Posted by
timothy
on from the 25-billion-dollars dept.
MaxVlast was the first to report: "The New York Times is reporting that HP is buying Compaq to form the second-largest computer company (after IBM). Wow."
A Hardware monopoly?
by
os2fan
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Maybe we might end up with a hardware monopoly to rival Microsoft - aka IBM's PS/2 architecture.
What happens if HP and Microsoft fight... HP are already on record as saying they would go elsewhere if they could...
-- OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Interesting...
by
CMcTortoise
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I was discussing this with my parents a few days ago:
Gateway is apparently in the hole because they don't offer much "unique" and with computer sales allegedly having a bad forecast, this doesn't leave much room for competition: Dell, IBM, and now "HP/Compaq" are here to stay.
Can we expect to see more mergers, or what's the deal? With computer "builders," we don't really suffer from the lack of standards, interoperability, etc. that we see in harware/software...so are these mergers really helping consumers or just gaging the diersity of merchants?
Re:Interesting...
by
kryonD
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The only problem with custom hardware is a limmited supply channel. I am a supply officer in the Marine Corps and we are currently suffering under our contract with Compaq. Their terms prevent us from performing any upgrades and the only parts we can use are Compaq's custom stuff. The end result are computers that are down for weeks as we wait for Compaq parts to arrive and then have to schedule one of their reps to come install them.
Needless to say, unless Compaq drastically changes their business practices, they will never see another contract from the US Military. We can't exactly stop training in the middle of Thailand to mail order overpriced NIC's and RAM when any other vendor would allow us to use parts we could purchase in country with pocket change.
Dell, on the other hand, has been wonderful and will continue to be my first choice on flexibility and customer service.
-- I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Implications for alpha?
by
alewando
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· Score: 4, Interesting
While Compaq hasn't done much with Alpha since it bought out Digital, there was always that hope that something new would eventually come out. Alpha was a lovely chipset for all of its thermal and pricing issues (which could've been solved by a company with more drive and fewer pitfalls than Digital/Compaq had.)
But now that HP is buying Compaq, any life that could've possibly been breathed back into Alpha is completely dissipated. HP is firmly in bed with Intel on the Itanium line (fronting cash, codevelopment, independent liscensing, etc.) Whereas Compaq hadn't had much incentive to improve Alpha, HP has exactly zero interest, since that would mean directly competing with and undermining the success of Itanium.
The polite course of action would be to release Alpha completely into the public domain, but that's a farcically utopian request. I'm just always saddened when competition is reduced and choices are constrained. Let's just hope Apple and the PPC line don't go bust in the near future, leaving us with absolutely no alternative to Intel's offerings (which are beginning to look more and more like crap as the years pass) and AMD's parallel offerings in the same architecture.
Wither the iPaq?
by
sucko
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· Score: 0, Interesting
What will happen to the iPaq pdas? I've seen the HP PocketPCs and they can't hold a candle to the iPaqs. Hopefully if one line has to go, it will be the HPs.
64-bit architecture
by
chill
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· Score: 5, Interesting
This means HP will inherit the Alpha processor. They already have the PA/RISC and are "co-developing" some of the IA-64 line with Intel. They also inherit cool products like the Itsy and the iPaq.
Linux is the only OS that will run on their entire architecture: Alpha, PA/RISC, IA-64 and x86. They sell machines with all of the above processors.
The makes a "Big 3" of Unix vendors: IBM, Sun, HP/Compaq.
SCO was acquired by Caldera, but they, along with all the other Linux vendors, are wannabes next to that bunch.
Unless I am missing someone, that really only leaves SGI as the remaining "big" Unix vendor. I wonder if they are going to be bought; wither-and-die; or if they can make a go of it alone.
--
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Compaq ruined Digital
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Compaq destroyed Digital. HP will destroy Compaq. This is not good for anyone.
Re:The CPU of Death and Destruction
by
Doctor+Faustus
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Compaq was already dropping the Alpha in favor of Itanium. Itanium is an Intel/HP joint project (and I read about that in Byte when I was still in high school, probably when the Pentium came out about eight years ago -- something like "Intel is working on the 786 with Hewlett-Packard, and it will be a revolutionary change, so much so that they are also working on a backup design (P-IV, anyone?) in case it doesn't work").
I'd say this removes any doubt about the fate of Alpha, but HP might be hoping to incorporate some of the Alpha technology. This might also raise some anti-trust concerns, since I'd been reading (Here? Ace's Hardware?) that AMD was looking at making a dual x86/Alpha instruction-set chip to compete with Itanium. They've already licensed a couple of things. Oh, well, I suppose they could go with SPARC or PowerPC. If they went with PowerPC, that could allow for a pretty nifty PC-compatible Mac, if Motorola went along...
Bruce Perens And Debian @ HP & Compaq
by
debrain
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Well, I know Bruce is a regular here, and will probably have some feedback somewhere:), but I'm wondering if this will provide more corporate level exposure to Linux with the modus operandi of "challenge the executive", IIRC, in the Compaq ranks as well as the HP. The actual merging of two companies of this size is rare and hard to predict, but in the fray sometimes new ideas come up that are entertained that might not otherwise be. I am curious as to how this will affect Bruce Peren's (et al) influence on HP and Compaq, but I don't want to speculate on it.
Re:Bruce Perens And Debian @ HP & Compaq
by
Bruce+Perens
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Bruce's Opinion Follows, not the HP Official Line: Obviously both companies have a Linux thrust. I doubt the merger would turn that off, instead I expect that together the two companies are a Linux powerhouse. Although Compaq is somewhat late to accept Linux, they claim to move more Linux systems than any other company. HP has some very good Linux efforts in place, has its pioneering role with the ia-64 architecture, and of course has yours truly.
Of course we now have to figure out how to fit the two companies together, and that will take a while. I live in exciting times:-)
Re:Bruce Perens And Debian @ HP & Compaq
by
Bruce+Perens
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Dear AC,
Note that HP's mainframe OS, MPE, is still a very healthy business. Entrenched products have a life of their own that has little to do with their competition.
The numbers don't work
by
shagoth
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· Score: 2, Interesting
HP has a market cap of about $1.5B, CPQ has $24B. HP will have to issue 25x their current float to make the acquistition which leads one to wonder why CPQ isn't the acquirer. It strongly suggests that CPQ is a mess.
The net result should be a collapse of both stocks in the premarket. But then i've never been able to predict these things.
Re:Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...
by
Ldir
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Anyhow, it seems like HP is picking up a LOT of baggage that they're going to end up throwing away. Sounds like an awfully risky business venture.
I suspect the baggage they'll throw away is HP's. Compaq is strongest where HP is weakest.
HP's greatest strength in computer technology is its printers. It's OK in midrange systems, but Sun and IBM are both stronger. HP's midrange systems are all proprietary today; this means their long-term viability is a crapshoot. Maybe they'll endure, maybe not, time will tell. HP's Intel servers are decent, but their strongest market is with companies that have HP midrange systems. Does HP even do desktops any more (and if so, why)?
