Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the thinning-the-herd dept.
jacexpo069 writes: "You can find it here , however, the highlights are
HP Omnibook, HP Kayak, HP Vectra, HP Jornada and HP Netserver all being phased out. TRU64 phased out, however OpenVMS lives on. Read all the gory details in this detailed roadmap "
369 comments
cherish my balls as though they were lost children
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
first post kids.
You want me.
From,
The.test community
Good news about the iPAQ line:
by
Subliminal+Fusion
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· Score: 3, Interesting
"Smart Handhelds
Decision: The Compaq iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC, re-named the HP iPAQ Pocket PC, will be our smart handheld platform. The best of the current HP Jornada technology will be engineered into the platform. Jornada products will be phased out of the market in 2002."
Good to know that they were smart about their handheld lines and decided to stick with the iPAQ (not that there was really much doubt, but...). The iPAQs have been on the leading edge of things for a while now, if they would only integrate something more than SD (and *not* CF type I like the Jornadas had) into the unit...
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
by
Krusty_Klown
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· Score: 1
nice to see the 500 bucks i spent on the IPAQ 3835 a few months ago wasn't a total waste. Oh wait, i use it about once a week to play Quake I and ssh into my network using 802.11b for ten minutes and then put it away. Yeah maybe it was.
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Whereas we Palm users use our PDA's every day, because it does what it was designed to do, efficiently, and is not intended to be a glorified sub-subnotebook.
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
And then it breaks right after the warranty ends. Any leads on cheap, reliable palm pilots?
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
if they would only integrate something more than SD (and *not* CF type I like the Jornadas had) into the unit...
SD sucks. There's nothing wrong with CF; the IPaq just needs to be built around it instead of requiring that damned sleeve. The REAL problem with the IPaq is the buttons. The hardware can only detect one button press at a time, which makes the IPaq far from ideal for gaming.
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
by
jasontheking
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· Score: 1
yeah. Handspring devices on ebay. My palm (and it's replacement) died in a year. not impressed:-P
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Newer iPAQ models, like the 38xx, detects more than one button press at a time.
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
by
bleckywelcky
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Nice to see the 700 bucks I spent on a Jornada 760 a couple months ago is going to waste. Too bad I can't return it.
I realize that there's nothing wrong with CF, but CF type I?! Come on now... CF type II has been around for quite a while, isn't much bigger than CF type I, and is much more functional.
Re:Good news about the iPAQ line:
by
nowt
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· Score: 3, Informative
w00t. That damn thing's changed names so many times, I got confused. Yeah, that's the ticket.
It's the Artist Formerly Known As UNIX of UNIX operating systems.
- A.P.
-- "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Re:Awesome.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yes. It was originally OSF/1 (HP and IBM had participated in OSF, but dropped out before shipping their own implementations (they bailed after the looming Sun/AT&T alliance fell apart)). DEC later renamed it Digital UNIX, then marketing guys decided it should be called Tru64 UNIX right before the Compaq buyout.
Thought that DEC's first unix ran on pdp/vax/decstation's as ULTRIX. Then, with the HP/IBM alliance, it became OSF, and finally TRU64. Or do I have it screwed up?
According to this page, Ultrix was a BSD derivative. The versions of Unix that ran on PDP's and Vaxes were probably from AT&T and then later BSD.
-- the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Re:Awesome.
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It has been dieing a slow, painful death
Re:Awesome.
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
between OSF and True64 Unix, it was known as "Digital Unix".
Re:Awesome.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Ultrix was indeed a BSD-derived OS (just like the original SunOS). When AT&T lost their case against BSD and decided to liberalize the licensing of UNIX, the POSIX standard was developed based on SYSV and all the major vendors started working on derivatives of that. SGI and SCO stuck pretty close to the AT&T code base, Sun went their own way with Solaris, and IBM, HP, and Digital worked on OSF/1. IBM and HP bailed out of that pretty early, so OSF/1 was mostly just a Digital developed operating system. OSF/1 version 1.0 was released with the first shipping Alpha systems and it was buggy as hell. By version 1.2 they had a stable, high quality OS. At some point (I don't remember when), Digital changed the name to Digital UNIX to reflect the fact that OSF was a non-entity and to distance themselves from the poor reputation of the earliest OSF/1 releases. Then when Compaq purchased Digital, they changed the name to Tru64 for obvious reasons. The OS formerly known as OSF/1 never had a thing to do with Ultrix, which was the OS for the VAXStations and DECStations.
You're correct on the names, but OSF/1 was a later branch off the BSD tree than Ultrix. OSF/1 was a Mach-based hybrid between BSD and SysV that never really took off; the only shipping system based on it was Tru64, though IBM did consider moving AIX to it. There was a rumor that Apple considered doing the same thing to A/UX, and PowerOpen (what was to be the native Unix on PowerPC, long before Linux and Rhapsody) was to be OSF/1-based.
Of course, none of them made it to market. And OSF/1 is now dead and buried. Oh well.
/Brian
Re:Awesome.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
NO! Ultrix was derived from BSD, but OSF/1 had absolutely nothing to do with BSD or Ultrix. OSF/1 was a POSIX compliant (in other words, more or less SYSV compatible) OS loosely based on Mach.
Hmmm... checking the lineage
it's not as clear as that. I had been under the impression that OSF was more or less BSDish, but with a heavy mix of SysV. The chart only shows it as being a hybrid (the perils of trying to explain everything with a family tree, I suppose).
Okay, I'm looking around the Open Group's site... do they even make OSF/1 available anymore (as if it was really necessary)?/Brian
10th post! NT
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
There is text though.
Even Carly couldn't kill VMS...
by
imac.usr
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· Score: 4, Insightful
TRU64 phased out, however OpenVMS lives on.
VMS will outlive us all, if there's any justice in the IT world.
(rest in peace, DEC.)
--
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Amen. Having extensive VMS experience on your resume is definately a way to get yourself noticed. Even in a job where there is no VMS. People seem to remember it.
The strange thing about all this is the weird nostalgia that I'm noticing in myself and a lot of the DEC fanatics out there. The company had a really strange culture. My father was there from the late 70s through the merger (and is one of the few still with Compaq, though his days as an engineer are long over). I was brought up in the DEC culture, and even though I never appreciated it when I was young (the last thing in the world I ever wnated to do was a computer job like my Dad's...so boring and technical) What do I do now, boring technical work!! But I have a real soft place in my heart for DEC, and I am amazed to see so many others who do as well.
So why? What was it about DEC? It's products? Its attitude? that people still collect/proudly wear the DEC logo as opposed to other tech companies? Will we have Compaq nostalgia? My feeling is that Compaq, running more like a multi-national corporation treating employees as resources, not family, and lacking DEC's perpetual underdog mentality, probably won't have this sort of associated nostalgia. Or will it?
Thats a really insightful question. I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess to the general answer (being a mathematician, rather than a social psychologist;) ). I can, however, tell you why *I* am a DEC fanatic. Its based purely on sentiment.
The first 'real' computer I cut my teeth on was a VAX 11/780. It was such a wonderful piece of machinary. I remember a distinct excitement present in exploring the the system... marvelling at the architecture... fighting (and often winning) with VMS;)
I have similar feelings for HP3000 minis running MPE, as my first job involved some system programming on these beasties. Still, there really *was* something magical about DEC and VAXen in particular (I'm sure the PDPs are nostalgia-worthy too, but they're just a little before my time).
I guess that didn't end up answering your questions at all, but it any case... I heartily agree with your comments on DEC and its lasting legacy (if only the minds of the faithful).
Ok, I think I can answer this, though no idea if I've got it right. I started out as a winslave user, and taught myself a little programming, a little of everything. Enough, that soon I got a job as a pc tech, and have been moving up from there. About 3 years ago, I started having enough spending money to blow on dumb stuff, and found myself buying vintage computers, learning all the trivia and history. Everyone in the industry has something that they can claim credit for, but DEC's reads like something that would be hard to believe if I didn't know it to be true.
UNIX, and C, simultaneously invented on the PDP.
And for whatever reason that unix wasn't good enough, they went out and wrote their own oddball OS, that in many ways is every bit as powerful. Bizarro Unix, from a parallel dimension. I'm still not sure if it's folly or genius.
Intel gives us x86 cpu crud. DEC gave us a beatifully clean PDP cpu, which later inspires the MC68k cpu family. Not sure if they can claim credit for a Motorola chip, but deserves a mention.
DEC didn't invent ethernet either. But they had sense enough to recognize it for what it was, when Metcalfe told them about it. DEC was the "D" in the DIX alliance, after all.
They fielded their own risc CPU, for christ's sake. And not just any, but an alpha... I literally lusted after these, when I was still a winslave. (Wanted to run NT on them, but I've since wised up). Alpha. That alone should land them in the Computing Hall of Fame.
Their own networking protocol. Some of the big names can claim this, but can HP?
And you just don't know how big circuit boards can be, until you've held a unibus card in your hands...
Hell, they were around challenging IBM in the 1950's, half a century ago with the PDP series. The PDP-1 debuted at a price of $100,000 or so, a tenth of anything IBM offered.
And this is the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, mind you. There are all sorts of obtuse little technical things, that I'm not sure everyone could appreciate. Vax clustering, some funky per-thread security architectures, etc.
Then again, I could just be the proud owner of PDP-11/04, VaxStation 4000/90, DECstation 5000/120, and a mosix cluster of 2 Prioris 5100 XL's. Only need a Rainbow, and an Alphastation, and my collection will be reasonably complete.
And please, if anyone else knows something interesting, help out. I'd love to hear something I don't already know...
Yea so will os/360, but that and 50 cents will only get you a cup of coffe.
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS...
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Alex
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· Score: 1
I don't like the way VMS only gets 2 lines - I especially don't like the way they've classified it under Unix. I'm suspicious about HP's motives for VMS.
I sit in front of a Dell commodity PC, but my X sessions are open on a six-node Alpha Cluster running VMS. It is the development cluster for the largest electronic futures and options exchange in the world. The same system is used by CBOT.
I expect are some management who would love to port the application to somthing else but it would be painful to move away from the uptime that we enjoy, the clustered file system, the distributed lock manager, journalling and so on (especially that uptime).
Production downtime is bad news and it is a very sensitive subject. We paid Digital now Compaq sh*t loads of money for support and got it. I very much hope that HP can do the same.
I don't know what happened to the main Alpha architect (Dick Sites), but many of the rest of the chip designers went over to AMD and are probably one of the reasons that they have been doing relatively well of late.
Many of the software technologies have been sold off such as RdB (non portable but oh so fast) and PolyCenter, but VMS remains.
Incidently, you forgot one major technology that was backed by Digital and that was X-windows. In those days, Digital had some of the key people working with them like Jim Gettys. Digital were also responsible for the VT100, one of the first high quality VDUs produced at a reasonable price.
2.) Because you have less than 15 years of experience with it.
As you are no doubt aware, the companies that rely on OpenVMS use clusters. Large clusters. Not just an eight machine cluster, located in one place. But clusters that span kilometers. Part of their disaster recovery plans, I guess.
And people without large cluster experience are a dime a dozen.
Over here, we get have an OpenVMS machine, because we get some data in OpenVMS BACKUP format. When the number of files in a directory exceeds 4000 or so, doing anything in the directory becomes almost impossible! Deleting files takes about 1 sec/file!
VMS has some nice features, but the CLI is too clunky.
They have certainly been trying to push people to move, but many can't or won't. As a condition of buying it they can't kill it for a certain number of years, but they can reduce its attraction.
HP doesn't have their own protocol, that I'm aware of. Plus, DECnet is a rather full featured protocol suite, rivaling IP in it's complexity.
Wangnet... god, don't even remind me of that. There is more banyan vines info on the net, than there ever was wangnet docs printed on paper. And that's not saying much, VINES amounts to 3 or 4 unique pages on the web.
Hmm, I should be able to name all the mini vendors from DEC's heydays. Quite a few seemed to use IP, which while superior in many ways, is the wimpy way out of the problem. Apollo didn't have their own protocol, though I think they got bought by HP also. Whatever happened to the likes of CDC? Data General doesn't have their own protocol either, that I'm aware of. I've had exactly 3 hours sleep, or I'd be able to name more, but the list isn't that long, and DEC is on it. It also has the notable exception of being one of the few for which linux has a decent implementation (IP, IPX, netatalk, DECnet, and to a lesser extent, SNA). Then again, I could just be pissed that Jay Schuler is working on linux/SNA instead of fixing the damn localtalk pc driver.
There's one thing I can't forgive DEC for, and that's mutating the keyboard in their VTxxx (where xxx > 200?) terminals. Why'd they have to take away the ESC key? What's with the 'DO' key? Did they really think doing this would force me to use All-In-One?
Having worked at DEC, and being an expert on VMS, I agree with you. DCL, the native "CLI", is pretty clunky, so is the concept of using RMS as a file system, and the device/file naming conventions could've used a lesson from UNIX.
As for DCL, you can get UNIX shell interfaces. They can help a bit, at least on the CLI side.
But, the list of good stuff is really, really, long and that stuff is really, really, well thought out. VMS still puts most UNIX to shame when it comes to systems and programmer services. Sometimes I wish Linux & Co. would take a lesson or two from VMS. (Alas, Torvald & Co. is pretty vocal dis'ing VMS to the point of blind exclusion.)
So, the goodness inside VMS is in the hands of Compaq/HP and will likely fade, lost into history, over time.
