Slashdot Mirror
HP/Compaq Merger Official Today
Ankou writes: "Today (May 6th, 2002) marks the first day of the Hewlett Packard and Compaq merger. The finalized buyout of Compaq is expected to be done today and are expected to be working together "as a combined entity" by tomorrow. This also means a new stock symbol will replace the old HWP to the new symbol HPQ. Behind the hype this merger will cost, according resources at CNN on this article, a total loss of 15,000 more jobs with over 150,000 following the next two years. The same article details more information regarding the new merger and the recent events which have lead to today." Update: 05/06 15:03 GMT by T : Note: that job-loss figure is off; the 15,000 jobs projected to be cut are from a total of 150,000 between the two companies.
First Fuck The Man Post - THe people of this country need to take over and rebuild, we need a government for the people, BY the people, FOR THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pepsi-MS-HP and Coke-AOL/TW-Ford tomorrow...
From now on, you will refer to them collectively as "Hewlett Paqard".
Change is good!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
There's nothing I like more than hearing capitalism triumphing and 150,000 jobs on the chopping block. Gotta love it.
Read the article. It says:
It also will result in the loss of at least 15,000 jobs out of a combined work force of 150,000 during the next two years.
Not that 165,000 jobs will be cut....
-Chris
This is quite a surprise to me. Considering the company's respective markets, and the amount of products that they produce, I would have suspected that Compaq would have bought out HP, not the way it turned out. Seems to me as if Compaq produces a lot more products in general, does more research, has more of a market presence, etc..
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
15,000 jobs out of 150,000 jobs total in the company over the next two years will be eliminated. Not great but, not 150,000 jobs lost.
Keep the synergy flowing! Anyone know any good replacements for HP laser printers?
sPh
The sun rose over the horizon as the new day awakened. Its beams of piercing light penetrated the office window that Rob sat in. He had fallen asleep at his desk again after a long night of coding a new Microsoft Flash 2005 game for his web site. Rob turned his head away from the sun. His skin was pale and his eyes never could quite adjust to the yellow glow of sunlight. He preferred the subtle gray-green shine from 44-watt florescent bulbs. Sleeping at his desk became a nasty habit. The ergochair his boss bought from Thinkgeek.com was too comfortable.
Rob finally pulled himself out of the ergochair, reaching for a bottle of Bawls. He unscrewed the cap and swallowed down the last five milliliters. "I don't know why I bought seven cases of this shit with my signing bonus," he thought to himself. He looked at his watch: it read 0000 0111 0011 0010. Damn, the boss will be here 30 minutes! Rob knew he smelled like a goat. Techies always smelled like field animals after coding Flash subroutines for 19 hours straight. Rob's boss, Jeff, wasn't digging the fact that he always smelled like the dumpster outside Chili's. Rob found some handiwipes in a bottom drawer of his desk and ran to the restroom. He stripped down and applied the handiwipe bathing technique he had learned from an O'Reily book. Four minutes later, Rob emerged from the wrong restroom smelling like a new man.
Jeff arrived right on time as always. He had a mug of Starbucks in his left hand, and a copy of the Wall Street Journal in the right hand. Ever since that old Slashdot web site was taken offline by the Scientologist lawyers, Jeff devoted more time to reading newspapers and current event magazines. He finally figured out how to juggle stock options and improve his golf swing. Jeff strolled in and passed Rob's office door. He said hello to his childhood buddy. Rob muttered, "Yo, what's up! Look at this gold chest I found in Everquest Reality." Jeff walked in, stepping over a box of Bawls, looking at the 50cm flatscreen monitor. "Yeah, that's pretty cool, Rob." Jeff said. Rob knew he wasn't supposed to play games during work hours, but Jeff never forced him to stop. Jeff walked out of the office saying, "Remember we have that contract negotiation with Mr. Gates this afternoon. Be sure to have your suit and tie on before we leave for his office." Rob waved his hand and returned to his skirmish in Everquest. Jeff walked to his office hoping that he won't embarrass the company again this afternoon.