Compaq, on the other hand, doesn't do printers. Their "midrange" platform is dead - Alpha fans don't want to accept it, but Compaq has no long-term plans for it. As pointed out elsewhere, both Compaq and HP are looking to Itanium for future midrange gear.
Compaq has the Intel server market nailed. Someone with market numbers chime in please, but I believe they're way ahead of everyone else. Compaq is credible on the desktop. Their major competitors are Dell and IBM. especially on business desks. Finally, Compaq has PDA offerings that HP lacks, and has a successful storage business that HP would benefit from.
All in all, this looks like a good move for HP... if they don't destroy Compaq in the process of assimilating it.
--
This space for rent.
Re:Very few mergers succeed. Combine two weaklings
by
VAXman
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I agree. It seems like HP is going to become the Computer Associates on the hardware side, and just buy up all of these failing companies with proprietary projects, and milk them to the death. Merging two companies of this tremendous size seems a recipe for disaster.
Re:Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...
by
denshi
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· Score: 5, Interesting
With this one, I'd have to say that Fiorina is a tool.
I'm glad someone brought up previous acquisitions. There's a bit of history worth examining here.
Compaq ate Digital, sold the StrongARM to Intel who buried it b/c it was an order of magnitude faster than Intel's low-power chips. Compaq/Digital then shed all their good engineers b/c their corporate culture sucked. Most of the Alpha guys went to AMD, which explains a great deal about the Athlon. (Incidentally, many of the StrongARM guys went to Cadence. Anyone know anything else?) They partnered the with Samsung, but for whatever reasons, Samsung has not been able or willing to sell Alphas here in the States. In op/sys, Compaq/Digital has tried several times to cancel the Digital Unix line; but hey, they renamed it to True64! Compaq/Digital told all their Unix customers that they were switching them over to NT; you can imagine how receptive their customers were about that. Thus, True64, marginal continued development, but most customers just left and went to Sun/IBM/Linux.
Final analysis? Fucking waste of money. The only people who benefited from this were the executives and the competition.
Round about the same time, Compaq bought Tandem. I used to run a Tandem in 96 -- nice boxes. The first thing Compaq did was gut the sales force. Compaq, a PC vendor, assumed that one needs one salesman to sell one machine (or some such). Turns out, you need a small army to sell a mainframe; lots and lots of handholding and a salespeep for each engineer. Tandem would often have several dozen salespeople working on a single client, for a multi-million dollar order. The inevitable response to gutting the salesforce? Yes, they lost all those orders.
Final analysis? Fucking waste of money. The only people who benefited from this were the executives and the competition.
Modern corporations are not innately designed to make money. They are innately designed to get bigger, driven by senior executives with Napoleon complexes. It does not help that standard management training teaches managers to seek larger fiefdoms rather than efficiency or productivity. This is not the usual Green-party ranting -- a survey of CEO salaries indicates an explosive growth over the last decade; even biz-school professors and analysts are worried.
Before I finish this, I should turn my cynicism on HP. In, I think, 1996 HP announced a new direction: dump their processors (PA-RISC) and their Unix (HP-UX), in exchange for Intel & NT. Of course, the customers fled to the other Unix vendors; they sold some nice NT boxes before realizing that no one can sustainably sell WinTel boxes on the margins that a big corp demands, since the clone makers can always build the same thing for less. HP fired the CEO who masterminded that FUBAR decision, and got back behind PA-RISC & HP-UX. Lasting fallout: fewer customers, multi-year development agreements with Intel (witness the Itanium & McKinley.). Is this the sort of company that can integrate a company like Compaq?
Technical acquisitions are perhaps the most complex of any company integration project. When I see an announcement like this, by two companies who have spent the last few years hurting while everyone else enjoyed the boom times, whose product lines overlap and present no clear engineering wins; I think 'golden parachute'. This is a way to manipulate the stock price. I see no clear way or reason for HP/Compaq to become anything more than an also-ran.
What new OS?
by
Broken+Bottle
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· Score: 2, Interesting
From the third paragraph of the NY times article:
"the acquisition amounts to a renewed bet on the computer business and particularly a new operating system for computer servers that was developed by Intel and Hewlett-Packard."
Are they really talking about the Itanium CPU or did I miss a big announcment?
Chris
Re:Operating system?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Linux. HP is planning on migrating to Linux over
the next two years according to the HP reps at
LWCE.
A Bold Move? Or A Death Cry for both companies?
by
OS24Ever
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm stunned. I'll admit, I was betting HP or Gateway would fold out of the business some time this year due to plunging market share. Out of the Business = stop making Intel based computers.
I did not expect HP to go out and buy Compaq.
But is this a good thing? HP has never been a player in the corporate desktop world to the extent of the other vendors. So I see the desktop line dropping away. Being in the Intel server business I can safely say that at least in the KS/MO areas HP is not a competitor either. So there goes the Intel Server line from HP.
But, HP is a R&D company. HP has big pockets from other divisions. HP has a service arm that can execute better than Compaq's (even after aquring Digital, I'd say Compaq Destroyed Digital in their blundering of that purchase) and hasn't had a decent service arm (at least in KS/MO/OK/AR region) ever (for Intel Servers).
Should be interesting. A merger of this size should take a good 12 - 18 months, so the fallout will be a while. Wonder what the heck they're going to do. Dell is still destroying the market into a commodity driven vs. quality driven, especially in the server market.
Please ad grains of salt to the last one, I don't like Dell. I'm sure many people do, I don't.
--
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
HP - Tandem + Compaq - HP
by
seaan
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Here is a bit of history: Tandem Computers was founded by HP employees, after HP refused to build their design. At one point Compaq was in a lot of trouble, and asked Tandem to purchase them. Tandem thought the PC market was not too difficult, and besides they were building their own PC at the time (the Dynamite, an 80% compatible that bombed:-)
I seem to recall that Tandem did bail Compaq out with a loan though. Flash forward several years to an ousting of the founding CEO, and Tandem being prepped for sale by the new one. Bought by Compaq, who totally destroyed the sales organization (and strangely enough most of Tandem's sale too). Soon after that, they bought DEC, and destroyed it's sales organization in almost the exact same way (takes talent!).
As a Tandem employee at the time of the merger, I found Compaq to not really be a "new wave" company. They talked the talk of employee empowerment, but were more like GE or a telco (aside: Scott Adams of Dilbert fame worked for Pacific Bell), than a typical Silicon Valley company following the true "HP" way. The Compaq CEO and bureaucracy were not used to having a middle class (engineers and professionals); and tried to treat all it's employees as a factory worker or an executive. We were not treated as executives, except for international travel!
The new insider Compaq CEO, after the destroying CEO was ousted, provided some peace in the lands that were formerly Tandem, sounding similar to a manager that valued it's employees. Alas there was still much turmoil, and I parted company to the relative stability of a start-up. I wish my former comrades well. I envision their times might be easier, for I judge HP way is more powerful than the Compaq way; if there is any way left!
Re:Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...
by
VAXman
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Compaq ate Digital, sold the StrongARM to Intel who buried it b/c it was an order of magnitude faster than Intel's low-power chips.