My personal memory is that once IBM and DEC started targeting the scientific computing community in the mid 80's... CDC's days were numbered. Prior to that, CDC had been pretty much the only game in town for hard-core numerical computing (I remember briefly being subjected to an old CDC Cyber.../shudder).
VMS was (and still is) a very powerful and cool OS. There were tons of things DEC put into this OS in conjunction with the Vax hardware architecture that is still advanced today (e.g. clustering).
There was a recent thread on usenet in which someone asked about the differences between VMS, Unix, and NT. This Deja link should take you near the top of that thread
Mitnick managed to steal VMS source code not by cracking a VMS system, but via social hacking (i.e. posing as someone who was supposed to have access in order to obtain a password). Mitnick testified before Congress that VMS was the only OS he was not able to crack.
-- *** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
It's true, VMS, properly configured, is extremely secure. And it tends to give you plenty of warnings when it's not properly configured.
Sadly, unbright sysadmins do things sometimes that are not so bright. Like, for example, giving SYSPRV to the DECnet account, because "nobody logs in to that anyway" and it simplifies some things.
It also simplifies greatly the process of using TELL.COM to run AUTHORIZE.EXE:)
(The real irony was, that box was running a BBS program. They didn't even make the account captive, and they gave it NETMBX. So all you needed to do was give a/NOCOM, get a command prompt, upload TELL.COM [no XModem but hell, TELL.COM only took a minute or so over 1200 to paste in] and run AUTHORIZE, and give the non-captive passwordless account SETPRV).
Ah, the '80s.
--
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
by
jettaman16v
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· Score: 1, Interesting
What happened to the HP calculators? Did they discontinue then pre-merger, or were they dropped just recently? It does suck that the Kayak line is being killed, but I can't say I will miss anything Compaq ever made. I have never seen a nice piece of Compaq equipment, save for the iPAQ.
-- "It tastes like.... burning." -Ralph Wiggum
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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kilocomp
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· Score: 1
The HP calcs were killed off. See this http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/03/123421 2&mode=thread (too lazy to link for ya right now)
Nick
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
by
thegrommit
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· Score: 1
Now that the IPaq is to be rebranded "HP IPaq", I'm sure there will be plenty of programs to provide it with the same functionality.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
HP dropped it's calculators about a year ago. It's a shame too. When I was taking high level math classes, there was no better calculators for the job. TI at that time just couldn't compete but now it appears they are the only alternative.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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Wesley+Felter
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· Score: 2
I went to the new HP site, clicked on products, and I saw a link for calculators; looks like they're still there.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
They're just manufacturing the same old stuff from 1993.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
by
Anonymous Coward
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And has there been much change in math since 1993? Have new trig functions been discovered? Are there new operators other than +-/*? Has the value of pi changed?
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's not that they weren't making money, either. The group turned a profit. The profit just wasn't big enough for Fiorina to justify keeping around in light of the Compaq merger plans. Shit, now you can't even get parts.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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foonf
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· Score: 3, Informative
Theyr's Gone. HP dropped the last remnant of their calculator organization on November 9, 2001 [hpcalc.org].
In some ways, thats a distortion. The ACO, according to those worked there, was actually not involved in calculator design when they were killed off, but was working on some kind of handheld PDA-type device which was deemed redundant when they decided to cut back. It was noted at the time that HP had frozen new calculator design for a span of several years before. There's been no indication that production of current models will cease.
--
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
by
GunFodder
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· Score: 1
Sucks for you then. The only thing that HP really excels at is making printers. All of their computing products are second rate or worse. Is it any surprise that they are migrating to Compaq products?
The one thing that kills me is their desire to continue several Compaq brands in the consumer market. They are quite famous... for being crappy computers.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm glad I've still got my HP48G because I'm pretty sure they stopped making them. Such a great calculator! I spent hours programming that thing (while I should've been doing my math homework).
And if it wasn't for the 48G introducing me to RPN, I wouldn't have known wtf to do when I discovered dc in my/usr/bin.
Ah, fond memories.
Interesting note: If the head of the math department has an HP48 program that he distributes (via IR) to all incoming students, and a student can get their hands on the teacher's calculator and replace said program with a slightly trojaned version that quietly installs a timebomb (as an "alarm", so even if the home directory is emptied it remains) with an offensive message to be displayed long after said student graduates from school, well, I wouldn't know what happens, because I don't go to school there anymore. But I bet that at 8.30am if a bunch of calculators started beeping and displaying anti-compulsory-education propaganda all at once, it would be a pretty funny sight.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yes... And the opposite is true in the entreprise areas, as has already been noted, Tru64/OSF is superior and HP-UX is inferior... Why are they keeping HP? Well that is consistent with what this new Carly-company is going to do more of... that is... SERVICES.
So where did the compiler technology end up? That was the crown jewels of DEC and the Alpha... It was the compiler, dude...
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
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Anonymous Coward
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I was at Fry's today.. There were HP calculators-a-plenty.
Re:The future of unix at hp
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jacexpo069
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Umm, that is not quite what it says about openVMS
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium.
I wonder if this is sign on how the merger will effect the product lines. Will we see a lot of HP stuff disappear in favor of Compaq stuff? Obviously the Ipaq and Compaq's servers were doing much better than HPs. Both their workstations sucks so they probably can't decide which crap to get rid of yet.
Another thing I wonder if this will minimize competition especially in the area of PocketPC (even thought most Slashdotters could care less about these).
HP risks losing the Compaq business without transitioning them successfully to HP. Non-slashdot readers are going to take a while to figure out that HP = Compaq. If I were them I'd offer the same products with Compaq and HP badges. Even give retail outlets the badges and let the badge them however they or the customer likes.
Re:Risk
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Anonymous Coward
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Consumer PCs and Notebooks
Decision: We will continue to offer both the Compaq Presario(TM) and HP Pavilion lines of consumer desktop PCs and notebooks through all existing channels in regions where both brands are strong
"give retail outlets the badges and let the badge them however they or the customer likes"
Why the hell would they do this? Most of the margin is due to the strength of the brand name.
"We will continue to offer both the Compaq Presario(TM) and HP Pavilion lines of consumer desktop PCs and notebooks..." So they will have two competing brands for their consumer pc offerings. HP says this is due to existing brand awareness and retailer's opinion. (The paper also says they will phase out HP's buisness PC line in favor of Compaq's.)
.Net lives
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Anonymous Coward
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Key Decisions: HP is deepening its commitment to developers and is the right partner to work with for J2EE and.NET tools, for management, UDC and IPF development. HP is taking a leadership role to integrate development and management through standards initiatives, developer tools, community/content and developer support products to simplify for developers this transition to a new way of thinking and working.
Sounds like good news for Microsoft. HP is one of the biggest guys around. Now to get Rational on their side...
You knew this stuff was coming.. I thought they'd kill HPUX for sure, though! DEC Unix (aka compaq tru64) finally dies.. it was truly a legendary OS. That's the only thing that surprises me about this roadmap. Maybe it's just because I used DU more than HPUX.
The rest of it is pretty predictable. I mean, I never even heard of a damn HP Kayak.. wtf is that? Of course OpenView and Insight Manager both have to stay, due to their ubiquity. iPaq kills Jornada hands-down. Compaq trounces HP for business desktops.
And let's see.. printing.. there's no clear winner there. HP's got a LaserJet in every office in the universe.. But don't rule out Compaq, they are great at rebranding plastic Lexmark inkjets!
I mean, I never even heard of a damn HP Kayak.. wtf is that? Of course OpenView and Insight Manager both have to stay, due to their ubiquity. iPaq kills Jornada hands-down. Compaq trounces HP for business desktops.
HP Kayak's are Intel based workstation class machines, similar to Compaq's Professional Workstation line.
HP Kayak was one of the ugliest PCs ever made, reminded me of American cars from the '70s, 'styled by Fischer' as advertised in Popular Mechanics. All lines, curves, widgets and no style.
--
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
Re:Wow
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Anonymous Coward
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Umm, what? Solaris and AIX have got to be first and second, although I'm not sure in what order.
Re:Wow
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Anonymous Coward
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I'm so tired of today's cars. They all look like soap bubbles.
Re:Wow
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Anonymous Coward
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I've got a Kayak under my desk right now. You are oviously thinking of something else. The Kayak has rather conservative styling. What realy sets them apart is their overall construction. They are designed to be easy to maintain and upgrade, ie PS that slides out on rails, easy access harddrive bays etc etc. The Kayak is like a Roles Royce. The standard home PC is like a Volkswagen. Actually I seem to remember the Pavillions of a year or so ago being particularly ugly, kinda like your Fischer analogy.
Yeah, the Kayak can RIP, but the vectra is a loss to any tech that ever worked on em. I can strip a vectra VLi8 by removing exactly one screw, the torex 15 that holds the backplane to the case, otherwise the case is completely toolless. A motherboard swap takes aproximately 15 seconds =)
-- There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
And let's see.. printing.. there's no clear winner there. HP's got a LaserJet in every office in the universe.. But don't rule out Compaq, they are great at rebranding plastic Lexmark inkjets!
In redards of rebranding, did you know that for most HP laserjets (if not all) the printing mechanic is manufactured by canon? HP only provides the formater (logic, driver connected end), and the brand, the rest is done by canon.
--
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
I actually think Kayaks are OK. Mind you I work for a contractor for HP but I've worked on enough other PC's to know what I like. Our Office/Tech Lab has about 5 P500's, a X500 or two, and 2 old XW's(one's the firewall/fileserver and the other is the MP3 Jukebox). They might not be the best looking but there not the ugliest either. Oh, the best part is the, nearly, toolless design:
Undo 2 clips and the case is off
Unscrew 4 thumbscrews and the hard drive is out
Unplug the motherboard, push in 2 tabs and out it comes
Pertty rock solid construction, can't beat them.
They sure as hell won't be selling Lexmark printers after the merger. Lexmark is owned by IBM. IBM is HP-Compaq's #1 competitior now. Why on earth would they retail a compeitior's product? Or why would IBM even sell it to them in the first place?
-- Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
Re:Wow
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Not knowing what an HP Kayak is shows you should not have an opinion on thise segment of the HP product line. I'm working on one now.
I thought Lexmark was a spinoff business from IBM, (as in no longer affiliated with IBM). So Lexmark being an independent company can do whatever it wants.
you can do the same with the compaq business desktops, only its not even one screw - just push in the clips at either side and pull...the case comes out. flip up the drive caddies, pull out the cd drive (about 10secs) and you have the motherboard there to play with;-)
even the drives can be replaces without screws...but then you're locked into buying compaq options, or finding the right fixings for normal drives:D
I have a Kayak XA (it was cheap) and an older 735, and both have extremly solid construction. The 735 is very rigid, and fully tool less, of course it had to support a 19" monitor in the mid 1990s. That thing must weigh 50kg. It has a video card the size of a miniATX mainboard.
The Kayak is well built and well cooled, and with two PII 266 processors its fast enough for my daily needs. Email, surfing, office, and the occasional game of quake. I have no complaints about either system.
-- Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
HP Kayak is HP's entry in the personal water transportation market. It's compelling feature is RPM - Reverse Paddling Motivation. You stroke the paddle backwards only on the right side of the Kayak, and it moves forward. Skilled HP Kayakers (mostly engineers and other tech weenies) generally claimed they could get downstream much more efficiently this way, but some privately admit that the real benefit was the ego boost from the knowledge that the average weekend warrior couldn't figure out how to paddle it.
The reasons why they didn't kill HP-UX are probably simple enough - control. You have to pay licensing fee's and network access fee's, tech support fee's every year.
Remember when MS launched that campaign saying Windows NT was a whole lot cheaper then running unix and you were sitting there in front of your linux or bsd machine saying "where do they get these numbers?!" - at the time I was working for a company that had a whole bunch of HP-9000's (various models) and I knew exactly where they got those numbers. Its rediculously expensive - but we needed to run colleague (a college database of sorts) on it [since the prime mini's were breaking down] and had to pay it.
In redards of rebranding, did you know that for most HP laserjets (if not all) the printing mechanic is manufactured by canon? HP only provides the formater (logic, driver connected end), and the brand, the rest is done by canon.
As far as i remember this used to be the true
in the early days, where the print mechanic
was supplied by Canon and the electronis were
from HP. But this has changed since a few years
(when the LJ4 came out).
hmmm, have a look one day at the front of the drive caddies.... They're usually right there. You only need to undo those screws, and put them into a drive, and what do ya know, a perfect fit for a new hard drive. Oh yeah, and in the 815 models, I've managed to get four drives in a Deskpro EN SFF. One in the floppy bay, (who needs it?), one in the cdrom bay with an adaptor, one in the regular hard drive spot, and one in the back in a static bag laying on the motherboard. Needed hella splitters though... Good cpus them deskpros. (if a bit quirky)
I own a VL series 7 (P2/333) and I have to say it is pretty interesting to work with. The design is upside down and backwards compared to an ATX, and it's sorta kinda NLX-like (the power supply connectors are different, though).
I can see why it might appeal to people, honestly; that's one of the niceties of the NLX-type design. Truthfully, I mostly bought it because it was the best thing available that day at the MIT flea, and I wouldn't recommend it to a serious PC user (I am a Mac user who was in search of a good Linux box that day). I would have liked to see HP use this design in some of their home systems; it would make working inside those beasties dramatically easier (especially on those older microtower Pavilion models that crammed a full-ATX board into a box the size of a large shoebox).