To be continued...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I work with a bunch of geeks. And that's okay. They do their thing and I do mine. Most of the time I'm happy for them, that they get joy and happiness out of playing with electronics. Admittedly I disagree with a lot of their thoughts about life. People used to believe that the Earth was the center of the universe, then it was the sun, but now we all know that the computer is the focal point of the universe, projecting its cathode ray goodness on our souls. You can't eat, sleep, breathe, live or run a business without one, or so we're told.
But if there's one thing I have no tolerance for, it's the geek phenomenon known as slashdot.org, the sorriest case for content on the web I've ever seen pawned off and gleefully accepted by the masses.
When I look at magazines, newspapers, or any other source of information, I judge them on three items: usefulness/uniqueness of content, quality of that content, and the depth of coverage regarding that content.
Slashdot has none of these things. And yet people try to convince me that the people who run that website are working hard at it.
Say what?
That's right - when Andover.net filed its IPO, making the editors of Slashdot instant wannabe millionaires, someone in the office said "Those guys put in a lot of hard work, and they deserve the success."
Now, I write code for a living, and I work hard at it, so I have a good idea of how slashdot operates. I guarantee you that the entire website is little more than leftover code from college projects and other unrelated work. At the very best, it is ill-conceived and poorly developed, which explains in part why the interface is so miserably awful, and the site is unbelievably slow.
Let's theorize what goes on in the average day of the slashdot editors:
10:42 AM - get out of bed.
10:45 AM - first Dr Pepper of the day.
10:46 AM - unglue keyboard from desk, check stock market.
10:56 AM - find a few interesting tech stories on the web. This is easy, since users send them to us all the time.
11:04 AM - post said stories to slashdot, disregarding spelling and journalistic impartiality.
11:08 AM - start playing Quake 3 (or whatever the game of the moment is).
3:15 AM - go to sleep.
If I'm wrong about anything, it's that they get up even later than that. And I couldn't figure out what time that order the pizza for dinner. But they have pepperoni on them.
Content - The content of slashdot is, admittedly, targeted towards geeks. But apparently not very smart ones. Regardless of the target audience, the content is never challenging - it never pushes the reader to think. Have we become a society where the last place you really exercise your brain is in grammar school? The average news article on slashdot is little more than a snippet from some tech rag about a new product that everyone loves, usually with an editorial comment tossed in telling everyone how they should feel about it.
I can get that same crap anywhere else. The TV tells me what to think, newspapers and magazines back them up, and slashdot does the same exact thing and is somehow worshipped as a haven for free thinking.
Quality - Why not try out that spellchecker? One word for you slashdot folks: dictionary. Try one on for size. Work on your spelling and grammar, and once those improve I'll attack the quality of your writing.
Consider this - Jon Katz is the best writer on slashdot. If you're familiar with his work, then you might appreciate that, or you might realize how lousy the writing must be if that's the case.
Katz has written some decent articles for slashdot (In particular, his Hellmouth series). But he's too wrapped up in the medium to see what he writes about. He's too busy dropping buzzwords that define his writing more than his actual content.
But the truly amazing thing about him is - almost everyone who reads slashdot hates Katz. They loathe him. The self-proclaimed geeks who read slashdot don't want to be challenged by his writing. There are people who attack every article he writes, regardless of the content.
Depth - unless its the updated release schedule for the new linux kernel or a new game, you're not going to get much repeat coverage on slashdot. And you're not likely to extract much from an article unless you already knew a certain amount of information about the topic. Once again, the exception might be Katz, who writes multi-part articles, but mostly that's because he's a hopeless wheezebag.