Huh? The guys upstairs in WCCG doing StrongARM and XScale (StrongARM, renamed) would be very interested in knowing that Intel buried their product. The fact is, StrongARM is generally acknowledged as one of Intel's key acquisitions in the last few years, and has a highly bright future ahead of it (at some point, it is likely to replace DragonBall in the Palm). It's a heck of a lot more successful than when DEC owned it, that's for sure.
FYI, the entire original StrongARM team walked out as soon as they were acquired by Intel. That's their fault, not Intel's. The Alpha team seems to have been a lot more cooperative (a whole bunch of them were just named Intel Fellows last week).
Server pie gets smaller and now with fewer players
by
Single+Serving+Jack
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Was thinking about the ramifications of this merger, and thought I'd look for some server market share statistics ( http://serverwatch.internet.com/news/2001_08_02_a. html ).
You have Compaq, Dell, IBM, HP, Sun, and the "Others" category.
Now we shall have Dell, IBM, HP, Sun, and "Others".
This stat is entitled "Preliminary Worldwide Server Unit Shipment Estimates for 2Q01", and both HP and Compaq lost market share. Looking at market share off of this chart, HP would then have 37.3% of Server Units shipped (estimate). That alone makes HP all of the sudden the #1 company with servers shipped for Q'2 2001. Impressive...
Also note that the stats I am referring to are for the worldwide market.
Of course, I'll stick with my commodity Dell servers, and (if need be) Sun/IBM Unix servers.
SUN AND IBM MERGE!
by
seek3r2k
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is probably the only logical merger if any in this industry.
Hmm, I wonder what is going to happen for development between the Jornada and the iPAQ? Maybe the could force Compaq to get the damn device to have more than one input at a time!
Salad days for Dell
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
The immediate winner in this is going to be Dell, who will really clean up in the PC/Server market while Compaq/HP try to figure out how to merge their product lines, service teams & infrastructure, their customers try to figure out what the hell they're up to, etc.
My forecast: 2-3 years of chaos for their customer, revenues drop by 20-30%, US$10-20 billion losses plus writeoffs of goodwill, etc., etc. They have a total of 150K employees right now, I reckon we will see that number hit 100K within 3 years.
I base this on the history of past mergers of troubled IT companies such as Compaq/Digital, Sperry/Burroughs, etc., as well as my own experience (as a regional department manager) of going through a merger that formed a major IT services company.
Ever since the early '90s I realised that a company has to be very good at hardware or software or services. Try to combine them and you have a recipe for failure, with the notable exception of IBM who are so big that each of those lines of business makes them one of the bigger players. All the old mini-computer makers who tried to combine the 3 businesses are gone, losing money or barely profitable. HP was the last one still standing.
Re:Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...
by
denshi
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· Score: 4, Interesting
As I heard it, the StrongARM team was based around Digital's New England foundry. Given the often idiosyncratic nature of the weather in the area, winter in particular, you would sometimes not see some engineers for several days. So it seemed that Intel's much less flexible culture might not look kindly on this kind of behavior. Speaking of culture, everyone in the chip biz seems to think of Intel as the place chip designers go to die -- overwork, mistreatment, malfeasance, etc, etc. I don't know, nor do I care that much. That's just the word on the street, and it seemed to be enough for them. OTOH, I'm glad to hear the Alpha team is doing so well.
I was building boards on StrongARM back in 1998, and when Intel bought them, it just sort of fell off the face of the earth for a while. I think it wasn't until 2000 that I started seeing StrongARM in anything higher than the 233MHz DEC had fabbed on.35 micron. I was really hopeful when Intel bought them; I thought we would see them move it to.22 or.18 as soon as possible. Imagine! 600+ MHz at <1 watt, in 1999! Didn't happen. With other assumptions and evidence in hand, I believe that Intel's short-term business was best protected by sitting on StrongARM until Intel's core chips had caught up. Of course, having the core team quit doesn't help them ramp up quickly either.
While you're here, could you tell me which ARM core they're building XScale with now? Do they have SMP enabled? (StrongARM (v4 core) had the SMP pin shorted).
Anbiguous C.S. F. declaration:
by
bockman
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· Score: 3, Interesting
From the article (emphasys is mine):
For Carleton S. Fiorina, who became chief executive of Hewlett- Packard in 1999 when she was hired away from Lucent Technologies, the acquisition amounts to a renewed bet on the computer business and
particularly a new operating system for computer servers that was developed
by Intel and Hewlett-Packard. Compaq is the other large company that has announced it plans to use that technology, which will compete with
technologies developed by Sun Microsystems and I.B.M.
It doesn't sound like Linux... or it is ???
-- Ciao
----
FB
HP/Compaq Printers
by
hound3000
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Right now in the printer field, Compaq printers are just Lexmarks with the Compaq name slapped on top. Lexmark is owned by IBM. How quickly will Compaq printers continue be discontinued? How will IBM/Lexmark respond to that?
Not that I really care, I think Lexmarks are crap compared to my HP anyways, but it is a potential point for minor fallout between IBM and HP.
Re:Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...
by
denshi
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· Score: 5, Interesting
You're thinking in the wrong realm. Intel isn't trying to compete with AMD with IA-64, they are trying to compete with Ultra SPARC-3, MIPS 10k, IBM's Power4, and HP's PA-RISC. Really big boxes that address 2.83 assloads of RAM and have several dozen processors (like up to a thousand in the case of SGI). Turns out there just no way a home user is going to buy one of these, and just no way a clone vendor is going to build one.
The real power with these systems is not the processor, it is the backplane: the buses, the memory, etc. That is where companies differentiate; that is what separates a million-dollar server from a desktop PC.
With this in mind, the processor is almost an afterthought. Why even develop the IA-64; why not use the P4? Well, you need to directly address more than 4 GB of RAM, which is the limit on 32 bits. Also you can operate on larger numbers in one operation, rather than several in a 32-bit chip. There's also a bit of black art involved in developing a chip to play well in a SMP or NUMA memory environment.
I expect AMD to be the Next Big Thing, and HPaq will declare bankruptcy within 2 years. Sledgehammer will run old 32-bit binaries fast, IA-64 will not. That alone will keep most people from buying IA-64. And with the alpha designers at AMD...all they need to do is license the alpha technology.
Pardon my saying this, but here you have walked from 'flights of fancy' into 'complete nonsense'.
Why would HP declare bankruptcy? And which kind, ie, Chapter? They have just reclaimed the title of 2nd largest computer company in the world. They have been on the Dow Jones for years. They have bukos of money. I don't think they have much going for them, but they aren't a dot.com, with no cash in the bank and set to blow away.
AMD already is the Next Big Thing. Haven't you been watching? They have been eating Intel's lunch in the desktop arena, then going home to Intel's house and raiding the fridge.
"most people" will never buy an IA-64. Read the above to see why. Switching all the desktops over to 64 bit is still 10 years out.
"license the alpha technology"? They already have!! The Athlon uses the same bus architecture as the Alphas. More to the point, they have the engineers; why do they need to license everything?
This might be a reason to custom-build your own PC
by
CraigMcPherson
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This turbulence in the computer market is making it very difficult to know what companies you can trust, what companies you can't trust, and what kind of computer you really need. Custom-building is an option that becomes more and more attractive with each passing day: by buying the components you really need and skipping the ones you don't, you can get a faster, more reliable computer for mess less than you'd pay for a pre-build PC, and you'll learn something doing it.