I will say this, though: if the Robo-Pavilion case I've been seeing at Best Buy is the future of HP cases, it's a good thing that Compaq got its industrial design groove with the latest generation of Presarios. If you're going to sell half-assed schlock systems for $1200 a pop, at least make sure you put it in a pretty package, because it's not going to sell on the technical merits...
Well for exactly the LJ4 I know exactly, as I've seen the "brother device" from canon. I serviced HP printers some years ago as an intern. If you wouldn't see the logo on the outside, you could hardly differencate the printers by looking upon them.
--
--
Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
PocketPC devices? Probably (though I have no statistics).
WINCE device? Almost definitely not. Again, I have no statistics, but there are a lot of uses for WINCE that are not PDA related.
WINCE is an operating system, currently based on the WinCE 4.0 kernel. PocketPC is a shell and some additional code on top of a modified WinCE 3.0 kernel.
WinCE is used and is targeted to be used all over the place -- DreamCast, Industrial automation, routers, mp3 players, dvd players, etc. Basically, a generic embedded OS.
-- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I wonder if all those products we paid for that run on AlphaVMS will run on Itanium VMS. It would be sweet though. Didn't DEC or Compaq come out with some sort of compatibility product during the VAX to Alpha transition?
Re:Woo-hoo VMS!!
by
jacexpo069
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· Score: 2, Informative
Indeed they did, you can see that here. Chapter 2 lists even the porting schedule to Itanium!
Re:Woo-hoo VMS!!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
You may be referring to the VAX Environment Software Translator (VEST) and/or the Translated Image Environment (TIE) which were documented in Section 3.2.2.1 of the VAX to Alpha migration guide, but as far as I ever knew noone ever ran images that were translated with VEST for very long. Typically you would want to recompile your code from source so as to exploit the speed ups in the Alpha native compilers. Things like VEST were only for VAX *.EXE's that came with no source, and then only for desperados. Note that some things could not be VESTed, including things that may have made extensive use of the VAX only MTH$ run time libraries.
Actually, we still run quite a bit of VESTed code. Interestingly enough, it is expected that it will be possible to take VAX software VESTed to run on Alpha and then VEST it again to run on IA-64...
-- *** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to ItaniumHP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium
Imagine going back in time 15 years and telling someone that HP would be releasing OpenVMS.
Bullshit. Anyone that time travels back that far, for M$, damn well better be doing so to asassinate B Gates. What you suggest, would be like traveling back to 1935, just so you could enjoy hawaiian beaches before commercialization. Sure, it's pretty, but awfully fucking selfish.
Then you don't have much in the way of ethics, do you?
In other words, it's that sort of attitude that got us into this problem. "Doesn't matter what you do, so long as it increases shareholder value" is not the basis for a Free economy. It's the basis for corporate dictatorships.
Behold the sh*t that happens when a company is owned by a bunch of VCs with no technical background, and who don't give a damn about anything but a chart that tells them if they sell DEC to Compaq, it will benefit their bottom line.
So Compaq has done nothing good for the products aquired from DEC, and yet the Alpha is still the most powerful processor around, setting records even today.
I really wish that companies would wise up. Wall Street is a plage... A large-scale game of black jack. No matter how good you are at the game, sooner or later your final card comes up.
Seagate has the right idea. IPO when you need some money and then buy back all the shares as soon as you can.
***RANT**** I read that it would be fitting if OpenVMS outlived us all. Personally it would be fitting if the Alpha got so popular it bankrupted Intel, and possibly knocked Microsoft off the desktop in the process. That would be a fitting end. In fact, it could just as well have done that if it wasn't for the whole Compaq sellout. The Alpha had incredible momentum, until Compaq. ***RANT****
Kind of like office space
by
OO7david
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Consultant 1: And that brings us to Mr. Compaq TrueUni-- TrueUniee-- TrueUni-ever gonna work here again! Consultant 2: And that Michael Bolton too!
Re:Kind of like office space
by
buffy
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· Score: 2
ROTFLMAO!
I think that has got to be one of the best Office Space references I've seen made.
I'm surprised we haven't heard more about HPQ employees threatening to set the building(s) on fire.
Sadly, not nearly as clever, but then again, I'm kind-of drunk now, so...
I'd better just step away from the keyboard now.
Re:Kind of like office space
by
mrbill
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· Score: 5, Funny
I keep telling our head admin that we need to go back and relabel our Alpha servers ilke this:
DIGITAL logo (crossed out) COMPAQ logo (crossed out) HP logo (in crayon)
Re:Kind of like office space
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
HP logo (in crayon) I thing HP should do that themselves on their new machines, also supplying a piece of rubber in a standard accesory kit...
Re:Kind of like office space
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Don't forget to go back and add an "Intel Inside" sticker on them after the Itanium upgrade.
Re:Kind of like office space
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You think it's bad for you... try working for the company!
Back in '98, I started working at Vanstar. In '99, we were bought by Inacom. In '00, we were sold to Compaq as a subsidiary, Custom Edge. In '01, we were absorbed into Compaq. And now, since Tuesday, we've been the New HP. My email address has changed every year:
We're taking bets in the office as to whether we'll be IBM or Dell next year!:-)
Good thing Carly know's her stuff
by
bytes256
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· Score: 0
It's a good thing that most of their stuff seems to be getting branded HP instead of Compaq...I've always found HP products to be of higher quality than the "equivalent" Compaq product. Both in terms of reliability and longevity. HP makes damn fine printers...and among the big guys, their desktop machines aren't too shoddy either.
--
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
Re:Good thing Carly know's her stuff
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The only thing Carly knows about is how to take home huge paychecks and screw over companies.
Re:hallo!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Then it must really get on your nerves that CS Majors basically fall into the category of being far more successful than you.:)
So who is going to buy these machines now, with the "In-box upgrade to IA-64" the only future for (some) current PA-RISC machines?
As it is, the uncertainty around the merger and the coming death of PA-RISC *must* have had a negative effect on sales of HP Unix machines. Anecdotally, the one customer I support who was on HP-UX and an HP 9000 has migrated over to Solaris on Sun hardware.
Any HP employees out there who can shed some light on this murky "strategy" ?
Uh, HP helped develop IA-64, the move to IA-64 has been known to be coming for a LONG TIME. None of the announcements today about either HP or Compaq's RISC or UNIX products were any surprise to ANYONE who cared about them.
Re:PA-RISC & HP-UX
by
guacamole
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Isn't IA64 binary compatible with PA-RISC? IA64 was HPs next PA-RISC processor before they gave the IP to Intel.
Here's a PA-RISC to Itanium roadmap Most big corporations prefer to wait and watch, and PA-RISC is good enough for those. And the migration path looks promising too; no code/data migration, just change the CPU board and you're done.
Re:PA-RISC & HP-UX
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yes, HP-UX can run PA-RISC binaries on IA64.
Emphasis on Inanium
by
Animats
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· Score: 4, Insightful
There's a surprisingly strong commitment to Intel's Itanium line. This despite the fact that the industry consensus seems to be that it's a loser.
Even NonStop (the old Tandem product line), is supposedly being migrated from MIPS to Itanium.
Inanium exists only to give Intel an architecture that can't be cloned for patent reasons. It's not better; it's just different. So it's best that it fail.
No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.
The fact that HP helped develop the Itanium might be why they want to use it.
Nick
Re:Emphasis on Inanium
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Interesting
No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.
I hear you. I grew up around HP test equipment and such and bought a HP-48 in 1993, I had a HP-11 in highschool. I always associated the HP brand with quality.
The bad news is that HP is going down the tubes.
The good news is that HP spun off their test and meaurement division a couple of years ago as Agilent.
I have been pleasantly surprised in dealing with Aglent. For example, I purchased some parts for an HP stethoscope from their online store using a credit card, I got an email the next day telling me that the parts had shipped an that they were not charging my credit card because I was a student! They had my money, but they gave it back!
So, my point is, they got the names backwards when they spun off Agilent: People looking for the old "HP way" should look to Agilent, people who expect HP quality from the new "HPQ" are in for a surprise.
I guess they did not know what to do with the calculater division when they split. I am sad that it went to the HP part, because if they had given it to Agilent I might be posting this on my '69gx calculator.
I would Love to agree with you but I can't. I used to work in their Semiconductor Fab in Ft. Collins. Totally clueless management, my manager with Her medieval disiplinary style, continous politics and rumors, and the gradual eroding of benefits. In the end the only thing for me to look forward to was when the cafeteria put up the once monthly Pasta Buffet. I'll give you the benefit of a doubt, maybe it just was the divison I worked for.
There's supposedly enough backwards compatibility in a high end itanium to run PA-RISC stuff. And HP has a good (perhaps not large, but certainly well paying) installed base for their HP-UX machines. Pushing itanium has the advantage of "providing" an upgrade path for all of them.
-- See you, space cowboy...
Re:Emphasis on Inanium
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
This despite the fact that the industry consensus seems to be that it's a loser.
A loser by what measure? One objective of the Itanium was to kill of the other players in the RISC Workstation/HighPerformance playing field.
MIPS.... on its last legs (in non embedded designs
).
Alpha... on its last legs
Sparc... stubbornly klinging on.
Power... they woke IBM up... they're now serious about Power.
PowerPC... pigeon holed. (IBM forked resources onto Power and both Moto and IBM are primarily retargeting to embedded. 64 bit hasn't seen light yet.).
Two out of five isn't bad. If they can quickly ramp up the sales volume they should have enough money to give Sparc headaches in the coming years (laggard in performance so passing them should be plausible). If Sun stumbles even sooner. It is going to take a longer time to deal with Power though.
If you speak of the current crappy performance. What v1.0 version of anything has the kinks worked out? Especially where there is significant software issues involved. There are limits to what you can do in simulation. If the third generation still sucks. Then there is a problem.
I suspect when you run scientific/engineering code through the second and third generations it is going to show respectable performance numbers. You don't buy an Itanium box to run Quake... (or Word or Access ) that isn't what its purpose in life is. An open question is how well the powerhouse databases will run on it since that code typically has a higher percentage of dynamic branching than more pure computation code. Coupled with a better paths to memory and I/O that should also be achievable.
If the loser metric is purely measured on MHz or speed of running 32 bit windows.... yeah. Itanium is and will likely remain a "loser".
Re:Emphasis on Inanium
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Hmmm...
I think you may be right.
I just noticed they sold their healthcare division last August.
If I get that damn song stuck in my head (again), you're gettin' modded down buddy...
;-)
hmm roadmap distilled
by
drDugan
·
· Score: 1, Troll
(0) large company 1 merges with large comany 2 to become super-large company, LargeCo.
(1) things are cut and tweaked for months
(2)LargeCo takes as much money as it can from the general populace, exactly as it was designed to do.
(3) in 2 years everyone looks back and says, "gee, we shouldn't have merged. Oh well, we're still good at taking people's money!"
the big Q going back home
by
binaryDigit
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, 20 years later and things have come full circle for Compaq. From the roadmap it looks like they'll be phasing out the Compaq name from most everything with the notable exception of business/consumer pc's. After forays into high end servers, laser printers, RISC/VMS (i.e. DEC), pda's, Compaq has come back to it's roots.
Maybe Compaq should come out with a 20th anniversary luggable just for old times sake? Hey, that's not a bad idea. They could put an lcd instead of a crt, mount the floppy/hd on one side and the dvd/cd on the other. Now that would be cool. Maybe one of those case mod'ers can get cracking on this one.
Re:the big Q going back home
by
cameldrv
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· Score: 1
Just make sure it has a toggle switch for amber/green screen emulation. Can't quite get the same effect without the old-school monochrome.
Re:the big Q going back home
by
lostchicken
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· Score: 2
HP said that they wanted to "protect" well known brands, i.e. Compaq, but they blew that one with Agilent.
Everyone in the scientific community knows the name Hewlett-Packard, and it is printed on 1 out of every 5 high-end devices in a physics lab.
If H-P really liked names, I would still be able to but an Hewlett-Packard brand caesium time base.
-- -twb
Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
From the roadmap:
"Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP."
Sounds like they'll be only working with Linux from an interoperability perspective.
Hmmmm....Linux development anyone?
Bruce, did they tell you that you'd be getting the axe today?
The new HP talks about following open standards. Where the hell is that in this roadmap?
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
noahm
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· Score: 2
Sounds like they'll be only working with Linux from an interoperability perspective.
First of all, Linux is not Unix. Second of all, you missed at least a couple other references to their plans for Linux support within the company. They will not be doing any less Linux work than they have been, I suspect, and will likely end up working for a higher profile in the Linux community.
The new HP talks about following open standards. Where the hell is that in this roadmap?
Why the hell should it be there? This is their plan for the merging of the two companies' product lines. If either of the companies owns it, it's not an open standard, now, is it?
noah
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
Bruce+Perens
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
You are correct that there is still strategy being worked on. The integration team was sort of clean-room until the merger closed - it would have been a bad idea to contaminate all of HP management with Compaq insider information if the merger for some reason did not close, so a lot of them are being brought in now. I have some future deliverables in this regard.
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
Dolly_Llama
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· Score: 2
The integration team was sort of clean-room until the merger closed
Dude, software is not developed in a clean room on THIS plant. Do you even know ANYTHING about HP OR Linux?
Sheesh...