The thing that really scares me is that all sorts of little slashdots are popping up all over the web, popular sources of sludge pawned off on the accepting readers, and we readily accept is all as verse. Is this what 200 years of the Industrial Revolution primed us for? 50 years of television? Or was it something else? In my short lifetime I've watched the quality of information sources decline to a point where coverage is simplistic enough that it could be fictionalized and no one would notice the difference. While people ignore the WTO or slaughters in Burundi, Angola, Cambodia, anywhere else to devote coverage to wonder drugs, the newest Internet craze, the Hollywood minute, or any other sort of "News you can use."
And now, in a time when information should be even more readily available, so much of it is crap that finding the gems is rarely worth the shit you need to shovel. The sort of crap you find at slashdot instead of insightful knowledge about this increasingly impersonal, computerized world that we all blithely accept and even embrace.
And that is why slashdot sucks. That website isn't encouraging any free thought, any independent thinking, and certainly not any dissenting viewpoints on the information age. And we all accept it, even 'credible' websites like Wired frequently link to slashdot as their source of expert information and news updates.
If you're not directly connected to the information you want, you're not likely to find anything of depth nowadays. And if you have that sort of connection, then why do you need the web in the first place?
As if cars, skyscrapers, television, mini malls, supermarkets, drugs, war, and McRainForest (brought to you by the Big Mac!) weren't enough, now we have to venture out on the web with millions of other people, and not once challenge out horizons or open our minds.
Willow John
Compaq has a stellar track record, from their sleek designs to their top-of-the-line reliability and support. Their support of the old standby DEC technology has truly been a boon to IT and engineering houses. As I type this, I am using a svelte Compaq tower with a P4 chugging away. This baby is sweet, and runs Linux with nary a hitch.
As for HP, they have demonstrated time and again that they can reign supreme in the realms of laser printing and server mainframes. Their own Unix OS was a champion in its heydey, and with their recent efforts in the Linux world, we have nothing but good things to look forward to from them.
In short, in a few years we will be looking back at this as the beginning of a new era for enterprise technology. Let's hope they keep raising the bar.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
a total loss of 15,000 more jobs with over 150,000 following the next two years.
The combined payroll of both companies is 150,000.
Someone you trust is one of us.
a total loss of 15,000 more jobs with over 150,000 following the next two years
It sounded as if a lot of people were against this in the first place - and considering the job losses indicated above, explain to me who exactly is going to benefit from this?!?!?! Why was this a good idea? Both companies' computers are just "eh" to begin with..
I'm a 2000 man.
these layoffs are all the fault of big business capitalism... why if we were all communists like most of you /.ers want, we would all have jobs. Of course we would all be farmers, we wouldn't actually get paychecks, and oh yeah, we wouldn't have this internet thingy...
just makes me sick all the anti business stuff on here, lets all go work for the government because they somehow aren't as evil as a business.... then want to explain how America kicks everyones ass in just about everything?
Okay, mod me down, flame on, troll, and all that happy crappy, but after you do that go take Economics 101 at your local place of learning.
Well.. they had to do something to stay alive? Both companies were having problems that would have made them a serious takeover target for other companies. They decided that they would rather risk a merger than to be taken over by a company like Dell or IBM.
And yes, they seriously were in that position.
If they made a wise decision or not is something for the future. Although some "visionairs" say they know the future of the new company.
There's a saying which could be applied here:
A visionair (or pundit or whatever) is someone who can explain _exactly_ to you why a merger will not work before the merger and when the merger succeeds they can tell you _exactly_ why this success was the unwritten exception on the rule..
Great... Now there will be even more competition for the few jobs that ARE still available. The biggest problem is that when you find an open job now, they want a specific set of skills. This used to be okay, because they could just train you on the skills that you don't have. But now, we have so many people available that they'll just pass on you until they can find someone who already knows the systems they have in place. I wonder if the heads of these huge companies even have a clue what they're doing to all the little guys that will be losing their jobs now... ARGH!
I admit I don't know much about the merger so feel free to take my comments with a grain of salt:
Right after all the reports about the massive money pit that is AOL and how it is hurting Time Warner why do these companies rush into mergers? And why right after the Enron and Global-Crossing fiascos is no one examining the benefits to the CEOs of the companies? While the Compaq-HP deal was announced last year there was alot of criticism about the benefits to both companies, where has it all gone? Was this a self defense merger? Were the two companies afraid that with out a merger they wouldn't be able to compete with other companies?