Although PC building has previously been the sole domain of propellerhead geeks, the controversial news and discussion site Adequacy.Org has recently posted an article demystifying the process and explaining the art of PC building in simple, easy-to-understand terms. It'll explain to you the full process of building your very own PC that you can truly call "your own" without drowning you in technical details. I found it very useful when custom-building my PC.
Re:WHAT?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0, Interesting
Moderators, if you're going to moderate something, moderate it correctly. The comment above is *NOT* flamebait, it is fairly moderated as either "off-topic", or perhaps "troll". Please learn the difference between a flamebait and a troll, okay? As for *this* post, once you have used it to inform yourselves as to proper moderation procedures, perhaps a fair moderation would be "off-topic".
Failure to rectify this gross travesty of moderation privileges will be corrected in meta-moderation, believe you me, you fucking bitches.
...being a (former) advocate for Compaq products, I must beg to differ with the statement of:
And if you exclude Compaq, with their non-standard components and horrible support for non-MS OSes.
Since Compaq bought Digital, there has been a conscious effort on Compaq's part to bring Alpha's BACK to the masses. TRU64 UNIX, VMS, and Linux are very well-supported on the Alpha line. As far as the Intel machines are concerned, how many OTHER Tier-1 hardware manufactures are providing direct support for users running Linux?
Compaq R&D's it's OWN equipment - from the server motherboards to the RAM you stick in it, Compaq designs and/or manufactures it all in-house. The price they pay for that is a slower development cycle on new products but it, in turn, allows for a much greater control over defects and quicker solutions to real-world issues.
Hell, if you fsck up your handheld iPAQ trying to put Linux on it, Compaq will support that, as well.
To include some ON-topic remarks here, I'm going on record as NOT being terribly enthusiastic about the HP-Compaq buyout. I have never had good experiences with HP's line of support (servers *or* printers *or* anything else). At least Compaq has a very clear-cut support channel. When Carly grabs Compaq's reins it'll be just one MORE company down the toilet...
-PONA-
-- +that's funny...I don't FEEL tardy.+
The final word
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
FROM MICHAEL CAPELLAS 4/09/01 - 8:47pm
To: Compaq Global Team
Compaq and Hewlett-Packard announced today that we have signed a definitive agreement to merge our two companies into an $87 billion global technology leader. The combined company will offer the industry's most complete range of IT products and services for businesses and consumers based on open, market-unifying standards and architectures.
I know this comes as a big surprise. In fact, surprise is probably an understatement. But once you understand the strategic logic, the promise and the opportunity of this combination become very clear and very compelling.
This is an historic moment for Compaq, for our customers and for the industry. We have a unique opportunity to build an IT powerhouse with an unrivaled capacity to create customer value. That's what we mean when we talk about our vision - to be the industry's leading IT solutions provider. It's what we mean when we talk about our mission - to deliver superior customer value through innovative products, integrated into solutions and delivered globally. And, it's what we mean when we talk about our commitment to customer success.
Our strategy has not changed. But our ability to deliver on that strategy - to make our aspirations a reality - will be greater than ever in the new company.
By marrying HP's "Invent" with Compaq's "Inspiration Technology" we will build a true innovation machine. We will define the technologies and solutions that transform the business and personal experiences of our customers - from fault tolerant servers at the high end, to powerful UNIX servers in the data center, to industry standard servers delivering content and Web services at the edge of the network. We will drive a new generation of innovative access devices and increasingly intelligent printing and imaging systems. And we will provide the services to plan, design, implement and manage the whole complex.
Behind the merger
The decision to merge was the result of serious discussion and rigorous strategic analysis during the past three months by the Compaq board of directors and the management team. Collectively, this was the only combination we considered because it made complete strategic and cultural sense.
During our talks, it became clear to me and to Carly Fiorina, HP's Chairman and CEO, that our two companies have the perfect blend of complementary strengths. We share a vision of how the market and customer needs are evolving. And, we have a common commitment to deliver integrated solutions, open systems and architecture, and the broadest portfolio of products and services.
The new company will have No. 1 worldwide positions in servers, access devices and printing and imaging, as well as leading positions in IT services, storage and management software. We will have leadership across the key IT markets - enterprise, small and medium business and consumers. And, thanks to the strong teams on both sides, we will have a deep and experienced management team.
But this is about more than product and service strengths. It is also about the complementary strengths of our cultures - a common commitment to:
Invention and innovation
Community service and corporate responsibility
Trust, respect, integrity and opportunity for employees
Customer success, and
Shareholder value
On every important score - customers, partners, shareholders and employees - this is a compelling combination that will create greater value and new opportunities for growth.
Innovation and engineering
I am particularly excited about our shared commitment to technology innovation and engineering excellence and what that means for our future together.
Hewlett-Packard was started by two inventive engineers in a now-famous (and still-standing) garage in Palo Alto, California in 1939. Compaq was born in a House of Pies restaurant in Houston in 1982, where a group of inspired engineers designed the company's first product on a placemat. In the ensuing years, we established ourselves as two of the most innovative companies in the industry.
Sometime in the first half of 2002 - pending the approval of government regulators and shareholders - we will become one company with the opportunity to change the competitive landscape in our industry.
Merger agreement
Under the terms of the agreement, Compaq shareholders will receive 0.6325 shares of newly issued HP shares for each share they own. The merger is valued at approximately $25 billion.
When the merger is completed, the new company will operate under the Hewlett-Packard name. Carly will be Chairman and CEO. I will be President, with responsibility for the company's four operating units: Printing and Imaging, Access Devices, Infrastructure, and Services. The board of directors will be made up of eight HP directors and five Compaq directors.
I have come to know Carly during the past 18 months as we worked together on a number of issues. I respect her leadership skills, her vision and her competitive fire. Like me, she hates to lose. I have every confidence that we will form a great partnership focused on a single objective - the success of the combined company.
I am also very confident that our management team will be well represented in the new company. Carly and I agreed that this depth of management was one of the major strategic elements of this deal.
You can find additional facts about the merger - as well as a copy of the press release and a Q&A - on Inline at http://inline.compaq.com/hr/eecomm/fbt/index.asp .
Integration
Clearly you can expect some changes as a result of this merger. The headquarters of the combined company will be in Palo Alto, California. The company will retain a significant presence in Houston, which will be the key strategic center of engineering excellence and product development for our industry standard server and other Intel-based businesses.
One of the clear advantages of the merger is the financial leverage it provides through consolidation and economies of scale. We expect to be able to realize $2.5 billion in annualized cost savings by mid-2004. This will include approximately 15,000 job reductions, or about 10% of the company's combined work force of more than 145,000. Those reductions will be phased in during the 12 to 24 months after the deal closes through targeted job reductions and attrition. Both companies will be affected.
We already have a comprehensive integration plan and an integration team led by two senior executives: Jeff Clarke, Compaq's CFO, and Webb McKinney, President of HP's Business Customer Organization. Key early decisions - including the top-level members of the new company's management team - have already been made. We believe we have the management talent and focus to balance successfully the complexities of the integration and the demands of our business operations. One of our top priorities is to make the integration as transparent as possible to our customers.
