HP Buys Compaq

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."

Comments

Re:Hate to say, sounds like a dot-bomb strategy...

[mcelrath]

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.

Someone explain to me just how these gargantuan companies are going to turn a profit on IA-64? Like all Intel processors, the Taiwanese clone makers will have a motherboard out a week before the chip comes out at 1/10 the price that HomPaq will be willing to sell it at. Both companies shot themselves in the foot by dumping their processor lines. Their processors differentiated them, and gave them a selling point that no Taiwanese clone maker could claim.

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.

--Bob (linux/alpha user)