Well I suppose I can look foward to good printers being sold with lousy computers and less hope of HP ever having decent Mac support.
As I said, not knowing much about the deal and the two companies, feel free to ignore.
Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
I don't think you'd be making $71K in Europe doing simple shell scripts and running some CAT5 around, would you.
You'd be lucky to get a tech job, and then you'd make MAYBE $28K. Then, ~ 45-55% of your gross goes to taxes. Mmmmm, $15K to rant, "Capitalism sucks!" Have at it. I'll be busy jet skiing with the hotties in Cali while your buying hard bread, freezing in the rain.
I could swear this article talks about the same thing....
Seriously, the thing I'm curious about is what's going to happen to the Unix divisions? Both HP and Compaq have their own flavors of Unix. Will we see a merging of the two (Join me...and together we will rule the root as father and son!) or will they decide to ditch both, and focus on a FreeBSD-GNU/Linux style solution?
There is some interesting possibilities between these two companies with their development houses and expertise - it all depends on whether they can actually make the good pieces fit together to make a better whole.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
So it doesn't matter how many jobs are lost or how much restructuring has to be done as long as the investor gets his 'bang for the buck'. In my own opinion, this is a bad idea. But I can see why the shareholders voted for the merger. They just did some simple calculations and figure 'we're gonna get ourselves some big bonuses, and pocket a whole lot of money if we go this route'.
- Tempestdata
Hewlett Compaqard
'Nuff Said. She's a greedy whore. I want to make my money and eliminate jobs from a sector that was already too cramped for comfort to begin with. Slut.
When a company goes into bankruptcy, a 'Q' gets appended to the end of the ticker symbol. HPQ. Hmmm.
The article says 15,000 jobs will be cut out of a workforce of 150,000 over the next 2 years, not that 150,000 jobs will be cut. Original post wasn't that clear....
I've been told that tomorrow is "Day One."
But if you prefer to start counting at zero, then I guess you might think it's official today ("Day Zero").
But then, I just work for Digital^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCompaq^H^H^H^H^H^HHP...
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
HPQ, what does that stand for, Hewlett-Paqard?
Oh My Gawd!!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Tossed Salad
Ingredients
1 head romaine lettuce
1 head red leaf lettuce
6 ounces crumbled feta cheese
1 (6 ounce) can sliced black olives
1 (4 ounce) package blanched slivered almonds, toasted
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
6 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red onion, sliced
6 fresh mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup grated Romano cheese
1 (8 ounce) bottle Italian-style salad dressing
Directions
1 Chop, wash and dry the romaine and red leaf lettuces.
2 In a large salad bowl, combine lettuces with feta cheese, olives, almonds, sesame seeds, tomatoes, onion, mushrooms and Romano cheese. When ready to serve, add the Italian dressing and toss thoroughly.
a total loss of 15,000 more jobs with over 150,000 following the next two years.
Come on dude, read the article. That's 15,000 layoffs in the next two years out of a combined workforce of 150,000. I.e., the combined size of the new company will be about 150,000 employees, of which ~15,000 (10%) will be fired in the next two years.
Bwahahaha!!
Editors really have no sense of humor today, do they.
They may have sold the investors on HP+COMPAQ=IBM but previous experience shows that X + COMPAQ X seems more true.
I would be surprised if it only cost 15 thousand jobs as they have a lot of overlap in products. Consider also that most of this overlap isn't exactly in a profitable area (PC and PC peripheals)
I think its best HP bought Compaq and not the other away around. The key to the merger will be how much control HP maintains over the process...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
But besides that, while HP's desktop boxes used to be somewhat keen, and I used to recommend them to family looking for a new PC, I've began to accuse them of having Compaqitis. Lots of useless crap silently installed into the OS out of the factory that has "gee whiz" value but only leads to lowered system performance and stability, hardware and case designs from hell, and a general feeling of "ewww yuck" surrounding their systems...