--
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
-- Carl Sagan
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
ScumBiker
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· Score: 2
Chill out Bruce, I'll get this one for ya. Errr, Dolly_Llama, do you have any idea how much evangelizing Bruce has done for Linux? He's literally up there with Alan Cox and Linus. Plus, he works at HP. Thus, I'd say that he uniquely positioned to report on how the integration team is doing it's work. On the other hand, if this is a troll or a joke, not very good either way.
-- --- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
HP-UX'er
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· Score: 2, Insightful
ROFLMAO... obviously you don't know anything about Bruce...
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
As a former DEC/CPQ/nowHP employee, I've been in the same boat as Bruce Perens insofar as the "Clean Room" is concerned.
HP and Compaq had upwards of 1500 people working over the past 5 months on integration strategy and planning. I've heard that it added up to just about 1 million people-hours of work, all told. But, because of the current litigatious atmosphere in the corporate world these days, all of this planning was totally segregated from the rest of the two corporations. (Let's see you write your code with a couple of lawyers looking over your shoulder at every keystroke!)
Part of the impetus for this was the previous "merger" when Compaq bought out Tandem and then DEC in two quick, and virtually undigested gulps. Both of the latter companies had to teach Compaq what enterprise-level computing and a double-digit mark-up was. They never did integrate such things as their part number systems, for example.
So far (~24 hours), it's been incredible - HP "gets it" as far as UNIX is concerned. Give it a few days for the dust to settle, and for the rest of the info to come out. Remember that HP has done a LOT for the Linux community already (thank you, Bruce), e.g. the hpijs drivers, and managed to win a very nice $24.5M DOD contract (well, if Compaq couldn't win that bid, I'm glad IBM didn't, either!:-) for a Linux supercomputing project.
Now that Bruce will be free to talk to the vestiges of the Linux community in what used to be Compaq, the best is yet to come!
Patience, grasshopper...
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Sorry, nice try, but you're not nearly as clever as the troll you're ripping off (the guy who asked tom christiansen "do you even know anything about perl?")
Re:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
What am I missing here?
IBM is getting rid of AIX. Solaris will be dead in the next three years.
Why would HP make a such a statement about HP-UX being "the future UNIX"?
Even Gartner agrees that the other UNICes are going to be phased out.
HP wants to differentiate itself from IBM in every way - like with Linux. So, they're going to spend millions of dollars adding more features to HP-UX - why? They should be spending the money on Linux. You can't have two UNICes - it confuses your customers.
Re:Emphasis on Inanium.......Inanium???
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Hmmmm....Inanium....interesting Freudian slip.
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
by
josh+crawley
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· Score: 1
How in the HELL is this redundant???
Redundant would imply there was a prior post of this exact same textual data. I looked at -1, and saw none. My ISP runs a cacheing web proxy (standard squid) and my ISP happened to have it. I wasnt sure if others were observing the/. effect. So In my service, I posted the full article.
Perhaps the moronic moderator would like to explain why they modded me as such.
HP's closing the calculator division was announced some time ago. Too bad.
Re:The future of unix at hp
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
*VMS is dying
Yet nother crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *VMS community when last month IDC confirmed that *VMS accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *VMS has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *VMS is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *VMS's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *VMS faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *VMS because *VMS is dying. Things are looking very bad for *VMS. As many of us are already aware, *VMS continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeVMS is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenVMS leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenVMS. How many users of NetVMS are there? Let's see. The number of OpenVMS versus NetVMS posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetVMS users. VMS/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetVMS posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of VMS/OS. A recent article put FreeVMS at about 80 percent of the *VMS market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeVMS users. This is consistent with the number of FreeVMS Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeVMS went out of business and was taken over by VMSI who sell another troubled OS. Now VMSI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *VMS has steadily declined in market share. *VMS is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *VMS is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *VMS continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For ll practical purposes, *VMS is dead.
*VMS is dying
The Compaq name will dissapear...
by
c.r.o.c.o
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
From what I can tell, the Compaq name will be kept only on a few categories of devices, especially business class ones and consumer laptops. Everywhere else, the lines will either be discontinued or they will be rebranded.
I don't want to sound like a troll, but in a couple of years (maybe a bit more) Compaq will go the way DEC went a while back.
HP will keep it alive just long enough for customers to get used to the change. Then it will dissapear from all refferences, products and documentation. HP will stop updating the Compaq product support sites, and eventually will even stop hosting them altogether.
You don't believe me? Try a google search for DEC, and you'll see how many Compaq hosted docs and web pages you will find. A couple of years ago I needed technical info on a DEC dual P classic workstation for a school project. It would have been a pretty fast machine, and I had 2 p200Mhz available to plug into it (up from the single P90Mhz that I found inside). After 4 hours of continuous searching for the jumper settings, I gave up and salvaged another slower computer.
This is the same that will happen to Compaq soon enough. Ironic, isn't it?
Re:The Compaq name will dissapear...
by
skribe
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I don't want to sound like a troll, but in a couple of years (maybe a bit more) Compaq will go the way DEC went a while back.
Re:The Compaq name will dissapear...
by
10am-bedtime
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· Score: 1
hp needs to sell linux boxes in the power tools section of wal-mart, embedded in a toolbox (duh).
thi
Re:The Compaq name will dissapear...
by
KidSock
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· Score: 2
It's already gone from Yahoo! which used to have little "Powered by Compaq" logos all over.
Re:The Compaq name will dissapear...
by
cnladd
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· Score: 2
I agree completely. How many of us remember when HP bought Apollo? The same thing happened there - the name stuck around long enough to server two purposes: get people who used Apollo products used to the change and get enough time to do a full migration/conversion/deletion.
Now, the only time I see the Apollo name is when I walk into a shop that still runs some old system - usually on an admin's desk. It's that way with DEC now, too - every so often I walk into a shop that still has an old VAX up and running.
--
--
Welcome to the land of the easily amused...
Re:hallo!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Don't forget the third, minority category, scrawny and unbelievably strong.
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Maybe because there is ZERO chance that HP gets slashdotted?
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
by
dingo
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· Score: 1
you know what the really suckie thing about that is... when it comes to meta moderation everyone will assume that it was already posted and mark it as fair. I think that the moderation system should come with a REASON for when it is to be meta-moderated. then when the moderater put something stupid like "it is the same as what was on the link" they will be meta moderated to hell
-- The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
by
dingo
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· Score: 1
you are kidding i hope. they just went through an extreemely publisised merger so their servers are probably already strained. The/. crowd could easily tip the scales
-- The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
Old Out, New In
by
BeagleBoi
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It looks like Hewlett Packard have been working hard on this change while the whole stockholder vote/battle was going on.
Even so, I was still taken aback when the familiar Flash-driven "Powered by Compaq" icon at the Yahoo Mail site was replaced by a "Powered by HP" icon today.
What other changes have people seen?
Re:Old Out, New In
by
jacexpo069
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well, the fact that the Compaq homepage only redirects to HP would be a biggie, I would think!
Even better: www.digital.com redirects to Compaq which redirects to HP.
Re:Old Out, New In
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
On the surface Compaq.com is gone,but go any futher along with anything compaq related and you are dumped back in to the old compaq.com site.
yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
keithmoore
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· Score: 4
HP-UX is the second worst UNIX I've ever been forced to use (SCO being the worst). I used to go into screaming fits every time I had to log into a HP-UX box because the damn thing didn't even support tty modes correctly.
At least OSF/1-Tru64 (at one time) had good release engineering. But it started going downhill fast once DEC started massive layoffs.
RIP DEC. We didn't know how good we had it...
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
Hanul
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· Score: 0, Troll
And what about Solaris? No Volume Manager by default, you have to buy one from Veritas. No decent graphical admin tool for newbies (like HP-UX's SAM or AIX's SMIT). And what's this with home directories being in/export/home? HP-UX has some strong HA software in MC/Service Guard, where SUN's clustering is crap (but their partitioning is very nice, a feature only recently introduced to HP-UX). If you really want a clean UNIX, stick with the BSDs. The commercial ones are all somewhat of a mess.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
mad_dwarf
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· Score: 1
You don't have to buy a volume manager from Veritas, you can use Solstice Discsuite. This allows mirroring of root disks, striping, concatanating..
The home directories in/export/home is to make it easier to setup NIS and automounted home directories, allowing members of staff to be able to access their home directories from any machine on the network.
-- Chaos, panic, and disorder - my work here is done.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
Znork
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· Score: 2
Actually, I sortof like HP-UX. The LVM and HA software is among the most trouble free implementations I've ever come across. Compiling stuff is a PITA tho, and whoever is responsible for the include files seems to have a fetish for disabling anything and everything common to modern UNIX unless you set several defines to get through it.
It's definitely gotten better in HP-UX 10 and 11; the releases before that were horrible. It still has some really annoying behaviour tho... memory allocation and reboot-on-changing-kernel-parameters, altho that's changed in 11i for some of it at least.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
Znork
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· Score: 2
Gaaack. Disksuite really really *really* sucks if you're managing anything more advanced than mirroring the root disks. It isnt a LVM, which is the problem.
Trust me, if you have 10 or more disks on a system, you dont want to pull out the system documentation to make sure the slices you want to use are unused. And then meticulously compare it with the current system configuration in case one of your fellow admins has been slack in updating the docs. When you get many disks, you _have_ to have a logical volume manager, so you can just add a disk to a volume group and extend the logical volumes on it, without mucking around with diskslices.
Disksuite just doesnt cut it for anything but the most simple configurations.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
spiro_killglance
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· Score: 1
What do you mean. DiskSuite tell you what disk/slices are in use, and will complain if you try to use a slice twice, not only that you can get it to colour all the used slices in the GUI. Finally, unless you just installed a new disk you shouldn't have any unused diskslices, they should all be in the hot spare pool.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
HP-UX'er
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· Score: 1
Sounds like a PEBKAC problem !
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
Znork
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· Score: 2
I mean exactly that. With disksuite you have to care about slices. With an LVM you dont.
For example, on a small server with two disks. You get 2 36GB disks, and at least our standard configuration sucks up 5 slices as swap plus various filesystems (all mirrored). Then you have the metadatabase replicas taking up another slice, plus the backup slice. Oops, used all my slices, which means I cant extend any filesystem later on, nor can I add more mountpoints. Which means I have to make the final configuration at once and I have no flexibility to change anything afterwards.
And on a large server you get the opposite problem; either you get too many slices everywhere since you have to have a new slice for every time you extend a filesystem, or you get loads of unused space for major additions that turned out to be unnecessary. On a large server with more than a hundred mountpoints, that makes quite a lot of slices, which makes it pretty unmanageable. It's painful even with LVM.
Oh, and hot spares we dont use, since we have FC disk. It's already raid plus hotspare, and mirrored on the host on top of that.
Disksuite simply doesnt compare to a real LVM. It works for setting up mirroring, but it just doesnt cut it when you need more flexibility. You just dont want to deal with slices at all when you get complicated consolidated larger servers.
Re:yeah, but HP-UX needed a quick mercy killing
by
analog_line
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· Score: 2
If SAM were a decent graphical admin tool, I might agree with you, but by the gods it so is not. I believe that HP-UX is the oldest commercial UNIX (aside from AT&T) and it shows in its Byzantine presentation and operation. I've worked with AIX, Digital Unix, Solaris, BSD back when it wasn't Free, Net, or Open. The only commercial UNIX so intentionally thickheaded that I'd use HP-UX over it is SCO, which makes makes HP-UX look like a sysadmins wet dream.
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Are you kidding me? HP and Compaq, the guys who run the NYSE for goodness sake, will NOT get slashdotted!
Vectra XU front panels
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Killing the Vectras, huh? That should make my latest quest even harder to complete.
Slashdot veterans should remember the PC Weasel. It's a card that emulates a video card and routes it out a serial port, so you can have a truly headless box. It also has a deal to connect in-line with your reset button so you can forcibly reboot the box from afar.
This is all well and good, but HP's bastard Vectra XU series (and probably more of their Vectras in general) have this proprietary connector between the front panel (where the button is) and the motherboard.
I appeal to the geek masses - surely someone out there has already found where the reset line is. My alternative is taking down a server for a few hours while it gets probed with a multimeter looking for the elusive pins, then fabricating a shim to go in between the cable and the board.
Re:Vectra XU front panels
by
BakaMark
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· Score: 1
Not as bad as the compaqs. Most of their desktops and servers over the years do not have a reset button. This forces you to use the power switch.
Key Decisions: The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms...
Workstations
Decision: We will incorporate the strength of Compaq's Windows NT workstations to form the industry's broadest, most comprehensive product line....[Kinda makes you wanna barf]...HP workstations will provide great value across the industry-leading 32- and 64-bit operations system environments: Windows, Linux and HP-UX.
Is it just me, or is the lack of mention under servers significant?
O well, Linux has come this far without depending on either HP or Q, it doesn't need HPQ either.
Is it just me, or is the lack of mention under servers significant?
You bet it is. Compaq was (and still is) a Windows company. Sure they had some Unix stuff here and there, but they knew which platform buttered their bread. Now that HP has assimilated Compaq, much of that "Windows above all else" culture will permeate HP. I fully expect HP to begin moving away from their remaining non-Windows platforms slowly but surely (at a pace just fast enough not to upset the media).
Re:Linux mentioned twice, lightly
by
gnomer
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· Score: 1
Is it just me, or is the lack of mention under servers significant?