Why merge?
I know that you have a lot of questions. Some we will be able to answer right away and some we won't. But I know that one major question is this one:
We've been making a lot of progress in becoming an enterprise company, so why merge with HP? Why not give us more time to execute our strategy?
We have made significant progress in establishing Compaq as an enterprise company. We get more than 50% of our revenue from our server, storage and services business. Our fastest growing businesses have been industry standard servers, enterprise storage and services. And we're winning major enterprise business across the world.
But we have two significant gaps in our portfolio that make it difficult for us to be truly recognized as a major player in the enterprise. One is a leadership position in data center UNIX. On the plus side, we're competitive in some key segments of the UNIX market. Tru64 UNIX is a technical leader, and we've been gaining market share. But our overall position is not broad enough, particularly in the data center.
HP, on the other hand, is No. 2 in the UNIX market and an acknowledged leader in the data center. Together, we will close the gap with the current market leader, Sun, and create new opportunities to grow our UNIX business.
The second key ingredient we are missing is a leading set of open application integration tools to support interoperability. HP's OpenView software suite is an industry leader for Internet-based system and network management and interoperability. That is a vital part of our ability to integrate solutions across the enterprise.
By merging with HP we are closing those gaps - and HP closes some gaps of its own, including its competitive positions in industry standard servers and commercial PCs.
There's a third important element as well. We will achieve a critical mass in services. Together we will have a $15 billion services business - the third largest in the IT industry. We will have significant strength in customer support, outsourcing, system and network integration, and vertical markets. This will make us an even more competitive solutions company with a unique value proposition for our customers.
But the most powerful combination of all is our people. I am very confident in the talent, engineering excellence and global sales expertise in the combined company. I believe we will have the best management team in the industry, and I can assure you that it will be a team that blends the best of both companies.
I also want to emphasize that until the merger closes early next year, we will continue to compete as vigorously with HP as we do with our other competitors. We have obligations to our customers, partners and shareholders - and to each other - and we need to stay focused on meeting the business and financial goals we have set. As I said before, this includes moving forward with our strategy to extend our world-class technology with a greater focus on services and solutions.
Most important of all, we need to stay close to our customers and partners. We need to meet and exceed their expectations today. And we need to help them understand how this merger will result in even greater value for them in the future.
Conclusion
I know this is not an easy decision for many of you to accept. I have been working through this for the past nine weeks, and I couldn't be more excited about the future of these two great companies. But I understand that you will go through the same range of emotions that I have been through - emotions rooted in our personal identification with this company, its name and its history.
I encourage you to read the material that we have made available on Inline to understand the strategic rationale for this merger. We will continue to communicate on the progress of the merger and answer the many important questions that you have.
I am confident you will see that this is indeed a powerful combination - a combination that builds on our success and on the contributions that Compaq's people have made during the past 19 plus years, and even further back with our Digital and Tandem heritage. It is a combination that will make us stronger . . . that will create new opportunities for business and personal growth . . . and that will define the industry.
I was talking with Ben Rosen the other day, and we were reminiscing about Compaq's founding - how it was built on an open platform that allowed it to compete with IBM - and win - by being better and cheaper. Well, we're going to do it again. The future is in our hands.
What happens if HP and Microsoft fight ... HP are already on record as saying they would go elsewhere if they could ...
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I was discussing this with my parents a few days ago:
Gateway is apparently in the hole because they don't offer much "unique" and with computer sales allegedly having a bad forecast, this doesn't leave much room for competition: Dell, IBM, and now "HP/Compaq" are here to stay.
Can we expect to see more mergers, or what's the deal? With computer "builders," we don't really suffer from the lack of standards, interoperability, etc. that we see in harware/software...so are these mergers really helping consumers or just gaging the diersity of merchants?
While Compaq hasn't done much with Alpha since it bought out Digital, there was always that hope that something new would eventually come out. Alpha was a lovely chipset for all of its thermal and pricing issues (which could've been solved by a company with more drive and fewer pitfalls than Digital/Compaq had.)
But now that HP is buying Compaq, any life that could've possibly been breathed back into Alpha is completely dissipated. HP is firmly in bed with Intel on the Itanium line (fronting cash, codevelopment, independent liscensing, etc.) Whereas Compaq hadn't had much incentive to improve Alpha, HP has exactly zero interest, since that would mean directly competing with and undermining the success of Itanium.
The polite course of action would be to release Alpha completely into the public domain, but that's a farcically utopian request. I'm just always saddened when competition is reduced and choices are constrained. Let's just hope Apple and the PPC line don't go bust in the near future, leaving us with absolutely no alternative to Intel's offerings (which are beginning to look more and more like crap as the years pass) and AMD's parallel offerings in the same architecture.
What will happen to the iPaq pdas? I've seen the HP PocketPCs and they can't hold a candle to the iPaqs. Hopefully if one line has to go, it will be the HPs.
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
This means HP will inherit the Alpha processor. They already have the PA/RISC and are "co-developing" some of the IA-64 line with Intel. They also inherit cool products like the Itsy and the iPaq.
Linux is the only OS that will run on their entire architecture: Alpha, PA/RISC, IA-64 and x86. They sell machines with all of the above processors.
The makes a "Big 3" of Unix vendors: IBM, Sun, HP/Compaq.
SCO was acquired by Caldera, but they, along with all the other Linux vendors, are wannabes next to that bunch.
Unless I am missing someone, that really only leaves SGI as the remaining "big" Unix vendor. I wonder if they are going to be bought; wither-and-die; or if they can make a go of it alone.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Compaq destroyed Digital. HP will destroy Compaq. This is not good for anyone.
Compaq was already dropping the Alpha in favor of Itanium. Itanium is an Intel/HP joint project (and I read about that in Byte when I was still in high school, probably when the Pentium came out about eight years ago -- something like "Intel is working on the 786 with Hewlett-Packard, and it will be a revolutionary change, so much so that they are also working on a backup design (P-IV, anyone?) in case it doesn't work").
I'd say this removes any doubt about the fate of Alpha, but HP might be hoping to incorporate some of the Alpha technology. This might also raise some anti-trust concerns, since I'd been reading (Here? Ace's Hardware?) that AMD was looking at making a dual x86/Alpha instruction-set chip to compete with Itanium. They've already licensed a couple of things. Oh, well, I suppose they could go with SPARC or PowerPC. If they went with PowerPC, that could allow for a pretty nifty PC-compatible Mac, if Motorola went along...
Well, I know Bruce is a regular here, and will probably have some feedback somewhere :), but I'm wondering if this will provide more corporate level exposure to Linux with the modus operandi of "challenge the executive", IIRC, in the Compaq ranks as well as the HP. The actual merging of two companies of this size is rare and hard to predict, but in the fray sometimes new ideas come up that are entertained that might not otherwise be. I am curious as to how this will affect Bruce Peren's (et al) influence on HP and Compaq, but I don't want to speculate on it.