The only benefit to the geek is that we'll have one less name on our long list of "Avoid these manufacturers..."
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Note: that job-loss figure is off; the 15,000 jobs projected to be cut are from a total of 150,000 between the two companies.
;)
Timothy, are you sure you want to make that correction? Your previous statement, while more speculative, may actually be closer to the truth!
Anyone notice that hpq.com is active. (But it's just hp's home page right now.)
I really love it when newspeople mention how the economic downturn is over, yet in the same breath mention that company abc is laying off thousands of worker.
With 15,000 being layed off, it seems the matter of this merger being a "good thing" depends entirely on who you ask.
King of All Geeks Bill Gates demands the hand of Carly Fiorina as his Queen.
Other potential suitors for the fair maiden will be forced to best Gates in a tournament, which will consist of contests to see who can release the most buggy software, who can best leverage a monopoly, and who has the worst personal hygene.
Rave on, brother. I still can't figure out why anybody thinks this is a good deal, unless there's something in Compaq's server offerings that I'm missing. It strikes me that HP's got printing, and some relatively big iron, while Compaq is just nowhere, competitively. Esp. since you can't make serious money with PCs any more.
Prove me wrong, kids.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
That is, firing trails the downturn and hiring trails the upturn. First things go to hell, then people get fired, then things get better, then people get hired.
Best Slashdot Co
Gotta run. Have to go rally the proleteriat.
According to this story, the stock is up so far today. That's a shock to me considering that according to this story that the street expressed it's displeasure with the idea by pushing HP stock down 25%.
Maybe it's a post merger hangover?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Two funerals to go to, that is. The other was a longtime personal friend. Rest in Peace, H-P. I will miss you.
I like chili. I like chocolate chip cookies. That doesn't mean I would like the two of them together.
I like Compaq. I like HP (mostly). I do not remain convinced and have neither seen nor heard any evidence that leads me to believe this is a good thing for consumers and employees. Thus far, the only people I see benefiting completely are those on top getting nice compensation.
I am not trolling, I really would like someone to explain why this is a good thing. Maybe I missed it somewhere.
Not hardly. Compaq's just a screwdriver shop, albeit a huge and stupidly-run one. There's no one at Compaq with brains enough to pour piss out of a boot -- the only thing that they do is package up other people's research (while taking a massive loss.) Sadly, this is also becoming true of HP.
I give HPaq 18 months, until they sell off printing and imaging and go bankrupt in an orgy of finger-pointing and recrimination. Fiorina, the architect of this train-wreck, will, naturally, be fired upwards. Again.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Compaq is a major player in the storage industry. IIRC, HP's offerings are rebranded OEM, while Compaq actually did something with DEC's StorageWorks platform.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
I have used and worked on Compaq DeskPro's and Compaq Proliants. They pretty much suck.
WTF, are you as clueless as you seem about Compaq products, or just a member of the HP board of directors?
So the poster disagrees with your anti-capitalist views and now he's flamebait? Great way to be a bunch of knee jerk, reactionary censors! Instead of refuting anything he says, he gets modded down.
15,000 lose their jobs. Cry me a fucking river. You welfare lovers are now going to make the lower and middle class bear the burden of supporting them because that's the way the "progressive income tax" works. 15% income tax on a family of 4 making $70,000 hurts them far more than 70% on a family of 6 making $500,000.
How many of you socialist goons rose up from the working class ranks? Probably not a damn one of you. Grew up in nice comfy little middle and upper class families.
just like the merger of AT&T and NCR, the merger of Burroughs and Sperry, and the merger of Digital and Compaq.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The heading above is mistating the facts just a little. The new HP doesn't roll out until Tuesday, May 7th. Today is the last day that Compaq is an individual.
Beware the wood elf!!!