Don't get your panties in bunch, AC. HP just landed a deal to build the one of largest compute clusters ever. And guess what it's going to run....that's right, Linux. HP also sells business systems with Linux preinstalled. Plus they hired some of the big name Linux guys (Bruce Perens for one). What more do ya want?
The purpose of this document is to tell customers what is going away. Linux isn't. You would not believe how much customer action Linux has been getting of late. If I took all of the sales presentation invitations I get, I'd never see my 2-year-old again. HP has to go where the customers are, and they are asking for Linux.
I wonder how many other famous people also read this site? We should get them together as guest commentators on various, relevant stories or something...
Bruce, I would love to agree with your assessment, but most of the road map discussed things that were to continue, this was certainly not just a review of what is to be dropped. It talked about Itanium as an upcoming 64 bit Intel platform, but touted NT as the driving OS for that platform, not even mentioning Linux. It claimed the HP-UX was to be HP's Unix offering. They have been trying to kill HP-UX for years and it just won't go away! I'm sorry, but whoever wrote that road map did NOT have Linux on their mind.
what it really says
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
UNIX
HP and Compaq both offered UNIX operating systems: HP-UX and Compaq Tru64(TM) UNIX.
Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP. Tru64 UNIX has some very advanced features -- including clustering and file systems -- and some of those will be integrated into HP-UX over time.
Rationale: HP-UX has a much larger market share and installed base of customers. It also has much broader ISV support than Tru64 UNIX.
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium.
MOD UP!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
n/t
Curious choice of words there, HP
by
xcomputer_man
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Read this:
"The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms."
(emphasis mine)
How do they expect to require.NET to support UNIX & Linux? The only other middleware option of significance here is J2EE, and that already supports all the platforms anyway. Mono, IIRC isn't anywhere ready for production use.
On the other hand, I think it is good to see them affirm equal attention for the three dominant platforms.
(I can almost hear the OpenVMS folk coughing loudly now...)
Re:Curious choice of words there, HP
by
term8or
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· Score: 0
They also said in the message that they will invest in.NET; presumably their main investment will be to port.NET to HP-UX.
I found the comments that HP-UX was to be their main unix operating system interesting (if a bit depressing). It suggests to me that a concentrated effort to add new functionality is on the way. After all, they can take any good tru64 (I've never used the OS, so can't comment on how good it was;) functionality and add it to HP-UX. More investment in HP-UX might result in a better OS; maybe HP are trying to rival Linux, Solaris and Microsloth. Ultimately, they can do this only if they provide one main unix OS.
(I hope they sort out the debugger. During an entire year programming in C, C++ and CORBA on HPUX i never found one that was any good).
With any luck, the merger might revive the OS wars. Unix looks a lot more like a viable alternative to WinDoze as a result of the merger. HP are definitely interested in becoming the "One True unix" and with a port to.NET, Application s written for WinDoze should (with any luck) be very easily ported to HP-UX, and possibly even linux.
Interesting.
--
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.:) " - AC
Re:Curious choice of words there, HP
by
sql*kitten
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· Score: 2
How do they expect to require.NET to support UNIX & Linux?
Why not? You can already get the Common Language Runtime, IL debugger, C# compiler, etc on FreeBSD. I'm sure HP could easily work with Microsoft to bring at least the CLR to HPUX, especially since Compaq and Microsoft were good friends.
Re:Curious choice of words there, HP
by
alext
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· Score: 2
Wow, just think...
All we'd need then is a user interface and maybe a link to a database or two, for those heavy duty Enterprise apps.
Truly the future is being shaped before our eyes.
BTW anyone who says just use Java is a spoilsport.
Re:Curious choice of words there, HP
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Just use Java instead.
This is what we all make of it.
by
Motheius
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· Score: 1
So Tru64 is being phased out. So what? You have to look at this like we are all in an ecosystem. The environment is changing, the ``dinosaurs'' are getting killed off and this leaves more room for other ``creatures'' to fill the void that is left after the big guys fall. I will be happy to take work migrating Tru64 systems to FreeBSD, OpenBSD or Linux as the client requires.
Don't feel guilty about it. Digital engineers quite liked the open systems and contributed (whether officially or not) to Linux and various BSD derivatives. They had GNU C running on Alpha a long time before they got a Digital compiler (DEC C) running there.
What does this mean for quality?
by
theolein
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· Score: 1
My impression of HP's PC line was that it was always amongst the best ones in terms of quality if not price and performance. My impression of Compaq was that their service was not very good, but expensive and their PC's were not very good quality or cheap but were good performers.
Does this mean that the quality will go down overall for PC's from HP?
I feel for all those that are going to lose their jobs because of this. Bad time to lose your job in this industry.
Re:What does this mean for quality?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
My impression of Compaq was that... their PC's were not very good quality or cheap but were good performers.
I think maybe you're mistaken.
Compaq deskpros aren't cheap, but their quality is second-to none. I've got a Deskpro P100 (one of the first P100s they made), and it's never had a problem; SCSI and Ethernet on-board, no screwdriver required to replace anything inside the case.
I've used clones, HPs, Compaqs, and I'd say that Compaqs are the highest-quality overall.
Don't judge Compaq by the Presario.
This saved me days* of development work!
by
mekkab
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· Score: 3, Funny
So I spent a couple of hours researching communication device driver implementations for both HPUX and Tru64. "They" want prototypes by the end of next week, however I go on vacation next Tuesday.
Guess which proto I don't have to do anymore?!?!?!
(* okay, not days. But the initial developement effort was "rounded up" to days in true software engineering style. Its still a win-win situation for me.)
-- In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
by
heinzkeinz
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· Score: 1
How in the HELL is this redundant??? [snip remainder of bitching]
Maybe the problem is that there is no moderation option for (-1, Karma Whoring).
It doesn't seem likely that H-f**king-P is going to get slashdotted, does it?
Get off your high horse.
They say they are in an "enviable" position
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Both Compaq and HP have very robust storage portfolios, so we are in the enviable position of being able to develop a roadmap based on the best of the best.
I thought that was funny, reading that on a corporate website.
Not funny enough to post logged in, but funny nonetheless.
Click on the link in the article shit for brains!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Click on the link in the article shit for brains!
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
HP and Compaq, the guys who run the NYSE for goodness sake
Yes, the run it alright, right into the ground. Which is hardly any different from a/.'ing.
Long Live BSD
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yay! It's good to see HP continue the tradition of BSD in HP/UX. BSD has pioneered many innovations which are still in use today. Furthermore, if you don't have a PA-RISC, you can now run true blue BSD on your PC. Check out FreeBSD. Make the switch. Run BSD today.
The unanswered question
by
SuperKendall
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· Score: 2
When will we see OpenVMS on our iPaq's?
-- "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice thought, but my little IPAQ pocket-PC has a much better spec than a VAX 11/750 with 4MB of memory. However the IPAQ has a GUI while the 750 supported about 4 users through character mode terminals.
RED HERRING'S open letter to HP CEO Carly Fiorina
by
IvyMike
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Saw this letter a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
Re:The future of unix at hp
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Have you heard of MacOS X?
Properitary UNIX isn't dying, it's just moving into the modern age.
Digital.com redirects you to Compaq.com which redirects you to HP.com!
It's a fun ride! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Bill
Bad news about the HP Jornada line:
by
BakaMark
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· Score: 1
Well I am not pleased, because I own a HP Jornada. I hope that this does not mean that spare parts and upgrades for the HP Jornada are effectively tossed out the window.
Correct me if I am wrong but the iPAQs are really only handhelds, with no keybaord. The models of the Jornadas span from handhelds, to fold out types (with keybaords), to laptop style. I consider the laptop type to be an expensive toy. However I also think that the handheld type is useless for anyone who prefers to type, rather than "be taught to write" with a stylus.
Yeah, you can probably plug a keyboard into the handheld iPAQ just like you can into a Palm devices, but there is a tradoff of sturdiness verses "putting the thing in your pocket".
Maybe a lot of spare parts places will start dumping their HP Jornada bits onto auction sites once they learn about this press release.
Re:Bad news about the HP Jornada line:
by
Subliminal+Fusion
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I've got an older Jornada, I bought it for about $250 or so when they discontinued the model (the thing's a freakin' brick so I hardly ever carry it around anymore). I've been looking into getting a new PDA for a while, and with this announcement, I'll probably wait 'till the new iPAQs come out (and either get one of them or one of the current models if the price is right).
As far as the form factors of the two, yes the Jornada did have mini-laptop types and fold-out models with keyboards. Kinda cool, but honestly, all but the palm-sized models are way too big to carry around in your pocket. If I'm going to have to carry something else, I might as well go for a full laptop that's got more functionality than any palm-sized out there (well, except for the OQO Pocket Computer)
x86-64
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
There is no mention of x86-64.
Wonder if they will have to when Microsoft releases an x86-64 vesion of Windows. Still, it must hurt.
Re:x86-64
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
"There is no mention of x86-64."
What, did you close your eyes (or your brain) when reading the "Itanium Servers" section? Huh? Did ya?
The most important question, for me: Will HP keep Compaq's service and support for business personal systems and servers?
Compaq's support is unequalled -- far better than HP's -- in my experience running the systems for many small businesses. The ability to speak to knowledgeable, motivated techs is the #1 reason I buy Compaq.
Before you jump in with your support experiences, remember: It depends on your relationship with the vendor. Buy 5,000 systems, you'll get one kind of support. But my clients buy 10-50; Compaq is the only company that offers them competent support. Don't tell me about Dell -- my support from them is only untrained bureaucrats.
Free domain names, $$$-free and restriction-free. Cool aTLDs, that make sense. Built in DynDNS. http://www.freenic.ntwrk Please, enlighten me. Freenic.netwrk doesn't resolve for me; I'm guessing it's some upstart type TLD that my ISP's DNS isn't wise to?
-- __ Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
hunh. i've had the same ip (24.xxx)since the Great Switch. which was about 8 months ago. previous to that my ip had been a (12.xxx). It's documented better on the link i provide. of course, i live in plano, tx, where alot of phone companies have their headquarters (supposedly), so cable internet downloads burst @ 1.7 mbps, and i've seen as much as 700k/s sustained transfer. i don't run my own DNS server, but i haven't had problems otherwise.
Re:[OT] Re:Awesome.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm guessing it's some upstart type TLD that my ISP's DNS isn't wise to
You could say that! You need to include freenic's root dns hints. I'd paste them here for you but Taco's junkcharacter bullshit prevents this from being easy
forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Nobody has mentioned this yet, but HP has a lot of "slices" in the test equipment "pie"; for example, for scopes, frequency/logic analyzers etc, their only real competition is Tektronix(arguably, Tektronix has them beat here, but HP still produces some damn fine, and popular, equipment.)
Fluke has the handheld meter pretty squared away(HP doesn't offer anything there anyway) but HP competes with Fluke on bench meters(ie, big but highly accurate meters for production assembly, test labs etc.)
HP also has a pretty big presence in the medical area, has for a -looooong- time(my father, 30 years ago, worked for HP programming their medical diag equipment.) What about that stuff?
And, of course, the most familiar category for slashdot people...HP calculators...but Fiorina(sp?) the Wicked Witch from the West killed that off a LONG time ago...way before any of this(at least a coupe months ago, right?)
One could argue that it wasn't mentioned in the press release because it may not "be an issue" since Compaq never had any of that stuff...maybe it's business as usual. What concerns me is that HP loves to tout their stupid barn in commercials, but they didn't tout in the PR release their test equipment business, which is, believe it or not, what was getting made in that stupid barn(and quite a while after the barn.)
If they -have- decided to dump the test/medical business, maybe they're embarassed and don't really want to draw attention to it exactly because it WAS their roots and they've basically abandoned them? Kinda spoils the commercials. "This is where it all started......BUT we've THROWN that out!"
I'm just completely disappointed by the whole thing; HP WAS an awesome company, so was Digital, in a bunch of ways, and like others have said, some of the coolest stuff has been flushed by execs with no soul; execs love to tout history/tradition/culture, but ONLY when it suits them.
Everything about the deal stunk, morale at both companies is probably going to go into the toilet(I know several -DIGITAL- employees, and they're NOT happy; certainly not a good sampling though), and who knows how investors will react. One BIG warning sign was that every time some hiccup in the merger process popped up, HP's stock took a nice little jump..it was like there were investors saying "oh, thank GOD, it's not going to go through"(sort of like the rich mother whose daughter gets dumped the night before the wedding to a sleazy shoe salesman; she's DAMN happy the marriage never happened.)
I guess a big part of it is that I'm just really, really tired of mergers. Haven't we seen enough fail? Isn't sometimes the solution just simply reorganizing the company? Why couldn't compaq cut the fat in areas where they sucked on their own?
Personally, I think the US consumer is pretty tired of megacorporations, which is why so many(mostly in the retail sector) are in trouble.
[siiiigh]. Folks, lets reward all the small businesses in the world and just ignore, no matter what the cost, the giant corporations trying to destroy the livelyhood of our neighborhood businessmen/women...
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
AnimeFreak
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It's funny, you wonder how companies start-out and you find-out they did something somewhat related but not the same...
For instance...
Sega of America did mechanical-based games for the Army. The name "Sega" came from it's original name "Service Games."
Nintendo of Japan started out as a playing card company.
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Toshiba made leather goods.
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
PMM
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· Score: 0
you are wrong
sega stands for sogota ekimito goto asa
dont know what the exact translation is, but your callous attempt is infuriating to the informed population of slashdot
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The common version of the story is here:
http://www.theseganetwork.8k.com/history.html
Which implies that "Sega" was derived from a predessor company called "Service Games" by American management.