HP has a market cap of about $1.5B, CPQ has $24B. HP will have to issue 25x their current float to make the acquistition which leads one to wonder why CPQ isn't the acquirer. It strongly suggests that CPQ is a mess.
The net result should be a collapse of both stocks in the premarket. But then i've never been able to predict these things.
I suspect the baggage they'll throw away is HP's. Compaq is strongest where HP is weakest.
HP's greatest strength in computer technology is its printers. It's OK in midrange systems, but Sun and IBM are both stronger. HP's midrange systems are all proprietary today; this means their long-term viability is a crapshoot. Maybe they'll endure, maybe not, time will tell. HP's Intel servers are decent, but their strongest market is with companies that have HP midrange systems. Does HP even do desktops any more (and if so, why)?
Compaq, on the other hand, doesn't do printers. Their "midrange" platform is dead - Alpha fans don't want to accept it, but Compaq has no long-term plans for it. As pointed out elsewhere, both Compaq and HP are looking to Itanium for future midrange gear.
Compaq has the Intel server market nailed. Someone with market numbers chime in please, but I believe they're way ahead of everyone else. Compaq is credible on the desktop. Their major competitors are Dell and IBM. especially on business desks. Finally, Compaq has PDA offerings that HP lacks, and has a successful storage business that HP would benefit from.
All in all, this looks like a good move for HP ... if they don't destroy Compaq in the process of assimilating it.
-- This space for rent.
I agree. It seems like HP is going to become the Computer Associates on the hardware side, and just buy up all of these failing companies with proprietary projects, and milk them to the death. Merging two companies of this tremendous size seems a recipe for disaster.
I'm glad someone brought up previous acquisitions. There's a bit of history worth examining here.
Compaq ate Digital, sold the StrongARM to Intel who buried it b/c it was an order of magnitude faster than Intel's low-power chips. Compaq/Digital then shed all their good engineers b/c their corporate culture sucked. Most of the Alpha guys went to AMD, which explains a great deal about the Athlon. (Incidentally, many of the StrongARM guys went to Cadence. Anyone know anything else?) They partnered the with Samsung, but for whatever reasons, Samsung has not been able or willing to sell Alphas here in the States. In op/sys, Compaq/Digital has tried several times to cancel the Digital Unix line; but hey, they renamed it to True64! Compaq/Digital told all their Unix customers that they were switching them over to NT; you can imagine how receptive their customers were about that. Thus, True64, marginal continued development, but most customers just left and went to Sun/IBM/Linux.
Final analysis? Fucking waste of money. The only people who benefited from this were the executives and the competition.
Round about the same time, Compaq bought Tandem. I used to run a Tandem in 96 -- nice boxes. The first thing Compaq did was gut the sales force. Compaq, a PC vendor, assumed that one needs one salesman to sell one machine (or some such). Turns out, you need a small army to sell a mainframe; lots and lots of handholding and a salespeep for each engineer. Tandem would often have several dozen salespeople working on a single client, for a multi-million dollar order. The inevitable response to gutting the salesforce? Yes, they lost all those orders.
Final analysis? Fucking waste of money. The only people who benefited from this were the executives and the competition.
Modern corporations are not innately designed to make money. They are innately designed to get bigger, driven by senior executives with Napoleon complexes. It does not help that standard management training teaches managers to seek larger fiefdoms rather than efficiency or productivity. This is not the usual Green-party ranting -- a survey of CEO salaries indicates an explosive growth over the last decade; even biz-school professors and analysts are worried.
Before I finish this, I should turn my cynicism on HP. In, I think, 1996 HP announced a new direction: dump their processors (PA-RISC) and their Unix (HP-UX), in exchange for Intel & NT. Of course, the customers fled to the other Unix vendors; they sold some nice NT boxes before realizing that no one can sustainably sell WinTel boxes on the margins that a big corp demands, since the clone makers can always build the same thing for less. HP fired the CEO who masterminded that FUBAR decision, and got back behind PA-RISC & HP-UX. Lasting fallout: fewer customers, multi-year development agreements with Intel (witness the Itanium & McKinley.). Is this the sort of company that can integrate a company like Compaq?
Technical acquisitions are perhaps the most complex of any company integration project. When I see an announcement like this, by two companies who have spent the last few years hurting while everyone else enjoyed the boom times, whose product lines overlap and present no clear engineering wins; I think 'golden parachute'. This is a way to manipulate the stock price. I see no clear way or reason for HP/Compaq to become anything more than an also-ran.
From the third paragraph of the NY times article:
"the acquisition amounts to a renewed bet on the computer business and particularly a new operating system for computer servers that was developed by Intel and Hewlett-Packard."
Are they really talking about the Itanium CPU or did I miss a big announcment?
Chris
Linux. HP is planning on migrating to Linux over the next two years according to the HP reps at LWCE.
I'm stunned. I'll admit, I was betting HP or Gateway would fold out of the business some time this year due to plunging market share. Out of the Business = stop making Intel based computers.
I did not expect HP to go out and buy Compaq.
But is this a good thing? HP has never been a player in the corporate desktop world to the extent of the other vendors. So I see the desktop line dropping away. Being in the Intel server business I can safely say that at least in the KS/MO areas HP is not a competitor either. So there goes the Intel Server line from HP.
But, HP is a R&D company. HP has big pockets from other divisions. HP has a service arm that can execute better than Compaq's (even after aquring Digital, I'd say Compaq Destroyed Digital in their blundering of that purchase) and hasn't had a decent service arm (at least in KS/MO/OK/AR region) ever (for Intel Servers).
Should be interesting. A merger of this size should take a good 12 - 18 months, so the fallout will be a while. Wonder what the heck they're going to do. Dell is still destroying the market into a commodity driven vs. quality driven, especially in the server market.
Please ad grains of salt to the last one, I don't like Dell. I'm sure many people do, I don't.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I seem to recall that Tandem did bail Compaq out with a loan though. Flash forward several years to an ousting of the founding CEO, and Tandem being prepped for sale by the new one. Bought by Compaq, who totally destroyed the sales organization (and strangely enough most of Tandem's sale too). Soon after that, they bought DEC, and destroyed it's sales organization in almost the exact same way (takes talent!).
As a Tandem employee at the time of the merger, I found Compaq to not really be a "new wave" company. They talked the talk of employee empowerment, but were more like GE or a telco (aside: Scott Adams of Dilbert fame worked for Pacific Bell), than a typical Silicon Valley company following the true "HP" way. The Compaq CEO and bureaucracy were not used to having a middle class (engineers and professionals); and tried to treat all it's employees as a factory worker or an executive. We were not treated as executives, except for international travel!
The new insider Compaq CEO, after the destroying CEO was ousted, provided some peace in the lands that were formerly Tandem, sounding similar to a manager that valued it's employees. Alas there was still much turmoil, and I parted company to the relative stability of a start-up. I wish my former comrades well. I envision their times might be easier, for I judge HP way is more powerful than the Compaq way; if there is any way left!
Compaq ate Digital, sold the StrongARM to Intel who buried it b/c it was an order of magnitude faster than Intel's low-power chips.