This is not true, and has not been trued for about the last two years. HP used to rebrand storage offerings, but in the last couple of years they have actually developed their very own, in house, Virtual Array series.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Ummm, Compaq buys its disk drives from Fujitsu, Maxtor and Seagate. They stopped buying from IBM a few quarters ago following a debacle on some high-profile Tandem Himalaya systems, causing the Tandem engineers to make an emergency buy from Seagate.
StorageWorks is all about enclosures, FC switches, RAID controllers and the like. StoryWorks does NOT make its own drives (tapes or disks).
It will be interesting to see how they fare against EMC and others now...
we see the obsolescence another one of those cute little topic icons on /. RIP, Compaq.
You know, maybe it would be nice for nostalgia's sake to post an article under the Digital logo once in a while. Of course, a small piece of DEC lives on in the Digital Networking Products Group. It's a real shame that Compaq cut off the DEC.com and Digital.com domains this year. DEC = 3 letters, Compaq = 6. More to type.
Maybe this signals the need for a mechanism to merge topics of old in the slashcode.
Time to go see if that VAX I booted 9 years ago is still heating, er, running...
Are you sure of that? To me, it looks like the two companies are almost identical. To list:
That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I know there are many more parallels between the two. The only differences I can recall are HP's printing and networking hardware product lines, for which Compaq doesn't have equals.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
I think it would be better to compare H-P to the Monty Python dead parrot sketch; it is an ex-company, it has ceased to be, it has gone to meet its makers.
Do they forget bankruptcies after a certian amount of time
Financial bankruptcies do end after a period of time. Moral bankruptcies, on the other hand...
Um, drives are commodity. Drive companies have razor thin margins. Enclosures, FC switches, RAID controllers and the like are where the storage industry makes money. Well, that and software.
It's when the company is about to be delisted, not bankruptcy that gets the Q appended.
No. According to this page, if a company's Nasdaq stock symbol ends in Q, then the company is in bankruptcy proceedings. C is for "may be delisted soon."
Will I retire or break 10K?
Poor misguided individual. I can only assume that you think "computers" are simply the things that sit on your desk and make pretty pictures for you to point at while you wipe the drool off your face.
Unlike Dell, and the other "screwdriver shops", Compaq does do a lot of R&D for their server line. You know, servers: the really BIG computers. Think of your computer, and then think BIG. I think you should be able to grasp that idea.
I'm sure this will get modded into oblivion because of the tone, but some response to the above garbage is warranted.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Oh, you mean "big" like a 64 processor E10k? Or "big" like an SGI Origin 3k? Or "huge", like an IBM zSeries, for that matter?
Oh, sorry, you meant "big" as in quad processor x86. Or were you referring to the Tandem Nonstop technology that Compaq bought (*not* designed)? Or the big DEC Alpha machines -- again, you do know that they didn't do anything to Alpha but fuck it royally right up, yes?
Putting the best quality parts -- as purchased from other people -- into a box with a copy of NT and a custom powersupply doesn't really qualify as building "big" computers.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
You can't be all things to all people. There's just no way to grow and retain a customer base, if you don't have a solid plan as to which customers to target.
As a current HP customer, but in almost all certainly not a future one, I can say there's no roadmap, there's no strategy, there's no plan for this new company that seems any different than for the old one. Sure, there may be lots of wonderful ideas, full of "synegry" and other intangible buzzwords, hopping around between Fiorina and her lieutenants in internal e-mail and voice mail. But that doesn't help the customer.
It just seems to me that the general rule of thumb at HP is "throw as much crap as possible against the wall, and let's hope something sticks!" Printers. UNIX. Windows. Linux, et. al. All that Compaq brings them is just more crap to throw and more hands to throw it with.
I think Dell and IBM are going to chew this new company up within a span of three years, maybe even sooner. Both of those companies have real solid business plans and clear cut strategies they openly share with their customers. HP is doomed unless it can identify its customer base, and then keep them happy.