As your post doesn't adequately contradict the common story, it isn't informative at all and will quickly be forgotten by myself and others. Game Over for you. Have fun being infuriated!
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
n8willis
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· Score: 1
Our favorite long-distance carrier Sprint started out as Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications -- stringing the lines that ran next to SP rails; which soon became a major source of revenue as other companies wanted to rent them out since the infrastructure was so good.
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
nelsonal
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· Score: 1
MCI was and still is a trucking firm. The telecomm arm was designed to save costs on controlling the trucks. It was only later that Ma Bell opposed it sparking the anti-trust suit.
-- Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Re:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
Deflatamouse!
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· Score: 1
One other interesting note about Sega was that it was started by a westerner... I don't remember, but it was either a British or an American.
Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP. Tru64 UNIX has some very advanced features -- including clustering and file systems -- and some of those will be integrated into HP-UX over time.
Wow! Tru64 UNIX has support for file systems? What'll those Compaq engineers dream up next? Symbolic links?!
Re:File systems?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
They probably mean AdvFS (OSF Advanced Filesystem), which supports journaling and ACLs. And it does it for at least 5 years...
Tru64 has some very cool technology in the file system and clustering space.
First off, they offer a journaling file system and have been doing so for a long time.
Second off, their clustering is very good -- some of the best around.
I'll have to disagree (re: services and support)
by
vekotin
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· Score: 1
I suppose there are as many opinions as there are writers, scenarios and locations, but over here I could write a book on customers that have been majorly unhappy with Compaq support. It may change with the number of installed systems of course, but from HP it's been good for 5 and 500 computers alike.
Then again, for me, it's not about software and support but about the fact that Compaq workstations have been a pain. Since the original HP Vectra (286), I've known to trust them. Compaq's done it's few good things but basically, they've either been too unstable with an okay price or too high priced.
With a large amount of various opinions all over the customer area I'm sure, how many people will have to do like me and just make the unwanted decision of stopping to buy HP stuff from now? I wonder if they've properly calculated this at HP.
-- /v\
The power of VMS
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Thanks for the great historical review, you reminded me of some pleasant memories and gave me more DEC arcana to enjoy. I only wanted to add a comment about my own nostalgia.
When I graduated from college in '92, the school's main computers were 2 VAXen (8550 and 8700). Just to put this in perspective: each machine had 64 Mb, later upgraded to 256; both shared a "disk farm" of washing machine-size units full of platters. 20Gb total. They also shared a T1 line to the outside world. And they comfortably served about 300 users, a mix of school administration and students.
When I remember this and see how slow my Thinkpad T21 feels, with PIII-800, 20Gb disk, 512Mb RAM and 100Mbps ethernet it makes me want to cry. Damn Win 2K...:-) (sorry, work requires it. Otherwise I'd have Linux on it, since Thinkpads love it!)
Re:The power of VMS
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Damn Win 2K...
More like... Damn GUI!
My box spends 95% of the CPU on my user interface (Steve's decision with the Quartz, ya'know). My computer architecture professor, Dr. Tom K. Miller, looked us all straight in the face told us the truth... He said, one day, far in the future, but not that far... 95% of the CPU would drive the UI. I did not know how right he was... Or...maybe... he only was referring to Mac OS X users.
Re:The power of VMS
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Have you actually tried DECwindows? It was amazingly sluggish even back in the day.
But it may yet make a comeback. VMS' main disadvantange has been that it ran strictly on proprietary DEC architecture, and it was hugely popular just as long as DEC hardware was hugely popular. Now that it's being ported to Itanium, I think it has a chance to recapture a significant portion of the market share it used to 0wn.
Relative to Unix, it has no significant technical drawbacks that I know of. As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
> As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
Built-in features out the gazoo.
Just last week I was looking at man lpr to see if I could change the priority on my big print jobs in the queue to let other people's smaller jobs past. Nope, but su can reorder them by hand. Sigh...
How I miss thee, O VMS. And how I wish there were a free{beer,speech} version for x86.
You don't even need a VAX hardware simluator. VMS runs just fine on Alphas, and there are plenty of those available used. If you insist on a VAX it's not even all that hard to find an old VAXStation; Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale has a stack of them.
That's what I would have guessed, but I don't know enough Unix to be able to tell on my own. You get used to a lot of luxuries with VMS, I suspect.
Why do you want an x86 version when Alphas are so cheap? And the hobbyist VMS license is free, or close to it.
-- And the brethren went away edified.
Re: Hope for VMS yet
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Your mom ruled it legal to fuck her ass by shoving my massive cock up it, and demonstrated how to do it.
The golden shine of memory
by
MadMirko
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· Score: 1
RIP DEC. We didn't know how good we had it...
Oh my... will there be people stating "RIP MS. We didn't know how good we had it..." in 15 years?
Re:The golden shine of memory
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
MS has $40,000,000,000 in cash assets. There would have to be some stupid shit going on for that company to be gone in fifteen years.
Re:The golden shine of memory
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petis
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· Score: 2
"I think k$40,000,000 will be enough for anybody"
- Bill G, fifteen years ago
hmm...
Re:The golden shine of memory
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Craig+Maloney
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· Score: 2
he ony issue I saw with TRU/64 (OSF/1 at the time) was DEC wanted $10,000 for the license to use it, and that only bought you a bare bones 2-user license. For the same $10K, you could get yourself VMS. They didn't want to cannibalize their VMS market, so they made their UNIX line suffer in the process. I didn't have many complaints about TRU/64, and I'd safely say it was one of my more favorite commercial UNIX implementations (Sun OS being the one I cut my teeth on and my favorite of them all). HP-UX is a real pain in the ass to develop on because nothing is in a standard location, and their compiler leaves much to be desired. I've never seen a commercial repository for GNU software where you absolutely had to use it to get the software to work until I saw HP-UX.
So long TRU/64! Thanks for the memories!
Re:The golden shine of memory
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MrDolby
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· Score: 1
Well If the federal reserve keeps pouring money into the market creating inflation, 40 billion might seem like a small amount of cash.
I love my 1985 HP-11C as well... I wish they still made them, as I'd buy a few more for members of my extended family who are turning 12. What a great way to learn how to write simple programs; registers, stacks, etc.
Although their days were numbered even before the merger was announced, it will be truly sad to see this combination go. I never really had the chance to get down and dirty with such a system, but Alpha is legendary in performance. I remember when Intel chips were under 200MHz (maybe even under 100) and Alpha was over 500, and that was without any pipeline-shifting nonsense. Ahh, those were the days... It is sad that Alpha never really got off the ground. I wonder what exactly it was that prevented Alpha-based machines from taking a position like Sun or IBM's systems have...ubiquitous in the network world. I guess Alpha was pitched as more of a number crunching box. Anyone who cares to comment...
I just hope that IA-64 is all it's cracked up to be since it seems that pretty much every maker of quality RISC processors is dumping their product for IA-64 homoginization (at least, HP/Compaq...IBM's PowerPC will live on as far as i know, but how long?) Even Sun is considering IA-64 based products I believe. We will see, I guess.
Re:Alphas & Tru64
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sasami
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I wonder what exactly it was that prevented Alpha-based machines from taking a position like Sun or IBM
It's the usual answer: DEC never knew how to market them. And Compaq? As far as I'm concerned, they never even tried.
I joined DEC right out of college. Exactly one week later, it became Compaq. None of the employees knew anything about it until it happened. But Compaq had damage control prepped and ready to go: the line they fed us was that corporate purchasers usually invite the top three companies to bid on a contract, and since DEC was fourth (after Sun, IBM, and HP, apparently), it was disproportionately locked out of the game. But whenever DEC managed to get invited, they would usually win. So the "strategy" for the new behemoth was pretty much that they expected to get invited everywhere and win lots of contracts. Almost without trying.
Well, we all know how Alphaserver sales just took off after that, don't we?
Interestingly, they had well-known DEC execs deliver these fabulously optimistic forecasts... execs that promptly departed before the integration even began. (Not that anything resembling integration actually happened anyway.)
I guess Alpha was pitched as more of a number crunching box.
Not really. Alpha did have that reputation, for obvious reasons, and it had a stable market in the technical computing field (CERN and LLNL come to mind). But that's a fairly small niche, not enough to sustain the business. The wider market penetration just never happened. When I left DEC in, I dunno, 1999 or something, I couldn't tell what marketing was doing at all. It was listless, confused, and worse than directionless.
And even that came to an end, didn't it? I didn't notice at the time, but in retrospect I don't recall seeing any kind of public support of Alpha after 2000 or so.
And so it faded away. My blood, sweat, and tears are in Digital Unix, but I began and concluded my mourning months ago, when Compaq murdered Alpha and handed its head to Intel on a platter. This merger is a postlude, nothing more...
---
I like canned peaches.
-- Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
Re:Alphas & Tru64
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Don't count out the Alpha. You get about 128 of them when you buy a Cray.
Re:Alphas & Tru64
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm sure that Compaq's thought process went something like this:
"Hey let's buy DEC. That will get rid of a major x86 server competitor."
"What are we going to do about all that old 'mainframe' stuff that DEC makes?"
"Aw - No problem! We'll just switch them all over to the new Intel Merced chip running on Proliants running Windows NT!!! It's they way of the future!"
(Buys Digital, looks closely at books)
"Oh shit. These guys made ALL of their money from funky proprietary midrange stuff, and they've got active 20 year support contracts. We're stuck with it!"
Intel: "Looks like Itanium is going to be about 7 years late. Sorry!"
"Uh, guess we have to keep making Alphas. But don't let anyone know about it because it will make it harder to switch 'em later."
Anyway, the rest of the industry was definately getting bad vibes about the future of Alpha ever since DEC sold their fabs to Intel. Compaq was a shitty box pusher and was just incapable of getting how to push midrange computing. Consequentally, they missed out on the biggest revenue period the market has ever seen (dotcom days). Everyone knew it was being EOLed and was staying the hell away from it.
The one good thing about this is that HP understands the importance of midrange tech, so some of DEC's engineering will live on.
is she married?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I've always wanted to marry a rich woman. I'll happily spend portions of those big paychecks on geek toys. If she's good at screwing entire companies, she'd probably be pretty good in the sack with just me. I'll just make sure I have a good supply of bungie condoms. Anyone involved in corporate wide group sex has to be carrying at least one or two nasty little bugs.
Re:cherish my balls as though they were lost child
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Heh... some webmaster at HP just learnt about the ABBR tag and has explained what HP stands for at least 60 times in that page (while leaving explanations of IA-32, tc2210, PA-RISC, HP-UX, NAS/SAN to the reader's imagination). Not only is ABBR probably wrong for HP (surely an acronym?), but you're only supposed to provide an explaination for the first occurence of the abbreviation in a page.
I never understood people who liked VMS. Nearly everything about it annoys me to death.
The shell command to change directory has about 39 different types of punctuation. The CXX compiler is utter crap. The graphical user interface sucks. LSE is crappy editor. Record Management System was a probably a nice idea 15 years ago but I suspect that even then it had no real world value.
I doubt it is as secure as people claim... Just last week a friend of mine found a shared memory bug that allowed him to read other people's memory.
I have to admit that I do like VMS ACL support. That's the only redeaming quality I can think of. And it's not enough...
Good thing GNU is here to save the day
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I hear they're starting work on a VMS clone. In typical GNU fashion, it's going to be named with a recursive acronym -- HIV, for HIV Isn't VMS.
Wow, maybe that name change will get another chance. Since I am looking for work anyway, I probably ought to dust off those old VAX VMS internals books and revise my resume;-)
On UNIX
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP. Tru64 UNIX has some very advanced features -- including clustering
and file system -- and some of those will be integrated into HP-UX over time.
Wow, there's a chance that HP-UX will get a file system!
Could HP be so bold and finally f*cking support iso9660 on HP-UX? Nah, that'd be too bold...
-- Sigged!
Re:Tru64 to improve HP-UX
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
iso9660 is supported on HP-UX. With a recent enough version of HP-UX, it even supports the Joliet extensions.
mount -F cdfs/dev/dsk/c0t6d0/cdrom
Want to see what filesystems are supported by your kernel?
/usr/sbin/fstyp
Ben Collver
Re:Tru64 to improve HP-UX
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
You have probably meant Rockridge extention support. Man pfs_mount should get you going. It's not what I would call a native support, it's a 3rd party tool. But it works.
It seems that Jornada PocketPCs will be replaced by iPaqs but what about their handheld PC line? I would hate to see them phase out the 700 line... I've had a Jornada 720 for over a year and it is indispensible.
Does anyone know what the story is here?
-- sudo eat my shorts
Re:Jornada 720 HPC
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nowt
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· Score: 3, Informative
Especially with linux installed. I now have a mobile linux workstation with my 720. It simply rocks.
Hacking cf-II into cf slot, I have a full gnu-gcc toolchain on udrive so can even piddle with kernel development for the jornada, on the jornada:-)
As far as what will happen with the joranda hpc's, I'm trying to find out... but everything done so far is directed toward the $ so I'm not hopeful.
-- A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
From what I remember, Tru64 was the first 64-bit clean OS. It was based on Ultrix which in turn was based on BSD.
Nice and Concise
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Wanker
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Is anyone else impressed that they even posted all this information in such a short and concise manner? How many merger/aquisitions have we seen where nobody admits to letting ANY products die for fear of losing the last two customers using it?
