

Fascinating to know that someone was designing interactive user interface 2000 years ago...

I agree to an extent on the tablet front, except for one small bit:

HP currently offers Slate 500's with Windows 7 on it, and has been doing so since October. The specs are roughly that of an HP Mini netbook in a tablet form factor. Mind you, it costs $800 a pop, and has a smaller screen. OTOH, it has everything that folks assert businesses are gagging for, since it has Windows 7 on it. Given that Microsoft hasn't exactly been bragging on it, I'm thinking it probably isn't selling all too well.

Meanwhile, stories abound of companies buying up iPads like the product was made of solidified cocaine. (mind you, they were quoting Apple as one of their sources, but when they're naming names, and those names are those of some pretty big corporations...)

In the face of that, I'm not so sure that Outlook (especially now that competitors like iOS and Android can connect to it too) is the biggie anymore. iOS has Office-like apps that are apparently more than sufficient for the platform - after all, it's not like you're going to type a novel on a tablet...)

HP is already the (somewhat distant) #2 player in high-end UNIX and proprietary systems, after IBM. I don't think they have that much interest in scale-out commodity Lintel/Wintel crap.

I'm sure HP isn't interested at all in the Linux on Intel. :-/

HP is already the (somewhat distant) #2 player in high-end UNIX and proprietary systems, after IBM. I don't think they have that much interest in scale-out commodity Lintel/Wintel crap.

I'm sure HP isn't interested at all in the Linux on Intel. :-/

HP is already the (somewhat distant) #2 player in high-end UNIX and proprietary systems, after IBM. I don't think they have that much interest in scale-out commodity Lintel/Wintel crap.

I'm sure HP isn't interested at all in the Linux on Intel. :-/