It's unfortunate for HP and its shareholders that such basic common sense as "keep the customer happy" was not a part of this deal.
I just heard from a friend at HP that he was told today that his position no longer exists. Sounds like there's a lot of that over at HP today.
Gotta pay those executive bonuses somehow.
I agree that Compaq totally dropped the ball with the Alpha and it's pretty much a dead technology because of that.
I shouldn't have been so condescending, and apparently there is no way I am going to be able to convince you that you are wrong, but I do know, that Compaq does design many of its components and form-factors for its servers.
The simple truth is that you are wrong about Compaq purchasing all of the parts from other people and assembling them.
Heh.
"The simple truth is that you are wrong about Compaq purchasing all of the parts from other people and assembling them."
You are of course correct. I plead rhetorical exaggeration: in this instance, because the HPaq merger is idiotic for HP, which at least passes a semblance of being a research-driven technology company. Truly, you have to admit that there's nothing at Compaq like the PA-RISC people (oops, sold to Intel), or their compiler team (uh oh, off to MS and Intel), or their printer and instrumentation folks (how much longer can they last)?
Compaq's been on a downward spiral since, well, since Dell. The fact that the DL740 (or whatever the 8 Xeon box is) has some tidy h/w engineering in it is swamped by the fact that nobody needs them, at least, nobody needs them badly enough to shell out the premium over Dell's offerings.
The commodity PC market -- and yes, those servers *are* commodity PCs, even if they're bigger -- is dead. HP is buying a huge exposure to zero margin commodity PCs in addition to the dysfunctional and hateful "services" group. The only winners are IBM and Dell. Oh, and Fiorina, who'll no doubt ride off with another $18,000,000 payday as HPaq dies an ignominous death. Lucent, anyone?
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
Ya... *sigh* i work the night shift
so now when i get to work i have to reprogram myself to say "thank you for calling compaq... a part of the NEW HP"
geez ppl.. who writes this stuff?
i wonder whats going to happen to Compaq.Com now?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
They ARE laying off 15,000 now. They WILL be laying off another 150,000 in the next few years, as their blatant mismanagement drives them into Chapter 11. What business is HPQ in now, anyway?
and you don't want to forget HP's digital cameras or projectors, either...both seem likely to make some good money.
adéu,
Mateu
"And we're happy here, but we live in fear, we've seen a lot of temples crumble..." - Concrete Blonde
Actually, that article is quoting the Carly Fiorina fantasy world figures which HP management used to bamboozle shareholders into approving this deal. Numerous internal memos leaked from HP since the beginning of the merger plans have showed that reality will be closer to 24,000+ jobs cut as well as steadily increasing flows of red ink for at least the first two years. Everything HP management has said about how this deal will benefit either company is complete bullshit, and the combined company will be even fatter, slower, and less able to compete with the likes of Dell in the consumer and small business marketplace. The only winners in this deal are the investment bankers who put it together and the senior management of both companies who are rewarding themselves with bonus packages in the hundred-million dollar range in the first year just for coming up with the whole idea.
The bottom line is that the real H & P worked for forty years to build a company with one of the most successful, productive, and motivational corporate cultures in the entire industry, and it only took one retarded CEO five years to destroy it all.
The majority of former HP people I work with (and that's quite a lot since my own company was split from HP just a few years ago) plans to dump every single share of HPQ they have the next time it reaches at least a break-even point for them.
I think you wrongly equate Compaq server = Proliant. You have overlooked three entire product sets. BTW these three products generate profit, which is not the case for PC systems.
The Nonstop division is a very profitable part of Compaq. Himalaya servers compete at the very high end with IBM BIG iron. HP did not have an equivalent offering. Systems with ultra high availability and scalability is a growth market.
VMS is a profitable part of Compaq. This is entrenched in the goverment/military so is not going to go away any time soon. HP did not have an equivalent offering.
TRU64/AlphaServers are extremely competive in the technical computing markets, especially those requiring advanced clustering. HP did not have this technology.