At least they're pretty much laying it down for us rather than letting everyone find out when it's time to upgrade. (Oh, that? Nah, we don't make that any more...)
I actually believe them as well. HP historically has had excellent support on their high-end products (i.e. UNIX servers, enterprise disk arrays, etc.) (Don't get me started on their PC support, though.)
The shift to the new products likely will be done over about a three year period, since that seems to be the preferred (max) length of an HP support agreement.
For all the uproar this aquisition created it sure looks like they are executing on it nicely so far. (I.e. no BS about how layoffs won't happen, nice and up-front on what products will go away, etc.) I find their honesty strangely refreshing given what I've seen in many other aquisitions.
Now if they'd just start calling it an aquisition instead of a merger, then they would really get my respect.;-)
Tru64 going is fine with me but it had some advanced features that Linux doesn't. As long as they're phasing it out they may as well GPL it and have some coders work on getting some of those features ported to Linux for inclusion into 2.5.xx, I mean HP actually looks like it wants to support Linux. Oh well, I doubt anything like that would ever happen.
I really don't see this happening, though the new company does seem pretty committed to the future of Linux. From what I understand all (most) of the advanced features that make Tru64 so powerful, like clustering and AdvFS will be incorporated into the next generation HPUX. This might finally be an example of the good old DEC technology finally getting put in a position with good market share.
didn't compaq sell off the rights to the Alpha (and along with that, Tru64) to Intel some time ago?
there's goes another good dist out the window...
Mod parent up!
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Good work, Mr. Forsh. Note to all Open Source fanboys: Your business plan is a road to nowhere, just look at VA Software. Pretty soon, Taco and the rest of the/. crew will be forced onto the street selling anal sex to dirty GNU/Linux hobos.
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yes, the run it alright, right into the ground.
Yeah, I ran my cock and balls right into your mother's rectum last night. She told me when I first met her that she was into "three input". So I decided to see if she was lying. Needless to say, she wasn't. Cleanup was easy, your Mom shat my load onto your mattress, just before you came home. I told her she was a good fuck. She said she gets a lot of butt-humping practice...from you.
But even before the DEC Rainbow, came the 'Robin' or VT180. A VT100 Terminal coupled with a Dual Floppy Drive/CPU Box that ran CP/M on a Z80 processor.
Re:just in case if they get slashdotted
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Get off your high horse.
Quit fucking your high horse, Linux hippie.
Possible fix for your palm.
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jawtheshark
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· Score: 1
After a year of heavy usage on my Psion (I use it all the time for all sorts of tasks), it seemed to behave eratically. Turning itself off suddenly, battery status indicator plainly wrong. After backing up my data (which I tend to do once in a while anyway), I did a hard-reset to it. It works fine again now (uploaded my stuff again of course). I suspect that the internal filesystem got fragmented/corrupted or something like that, because I came down from 25% disk usage to 8% disk usage. Not sure.
If your Palm is not phyically dead (I mean a hardware failure), try to reset it (usually with a pen).
Hope this helps...of course we're talking about different platforms. (I don't really like Palms, hardware and software wise)
-- Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I can't say that I am one of those big fighters for open source, though I must say coding your own software is easier if you have the code for certain parts of the OS (depending on what you do, different parts are relevant). In fact, I really hate it when I can't get to know what that OnPaint() really does when I want to inherit a GUI control.
But onto my read message. Where does the source go when the OS are killed? I persume it will go into hiding, never to be found again, which really is a shame. There is one thing when a company tries to sell a product, but when they stop doing so, it's only fair to their customers that they release the source. It more than likely won't have any impact on the OpenSource movement, but to some it might be very very important indeed.
Re:Where do all dead OSs go?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
OSes are usually mired in years of old licenses and crap like that.
A company buys a license to use SystemV source in their product... 15 years later 100 lines of original SystemV still exist. Therefore it is still copyrighted. Same reason why "openning solaris" is really not that open.
Re:Where do all dead OSs go?
by
forgoil
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· Score: 2
Even more reason to smack som sense into the whole software business. There need to be a "best before" date on these kinds of things. If nothing else so that it's not so dangerous to invest in software from non big companies.
Re:Where do all dead OSs go?
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wadetemp
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· Score: 2
The source for those OSes still contains plenty of IP that the company is going to want to keep secret. By releasing the source they could provide the information a competitor needs to undercut sales (even if that competitor is Linux.) I think they'd prefer to hold onto the IP and implement it in whatever *nix they feel it is most appropritate.
Re:Where do all dead OSs go?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I don't know anything about Tru64 in particular, but in general, the problem with open-sourcing a proprietary product is usually all the third- party licensed code. Sanitizing an old commercial OS which has been around for years could be a pretty major effort, and any mistake could easily end up getting the company into a lawsuit.
Re:RED HERRING'S open letter to HP CEO Carly Fiori
by
3nd3r
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· Score: 0
As an ex hper, and my brother's division verifone recently dropped from hp - I can only say that letter is absolute gospel.
That women should have been thrown out on her ass a long time ago.
I for one am entirely happy with the way this thing has panned out. My little Compaq Armada has been a tank, and I sure as heck don't want one of those HP Omnibooks (well, the low end cheapos) to replace the Armada line. I applaud HP's wise decision to maintain the better of the two lines, but at the same time hope that it won't become a curiously melded or designed-by-a-far-larger-committee exercise. I think the merger was the right choice, overall, and I look forward to a future of better products than either Compaq of HP could have offered separately. $0.02 for sale
HP spun off the test/medical equip division into a seperate company. Visit www.agilent.com.
Re:Alphas & Tru64 - Reply to Sun + Itanium Ide
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
so, you asked for sun and the itanium.
to my understanding, and all i am fine to tell without violating any paperwork, sun plus itanium is not goint to happen. sun currently puts a lot of work in the ultrasparc 5 cpu, which will among other features bring asynchronous data processing - which means that the sub-units of the cpu are no longer running at a common clock frequency, each can go as fast as necessary/desired. this will finally kick the intel-infested "Mhz-Benchmarking" out of the door, since you cannot measure Mhz with a CPU that is able to vary clock and has various clock multipliers throughout the "boats" inside the cpu.
powerpc cpu in a sun is even less likely.
the only advanced intel-related thing i expect to see is AA64 aka x86-64 in the cobalt appliance line, or maybe a blade-server running linux.
don`t expect to see anything intel based in the future, unless sun gets bought by HPack or IBM. (no one else would dare, and HPack is IMNSHO doing the SGI thing already, too.).
so, enjoy your time, Apple starts building Rack servers - i cannot wait for my flashy looking white plastic with blue apple IBM Regatta Mauler from Apple:-)
I think we can expect great things from RoboTroll, very strong fundamentals. I can see synergistic convergence through both horizontal and vertical integration. I'm issuing a strong buy recomendation on this stock. Make sure to load up on this in your 4o1K.
The only downside is the very great risk that slashdot will go titsup.com. This will be an obstacle in the RoboTroll roadmap. But there still is usenet!
Nokia started with rubber boots. At the same time, they were in the paper industry, too, and even nowadays, there is a company called "Nokia" that makes really good paper towels.
The mobile phone business came into the picture with another little company that merged with Nokia. The company was called "Mobira" and many a Finn still remember them and their "portable" (really freaking heavy boxen) phones:o)))
ULTRIX is a red-headed stepchild. It's not related in any way, shape or form to OSF/1-DEC-UNIX-TRU64. Well, other than the fact that it's a Unix system.
Does this mean we get HP OpenView for Linux...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Re:Is it called HOMPAK now?
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crawling_chaos
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· Score: 2
I prefer Unisys, The Next Generation. Reminds me of what's in store for the future HP. Anyone work for Unisys during the merger? I had a co-worker who shared with me a song the employees wrote to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" I can't remember anything but the chorus, which went something like this:
Glory, glory, Halleluiah
Glory, glory, Halleluiah
Glory, glory, Halleluiah
And the stock keeps going down!
-- You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
The thing I'll miss more than anything
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Is when Tru64 disappers i highly doubt the people at hp will be able to port over AdvFS....it is undoubtably the best filesystem EVER. Also I'm sure on this but isn't tru64 microkernel and HP-ux monolithic? That would cause more than a few problems in the port of anything
I appeal to the geek masses - surely someone out there has already found where the reset line is.
The servers at the ISP where I work are all HP Netservers (running Linux:o) ; when I was setting them up, my boss insisted we have Watchdog cards installed (he was used to Windows, and thought Linux would have the same problems.)
I ran into the same problem you did - the reset line isn't accessible from the front panel. So I called HP, explained what I was trying to do, 10 minutes later a tech had emailed me what I needed to know. (not that it mattered - the watchdog cards have never been needed.)
So, the simplest solution is to ask them. You might be surprised.
Re:Have you tried asking them?
by
Sophacles
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· Score: 1
I ran into the same problem you did - the reset line isn't accessible from the front panel. So I called HP, explained what I was trying to do, 10 minutes later a tech had emailed me what I needed to know. (not that it mattered - the watchdog cards have never been needed.)
I also have found HP tech support to be extremely helpful. I recently bought an ancient hp hub (ethertwist HubPlus) from the store where the university sends old equipment to be recycled (a separate rant is how they used to just keep it in a warehouse to die... sad really). Anyway I couldnt find any documentation about the hub (other than reccomended upgrade paths), so I called tech support. Instead of being fed a "we dont support that anymore" line, and being told that I really should upgrade (nevermind that Im a poor student), the tech pulled the doc from thier document server and made it available thru ftp from one of thier public servers. No hassle, no tech saying I didnt know what I was talking about, just someone listening to what I could explain, and then answering my questions without just being a fancy bio-robotic interface to the tech support database.
The follow-up email from the tech to make sure I had gotten everything working and assuring me she would willing to help if I had any more problems was way unexpected and way cool too. It was kind of funny too, it had a line something similar to: While Hewlett-Packard is certain that our products are high quality and should last a long time, the equipment you are using is aging, and may be prone to failure. This is fine for your home network, but we urge you to consider newer HP solutions in a mission critical setting. (or some other corporatese meaning the same thing).
Hopefully theyll keep the same level of support with the influx of Compaq customers
-- To live till you die
is to live long enough.
-Lao Tzu,
Tao Te Ching
Hp's new palm pc:
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
the iNada!
I would have been happier with UNIX integration.
by
emil
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· Score: 2
HP-UX is profoundly weak in several areas. If Carly had come out and said "the new TruHP UNIX will unify the strengths of HP-UX and Digital OSF/1 UNIX on ia64," I would have thought her to be much more reasonable.
Really, the tru64 kernel should simply replace the HP-UX kernel, with the important addition of Veritas support.
Now would also be a good time to redesign the software packaging mechanisms and implement something like RedHat up2date.
But instead, HP throws us the same old trash. I hope their market share continues to erode.
She killed HP's MPE OS. She killed HP's calculators. She sold the PA-RISC design team to Intel.
She didn't kill VMS yet, but Just Wait. VMS is alive till they can figure a way to transition them to HPUX. They are not making the same mistake of not offering a transition like they did with MPE. VMS is Dead, but the death certificate hasn't been signed yet by Mrs Carly.
Very Sorry.
Breaking news!!!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The customers who will initially purchase Itanium servers are the ones who require 64-bit computing.
They did, however, forget to add those same customers will have way more money than brains.
Carly, what's the Linux story for the new HP? Ceding that space to IBM?
Re:I'll have to disagree (re: services and support
by
guanxi
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· Score: 1
Compaq's done it's few good things but basically, they've either been too unstable with an okay price or too high priced.
You certainly pay a premium for the quality business-line Compaqs (formerly Deskpro, Armada, iPaq and now Evo); I avoid the cheaper consumer line at all costs. But those expensive business line machines have always been very reliable, and more than pay for themselves in reduced downtime for users, fewer support calls for me, and reduced time per support call due to their well-trained technicians.
It's already ported to IA-64 - HP-UX 11.20 is the first commercial version on IA-64. We have an Itanium server with this at work. They've still got some work to do on it though...there was a lot of "this will be supported in the next release" in the manuals. But the basic kernel is there, etc, and we did get it to run the HP-UX version of Oracle 9 (with some tinkering).
my corporate investment group for voting yes on this merger. The company I work for had enough votes that if they had changed from yes to no, the merger would have failed. So, our yes vote is now going to cause us to throw away over $3M in work and planning on an imminent server and workstation rollout that now has to be canceled becuase of HP's planned elimination of Vectras and Netservers. Way to go guys. lets hear it for working together to cost the company money on both the investment side, when the merger tanks, and our own side in wasted R&D.:P
Re:I must thank....
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
But, hasn't that become today's definition of "good buisness"?
So true. Gates, at least, is a true geek at heart. He may be the Darth Vader of computing. But he could concievably be turned from the dark side.
Bill is a man of many talents, questionable morals, and great luck. And he has actually done a great deal of good to the geek community, even though this is overshadowed by his many horrible misdeeds and underhand tactics. If he gave up his plan for world domination, I personally wouldn't hold a grudge against him. (Though I wouldn't trust him till he had proven himself to be a changed man.)
Too bad this will never happen, but one can dream, yes?
--
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Does this mean HP will dump all their Jornadas on the market at a cheap price? I use my Palm day to day, but I'd like a Jornada too if I could get it for next to nothing.
Where should I look for dirt-cheap Jornadas? Ebay?