Huh? The guys upstairs in WCCG doing StrongARM and XScale (StrongARM, renamed) would be very interested in knowing that Intel buried their product. The fact is, StrongARM is generally acknowledged as one of Intel's key acquisitions in the last few years, and has a highly bright future ahead of it (at some point, it is likely to replace DragonBall in the Palm). It's a heck of a lot more successful than when DEC owned it, that's for sure.
FYI, the entire original StrongARM team walked out as soon as they were acquired by Intel. That's their fault, not Intel's. The Alpha team seems to have been a lot more cooperative (a whole bunch of them were just named Intel Fellows last week).
Was thinking about the ramifications of this merger, and thought I'd look for some server market share statistics ( http://serverwatch.internet.com/news/2001_08_02_a. html ).
You have Compaq, Dell, IBM, HP, Sun, and the "Others" category.
Now we shall have Dell, IBM, HP, Sun, and "Others".
This stat is entitled "Preliminary Worldwide Server Unit Shipment Estimates for 2Q01", and both HP and Compaq lost market share. Looking at market share off of this chart, HP would then have 37.3% of Server Units shipped (estimate). That alone makes HP all of the sudden the #1 company with servers shipped for Q'2 2001. Impressive...
Also note that the stats I am referring to are for the worldwide market.
Of course, I'll stick with my commodity Dell servers, and (if need be) Sun/IBM Unix servers.
This is probably the only logical merger if any in this industry.
Hmm, I wonder what is going to happen for development between the Jornada and the iPAQ? Maybe the could force Compaq to get the damn device to have more than one input at a time!
My forecast: 2-3 years of chaos for their customer, revenues drop by 20-30%, US$10-20 billion losses plus writeoffs of goodwill, etc., etc. They have a total of 150K employees right now, I reckon we will see that number hit 100K within 3 years.
I base this on the history of past mergers of troubled IT companies such as Compaq/Digital, Sperry/Burroughs, etc., as well as my own experience (as a regional department manager) of going through a merger that formed a major IT services company.
Ever since the early '90s I realised that a company has to be very good at hardware or software or services. Try to combine them and you have a recipe for failure, with the notable exception of IBM who are so big that each of those lines of business makes them one of the bigger players. All the old mini-computer makers who tried to combine the 3 businesses are gone, losing money or barely profitable. HP was the last one still standing.
I was building boards on StrongARM back in 1998, and when Intel bought them, it just sort of fell off the face of the earth for a while. I think it wasn't until 2000 that I started seeing StrongARM in anything higher than the 233MHz DEC had fabbed on .35 micron. I was really hopeful when Intel bought them; I thought we would see them move it to .22 or .18 as soon as possible. Imagine! 600+ MHz at <1 watt, in 1999! Didn't happen. With other assumptions and evidence in hand, I believe that Intel's short-term business was best protected by sitting on StrongARM until Intel's core chips had caught up. Of course, having the core team quit doesn't help them ramp up quickly either.
While you're here, could you tell me which ARM core they're building XScale with now? Do they have SMP enabled? (StrongARM (v4 core) had the SMP pin shorted).
It doesn't sound like Linux ... or it is ???
Ciao
----
FB
Not that I really care, I think Lexmarks are crap compared to my HP anyways, but it is a potential point for minor fallout between IBM and HP.
The real power with these systems is not the processor, it is the backplane: the buses, the memory, etc. That is where companies differentiate; that is what separates a million-dollar server from a desktop PC.
With this in mind, the processor is almost an afterthought. Why even develop the IA-64; why not use the P4? Well, you need to directly address more than 4 GB of RAM, which is the limit on 32 bits. Also you can operate on larger numbers in one operation, rather than several in a 32-bit chip. There's also a bit of black art involved in developing a chip to play well in a SMP or NUMA memory environment.
Pardon my saying this, but here you have walked from 'flights of fancy' into 'complete nonsense'.This turbulence in the computer market is making it very difficult to know what companies you can trust, what companies you can't trust, and what kind of computer you really need. Custom-building is an option that becomes more and more attractive with each passing day: by buying the components you really need and skipping the ones you don't, you can get a faster, more reliable computer for mess less than you'd pay for a pre-build PC, and you'll learn something doing it.
Although PC building has previously been the sole domain of propellerhead geeks, the controversial news and discussion site Adequacy.Org has recently posted an article demystifying the process and explaining the art of PC building in simple, easy-to-understand terms. It'll explain to you the full process of building your very own PC that you can truly call "your own" without drowning you in technical details. I found it very useful when custom-building my PC.
Moderators, if you're going to moderate something, moderate it correctly. The comment above is *NOT* flamebait, it is fairly moderated as either "off-topic", or perhaps "troll". Please learn the difference between a flamebait and a troll, okay? As for *this* post, once you have used it to inform yourselves as to proper moderation procedures, perhaps a fair moderation would be "off-topic".
Failure to rectify this gross travesty of moderation privileges will be corrected in meta-moderation, believe you me, you fucking bitches.
...being a (former) advocate for Compaq products, I must beg to differ with the statement of:
And if you exclude Compaq, with their non-standard components and horrible support for non-MS OSes.
Since Compaq bought Digital, there has been a conscious effort on Compaq's part to bring Alpha's BACK to the masses. TRU64 UNIX, VMS, and Linux are very well-supported on the Alpha line. As far as the Intel machines are concerned, how many OTHER Tier-1 hardware manufactures are providing direct support for users running Linux?
Compaq R&D's it's OWN equipment - from the server motherboards to the RAM you stick in it, Compaq designs and/or manufactures it all in-house. The price they pay for that is a slower development cycle on new products but it, in turn, allows for a much greater control over defects and quicker solutions to real-world issues.
Hell, if you fsck up your handheld iPAQ trying to put Linux on it, Compaq will support that, as well.
To include some ON-topic remarks here, I'm going on record as NOT being terribly enthusiastic about the HP-Compaq buyout. I have never had good experiences with HP's line of support (servers *or* printers *or* anything else). At least Compaq has a very clear-cut support channel. When Carly grabs Compaq's reins it'll be just one MORE company down the toilet...
-PONA-
+that's funny...I don't FEEL tardy.+
FROM MICHAEL CAPELLAS 4/09/01 - 8:47pm
To: Compaq Global Team
Compaq and Hewlett-Packard announced today that we have signed a definitive agreement to merge our two companies into an $87 billion global technology leader. The combined company will offer the industry's most complete range of IT products and services for businesses and consumers based on open, market-unifying standards and architectures.
I know this comes as a big surprise. In fact, surprise is probably an understatement. But once you understand the strategic logic, the promise and the opportunity of this combination become very clear and very compelling.
This is an historic moment for Compaq, for our customers and for the industry. We have a unique opportunity to build an IT powerhouse with an unrivaled capacity to create customer value. That's what we mean when we talk about our vision - to be the industry's leading IT solutions provider. It's what we mean when we talk about our mission - to deliver superior customer value through innovative products, integrated into solutions and delivered globally. And, it's what we mean when we talk about our commitment to customer success.
Our strategy has not changed. But our ability to deliver on that strategy - to make our aspirations a reality - will be greater than ever in the new company.