I expect TRU64 and AphaServers to die, though much of it will live on in a future versions of HP-UX and SuperDome. NSK/Himlaya will benefit from the merger and will have even faster market growth than it does today. VMS will live on.
The gold "Compaq" letters were removed from the old DEC Systems Research Labs building in Palo Alto just a few minutes ago. Unknown at this time whether they get replaced with "HP", or "Available".
Seen in rec.humor.funny (by King Ables)
With apologies to Don McLean...
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how computing
used to be worthwhile.
And I knew from the day I was born
that I could make that code perform
and maybe I could do it with some style.
But last September made me shudder,
with every 'nouncement Carly uttered.
Bad news in my In-tray,
I couldn't take one more day.
I can't remember if I sighed when I
read about our latest stride,
something cut me deep inside,
the day the HPWay died.
So
Purge, purge, Ms. Technology Scourge,
Drove my Beetle to the Needle,
Now my job's on the verge.
Them Compaq boys were
drinking Starbuck's and Surge
singing "This'll be the day that we merge,
This'll be the day that we merge."
Did you write the Book of DOS
And do you believe an albatross
Can really save our company?
Now do you believe in buying time?
Can Compaq save our bottom line?
And can you teach me how write a resume?
For all the words in a much better formated way (thanks lameness filter!) go here
I agree, HP's printing business accounts for the greater share of the company's revenue, and looking at it that way, it is obvious that HP is much larger than Compaq. And yes, there are other product lines in HP's catalogue that Compaq doesn't have (cameras and projectors, as you mentioned, as well as scanners), mostly targetted at consumers. The point I tried to make was that their offerings could be matched item by item (and then some, in HP's case). Basically, HP has acquired a subset of HP, which more than likely will end up in the scrapper, and that oh-so-important-to-Princess-Fiorina services unit. In the end, HewCom PackPaq != HP + Compaq.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Well since they like to have 95% temps, technically you didn't get laid off. You are "released to your temp agency". "we're on a hiring freeze". Bastards. I hope the stock goes down. It's not right the way they treat people in the name of profit. In indy we used to say we were the last stop before Mexico. They love to hire temps who have never even touched a computer, let alone put one together. You would be amazed at how many broken p4s happen because they can't remember to lift the latch on the ZIF socket. Then you turn it on.....poof. MB, CPU, and sometimes RAM up in a lovely ozone-plastic smelling cloud.
Am I bitter about my lack of being hired? Yes. Am i pissed that the temp agenct tells everyone who goes in there if they do a good job they'll be hired in three months? Yes. Would I buy a compaq PC? Hell no. Still buy a server though...that's good stuff.
Can't we hire a syphilitic or someone to rape Fiorina?
In case anyone wanted to know:
838,401,376 shares voted for the merger.
793,094,105 shares voted against.
13,950,651 shares abstained.
Sounded pretty close to me.
Mergers of companies this big usually have close votes though.
Actually, compaq makes projectors also. It's part of their iPaq product line...
http://www.compaq.com/products/projectors/
I figure Carly will likely destroy HP or sell off anything of value to keep what's left afloat.
I'm very worried that RPN calcs won't exist in a few years. I probably ought to stockpile enough to last me the next 40 or so.
Actually, I'm miffed by the idea that HP (cough.. carly) dropped the calculator line. Go around Wall Street trading desks and EVERYONE has a 12C/17Bii/19Bii on their desk. Go to any business school and you'll find the same situation. The TI calculators are fine, but HP is (soon to be 'was' I guess) the standard.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
To a cool company, and the bitch-whore that destroied it. She will leave with millions of bling bling to piss away while the company is crushed under all that debt. To buy a company that is fucking going out of business anyway! But hey lawyers and CEOs gotta eat, so lets do a big big deal that won't explode for a couple of years, so we wont get blamed, and we can sell all of our stock options before doomsday. Fuck everybody else! Can you say Enron?