By marrying HP's "Invent" with Compaq's "Inspiration Technology" we will build a true innovation machine. We will define the technologies and solutions that transform the business and personal experiences of our customers - from fault tolerant servers at the high end, to powerful UNIX servers in the data center, to industry standard servers delivering content and Web services at the edge of the network. We will drive a new generation of innovative access devices and increasingly intelligent printing and imaging systems. And we will provide the services to plan, design, implement and manage the whole complex.
Behind the merger
The decision to merge was the result of serious discussion and rigorous strategic analysis during the past three months by the Compaq board of directors and the management team. Collectively, this was the only combination we considered because it made complete strategic and cultural sense.
During our talks, it became clear to me and to Carly Fiorina, HP's Chairman and CEO, that our two companies have the perfect blend of complementary strengths. We share a vision of how the market and customer needs are evolving. And, we have a common commitment to deliver integrated solutions, open systems and architecture, and the broadest portfolio of products and services.
The new company will have No. 1 worldwide positions in servers, access devices and printing and imaging, as well as leading positions in IT services, storage and management software. We will have leadership across the key IT markets - enterprise, small and medium business and consumers. And, thanks to the strong teams on both sides, we will have a deep and experienced management team.
But this is about more than product and service strengths. It is also about the complementary strengths of our cultures - a common commitment to:
Invention and innovation
Community service and corporate responsibility
Trust, respect, integrity and opportunity for employees
Customer success, and
Shareholder value
On every important score - customers, partners, shareholders and employees - this is a compelling combination that will create greater value and new opportunities for growth.
Innovation and engineering
I am particularly excited about our shared commitment to technology innovation and engineering excellence and what that means for our future together.
Hewlett-Packard was started by two inventive engineers in a now-famous (and still-standing) garage in Palo Alto, California in 1939. Compaq was born in a House of Pies restaurant in Houston in 1982, where a group of inspired engineers designed the company's first product on a placemat. In the ensuing years, we established ourselves as two of the most innovative companies in the industry.
Sometime in the first half of 2002 - pending the approval of government regulators and shareholders - we will become one company with the opportunity to change the competitive landscape in our industry.
Merger agreement
Under the terms of the agreement, Compaq shareholders will receive 0.6325 shares of newly issued HP shares for each share they own. The merger is valued at approximately $25 billion.
When the merger is completed, the new company will operate under the Hewlett-Packard name. Carly will be Chairman and CEO. I will be President, with responsibility for the company's four operating units: Printing and Imaging, Access Devices, Infrastructure, and Services. The board of directors will be made up of eight HP directors and five Compaq directors.
I have come to know Carly during the past 18 months as we worked together on a number of issues. I respect her leadership skills, her vision and her competitive fire. Like me, she hates to lose. I have every confidence that we will form a great partnership focused on a single objective - the success of the combined company.
I am also very confident that our management team will be well represented in the new company. Carly and I agreed that this depth of management was one of the major strategic elements of this deal.
You can find additional facts about the merger - as well as a copy of the press release and a Q&A - on Inline at http://inline.compaq.com/hr/eecomm/fbt/index.asp .
Integration
Clearly you can expect some changes as a result of this merger. The headquarters of the combined company will be in Palo Alto, California. The company will retain a significant presence in Houston, which will be the key strategic center of engineering excellence and product development for our industry standard server and other Intel-based businesses.
One of the clear advantages of the merger is the financial leverage it provides through consolidation and economies of scale. We expect to be able to realize $2.5 billion in annualized cost savings by mid-2004. This will include approximately 15,000 job reductions, or about 10% of the company's combined work force of more than 145,000. Those reductions will be phased in during the 12 to 24 months after the deal closes through targeted job reductions and attrition. Both companies will be affected.
We already have a comprehensive integration plan and an integration team led by two senior executives: Jeff Clarke, Compaq's CFO, and Webb McKinney, President of HP's Business Customer Organization. Key early decisions - including the top-level members of the new company's management team - have already been made. We believe we have the management talent and focus to balance successfully the complexities of the integration and the demands of our business operations. One of our top priorities is to make the integration as transparent as possible to our customers.
Why merge?
I know that you have a lot of questions. Some we will be able to answer right away and some we won't. But I know that one major question is this one:
We've been making a lot of progress in becoming an enterprise company, so why merge with HP? Why not give us more time to execute our strategy?
We have made significant progress in establishing Compaq as an enterprise company. We get more than 50% of our revenue from our server, storage and services business. Our fastest growing businesses have been industry standard servers, enterprise storage and services. And we're winning major enterprise business across the world.
But we have two significant gaps in our portfolio that make it difficult for us to be truly recognized as a major player in the enterprise. One is a leadership position in data center UNIX. On the plus side, we're competitive in some key segments of the UNIX market. Tru64 UNIX is a technical leader, and we've been gaining market share. But our overall position is not broad enough, particularly in the data center.
HP, on the other hand, is No. 2 in the UNIX market and an acknowledged leader in the data center. Together, we will close the gap with the current market leader, Sun, and create new opportunities to grow our UNIX business.
The second key ingredient we are missing is a leading set of open application integration tools to support interoperability. HP's OpenView software suite is an industry leader for Internet-based system and network management and interoperability. That is a vital part of our ability to integrate solutions across the enterprise.
By merging with HP we are closing those gaps - and HP closes some gaps of its own, including its competitive positions in industry standard servers and commercial PCs.
There's a third important element as well. We will achieve a critical mass in services. Together we will have a $15 billion services business - the third largest in the IT industry. We will have significant strength in customer support, outsourcing, system and network integration, and vertical markets. This will make us an even more competitive solutions company with a unique value proposition for our customers.
But the most powerful combination of all is our people. I am very confident in the talent, engineering excellence and global sales expertise in the combined company. I believe we will have the best management team in the industry, and I can assure you that it will be a team that blends the best of both companies.
I also want to emphasize that until the merger closes early next year, we will continue to compete as vigorously with HP as we do with our other competitors. We have obligations to our customers, partners and shareholders - and to each other - and we need to stay focused on meeting the business and financial goals we have set. As I said before, this includes moving forward with our strategy to extend our world-class technology with a greater focus on services and solutions.
Most important of all, we need to stay close to our customers and partners. We need to meet and exceed their expectations today. And we need to help them understand how this merger will result in even greater value for them in the future.
Conclusion
I know this is not an easy decision for many of you to accept. I have been working through this for the past nine weeks, and I couldn't be more excited about the future of these two great companies. But I understand that you will go through the same range of emotions that I have been through - emotions rooted in our personal identification with this company, its name and its history.
I encourage you to read the material that we have made available on Inline to understand the strategic rationale for this merger. We will continue to communicate on the progress of the merger and answer the many important questions that you have.
I am confident you will see that this is indeed a powerful combination - a combination that builds on our success and on the contributions that Compaq's people have made during the past 19 plus years, and even further back with our Digital and Tandem heritage. It is a combination that will make us stronger . . . that will create new opportunities for business and personal growth . . . and that will define the industry.
I was talking with Ben Rosen the other day, and we were reminiscing about Compaq's founding - how it was built on an open platform that allowed it to compete with IBM - and win - by being better and cheaper. Well, we're going to do it again. The future is in our hands.
Michael