Re: your insufficient manhood
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
So I see the Itanium 64-bit processor mentioned throughout but no mention of the AMD Opteron/Sledgehammer. Is this just because that chip isn't on the market yet, so once it is, HP/Compaq will make an announcement; or are they just not planning on using it? Also, there is no mention of AMD in the personal computer section either. If HP/Compaq switches to all Intel computers, then is AMD finished? Dell refuses to use the AMD processors, I don't see an AMD based offering from IBM, Gateway looks like they're on the way out, so HP/Compaq is really the only "major" computer manufacturer that uses AMD chips. If they were to become Intel only, would that be the beginning of the end for AMD (by end I don't mean completely phased out, but woudl they become more like Apple, commanding a very very small percentage of market share?)
getaway
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
was there no comment from Gateway's CEO ?
Re:I would have been happier with UNIX integration
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I'm sorry, but Tru64 is being canniballized with lots of pieces going to make HP-UX better. Probably not the kernal, but many other pieces will be used, so its hardly the same old trash. They won't get rid of the HP-UX name because it sells, and they don't want to alienate ISVs so it must stay HP-UX. And Veritas support isn't needed with Tru64's AdvFS ported over. Plus, HP-UX created the POSIX standard for installation. RPM causes many people major headaches.
Re:I would have been happier with UNIX integration
by
emil
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· Score: 2
UNIX file systems reside in the kernel, so the kernel will be modified.
HP-UX currently uses Veritas file systems, so Veritas will be required unless a Veritas->AdvFS converter is released.
SD-UX causes many more problems than RPM.
POSIX was a community effort.
Middleware?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think you mean meddlewear there.
Why must we have so many different processors?
by
evilviper
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· Score: 2
Why does even company need to have it's own CPU? Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, SGI, et al.
The Alpha CPU is the single most advanced CPU on earth, and nobody but Compaq is making use of it. Why not manufacture Sun Boxes with Alpha processors instead of SPARC? SGI boxes with Alphas instead of MIPS? Apples with Alphas instead of PPCs?
They are all doing with hardware what was previously done with the OS... Vendor Lock-in. It actually hurts both the vender and consumer. Right now, we standardize on I386. BeOS was made for PPC, And i386. Solaris is made for SPARC, and i386, etc. Doesn't everyone think we would be better off if everyone stanrdized on Alpha, the most advanced, rather than i386, the most crappy and hacked together?
Alpha, per the power, were widely known as the only CPU that was cheaper than Intel for the performance. What ever happened? Where did we go wrong? And most imprtantly, what can any of us do to change it?
Of course, it's quite possible that when ia64 comes out everyone will run for refuge, and end up landing on a non-intel architecture in the future.
Re:Why must we have so many different processors?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
> They are all doing with hardware what was previously done with the OS... Vendor Lock-in. It actually hurts both the vender and consumer.
Every trick in the book is used to lock-in. Hardware, OS, API's, file formats, protocols, etc. etc. etc. But, in the information age life is about marketing. Today, it has become almost axiomatic that the "best" solution will die, while those that spend less on R&D and more on Marketing will win.
> Right now, we standardize on I386.
You're answering your own question.
> Alpha, per the power, were widely known as the only CPU that was cheaper than Intel for the performance. What ever happened?
DEC, and Compaq, simply made the entire package too expensive and chose to ignore a number of market realities. The platform was never allowed to reach "commodity" status, so every part, every software package, was more expensive.
Simply put... The Alpha is good, and they acted that way. Quote from sales presentation... "Alpha is the Roles Royce of CPU's" Right, and their noses were held a few inches higher than the rest of us mortals as they handed you the quote.
Bottom line. People do buy Roles Royces. But, computers are by their nature subject to standardization and network effects. Choose to confuse yourself into thinking you're better than you are, and you will die.
> what can any of us do to change it?
Nothing, most likely. It is just another opportunity in the course of human affairs lost to the depths of history.
> when ia64 comes out everyone will run for refuge
Most unlikely. I believe Intel has design rights to Alpha now, and HP helped them bring PA-RISC bits into the design. A couple of versions out and ia64 may not be as bad as you expect. ia64 design was able to pick the best from ia32, PA-RISC, and Alpha cores.
Not necessarily bad news...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Abridged version of an article from CNET. Here's the link: http://news.com.com/2100-1040-903128.html?l egacy=c net&tag=lthd
The Jornada 560 will be discontinued in three to six months, and the next handheld will be an HP iPaq device. The original successor to the 560--the unannounced 570, which was put on hold because of a component delay--is being canceled. A similar device using the XScale processor will get the HP iPaq name. Devices using XScale chips are expected in the summer.
The already announced Jornada 928 is still in the company's plan but is being re-evaluated.
HP will continue to sell the Jornada 720, which resembles a mini-notebook. However, the gadget will eventually become an HP iPaq branded device.
The iPaq 3700, 3600 and 3100 series will be phased out, but the 3800 series will remain.
I've looked into linux for my J720 but haven't had time to really do anything with it... does it still require swapping out the ROM for a flash-rom? Can you but the old one back in and get CE back if you need it? Is there an actual distribution available yet (like Familiar for iPaq)?
I've tried finding answers to these questions myself but Jornada Linux info is spread all over the net...
And what about the BackSpace vs. Delete fuck-up in the VT100 keyboard? That's one of the most dumb and painful PITAs every Unix expert has to face every once in a while...
Slashdot Mirror
first post kids.
.test community
You want me.
From,
The
"Smart Handhelds
Decision: The Compaq iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC, re-named the HP iPAQ Pocket PC, will be our smart handheld platform. The best of the current HP Jornada technology will be engineered into the platform. Jornada products will be phased out of the market in 2002."
Good to know that they were smart about their handheld lines and decided to stick with the iPAQ (not that there was really much doubt, but...). The iPAQs have been on the leading edge of things for a while now, if they would only integrate something more than SD (and *not* CF type I like the Jornadas had) into the unit...
OSF/1 (nee TRU64) needed to die a slow, painful death.
And, now it shall.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
There is text though.
VMS will outlive us all, if there's any justice in the IT world.
(rest in peace, DEC.)
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
What happened to the HP calculators? Did they discontinue then pre-merger, or were they dropped just recently? It does suck that the Kayak line is being killed, but I can't say I will miss anything Compaq ever made. I have never seen a nice piece of Compaq equipment, save for the iPAQ.
"It tastes like.... burning." -Ralph Wiggum
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium.
I wonder if this is sign on how the merger will effect the product lines. Will we see a lot of HP stuff disappear in favor of Compaq stuff? Obviously the Ipaq and Compaq's servers were doing much better than HPs. Both their workstations sucks so they probably can't decide which crap to get rid of yet.
Another thing I wonder if this will minimize competition especially in the area of PocketPC (even thought most Slashdotters could care less about these).
My 2 cents,
Nick
HP risks losing the Compaq business without
transitioning them successfully to HP.
Non-slashdot readers are going to take a
while to figure out that HP = Compaq.
If I were them I'd offer the same products
with Compaq and HP badges. Even give retail
outlets the badges and let the badge them
however they or the customer likes.
Key Decisions: HP is deepening its commitment to developers and is the right partner to work with for J2EE and .NET tools, for management, UDC and IPF development. HP is taking a leadership role to integrate development and management through standards initiatives, developer tools, community/content and developer support products to simplify for developers this transition to a new way of thinking and working.
Sounds like good news for Microsoft. HP is one of the biggest guys around. Now to get Rational on their side...
You knew this stuff was coming.. I thought they'd kill HPUX for sure, though! DEC Unix (aka compaq tru64) finally dies.. it was truly a legendary OS. That's the only thing that surprises me about this roadmap. Maybe it's just because I used DU more than HPUX.
The rest of it is pretty predictable. I mean, I never even heard of a damn HP Kayak.. wtf is that? Of course OpenView and Insight Manager both have to stay, due to their ubiquity. iPaq kills Jornada hands-down. Compaq trounces HP for business desktops.
And let's see.. printing.. there's no clear winner there. HP's got a LaserJet in every office in the universe.. But don't rule out Compaq, they are great at rebranding plastic Lexmark inkjets!
HP is going to end up with a rather large market share in PDAs with the combination of the jornada line into the iPaqs (iPAQ Pocket PC).
Aren't the iPaq and the Jornada the market leaders in WINCE devices?
I am also suprised to see the rest of Compaqs iStuff living on... since lots of it is crap.
--- I do not moderate.
Well written, and almost believable.
I wonder if all those products we paid for that run on AlphaVMS will run on Itanium VMS. It would be sweet though. Didn't DEC or Compaq come out with some sort of compatibility product during the VAX to Alpha transition?
Imagine going back in time 15 years and telling someone that HP would be releasing OpenVMS.
"You mean that HP bought DEC?!?!"
"Ah, no, HP bought Compaq who had bought DEC."
"Compaq bought DEC!?!?!?!?!?"
Consultant 1: And that brings us to Mr. Compaq TrueUni-- TrueUniee-- TrueUni-ever gonna work here again!
Consultant 2: And that Michael Bolton too!
It's a good thing that most of their stuff seems to be getting branded HP instead of Compaq...I've always found HP products to be of higher quality than the "equivalent" Compaq product. Both in terms of reliability and longevity. HP makes damn fine printers...and among the big guys, their desktop machines aren't too shoddy either.
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
Then it must really get on your nerves that CS Majors basically fall into the category of being far more successful than you. :)
So who is going to buy these machines now, with the "In-box upgrade to IA-64" the only future for (some) current PA-RISC machines?
As it is, the uncertainty around the merger and the coming death of PA-RISC *must* have had a negative effect on sales of HP Unix machines. Anecdotally, the one customer I support who was on HP-UX and an HP 9000 has migrated over to Solaris on Sun hardware.
Any HP employees out there who can shed some light on this murky "strategy" ?
Inanium exists only to give Intel an architecture that can't be cloned for patent reasons. It's not better; it's just different. So it's best that it fail.
No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.
Wer'e on the road to nowhere......
enough is too much
(0) large company 1 merges with large comany 2 to become super-large company, LargeCo.
(1) things are cut and tweaked for months
(2)LargeCo takes as much money as it can from the general populace, exactly as it was designed to do.
(3) in 2 years everyone looks back and says, "gee, we shouldn't have merged. Oh well, we're still good at taking people's money!"
Well, 20 years later and things have come full circle for Compaq. From the roadmap it looks like they'll be phasing out the Compaq name from most everything with the notable exception of business/consumer pc's. After forays into high end servers, laser printers, RISC/VMS (i.e. DEC), pda's, Compaq has come back to it's roots.
Maybe Compaq should come out with a 20th anniversary luggable just for old times sake? Hey, that's not a bad idea. They could put an lcd instead of a crt, mount the floppy/hd on one side and the dvd/cd on the other. Now that would be cool. Maybe one of those case mod'ers can get cracking on this one.
From the roadmap:
"Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP."
Sounds like they'll be only working with Linux from an interoperability perspective.
Hmmmm....Linux development anyone?
Bruce, did they tell you that you'd be getting the axe today?
The new HP talks about following open standards. Where the hell is that in this roadmap?
Hmmmm....Inanium....interesting Freudian slip.
How in the HELL is this redundant???
/. effect. So In my service, I posted the full article.
Redundant would imply there was a prior post of this exact same textual data. I looked at -1, and saw none. My ISP runs a cacheing web proxy (standard squid) and my ISP happened to have it. I wasnt sure if others were observing the
Perhaps the moronic moderator would like to explain why they modded me as such.
HP's closing the calculator division was announced some time ago. Too bad.
Yet nother crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *VMS
community when last month IDC confirmed that *VMS accounts for
less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of
the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *VMS has lost more
market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along.
*VMS is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by
failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin
comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict
*VMS's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *VMS faces a bleak
future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *VMS because
*VMS is dying. Things are looking very bad for *VMS. As many
of us are already aware, *VMS continues to lose market share. Red ink
flows like a river of blood. FreeVMS is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenVMS leader
Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenVMS. How many users of NetVMS
are there? Let's see. The number of OpenVMS versus NetVMS posts on Usenet
is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400
NetVMS users. VMS/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of
NetVMS posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of VMS/OS. A recent
article put FreeVMS at about 80 percent of the *VMS market. Therefore
there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeVMS users. This is consistent with
the number of FreeVMS Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut
Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeVMS went out of business and was
taken over by VMSI who sell another troubled OS. Now VMSI is also dead,
its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys
show that *VMS has steadily declined in market share. *VMS is very sick
nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *VMS is to
survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *VMS continues
to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in
time. For ll practical purposes, *VMS is dead.
*VMS is dying
From what I can tell, the Compaq name will be kept only on a few categories of devices, especially business class ones and consumer laptops. Everywhere else, the lines will either be discontinued or they will be rebranded.
I don't want to sound like a troll, but in a couple of years (maybe a bit more) Compaq will go the way DEC went a while back.
HP will keep it alive just long enough for customers to get used to the change. Then it will dissapear from all refferences, products and documentation. HP will stop updating the Compaq product support sites, and eventually will even stop hosting them altogether.
You don't believe me? Try a google search for DEC, and you'll see how many Compaq hosted docs and web pages you will find. A couple of years ago I needed technical info on a DEC dual P classic workstation for a school project. It would have been a pretty fast machine, and I had 2 p200Mhz available to plug into it (up from the single P90Mhz that I found inside). After 4 hours of continuous searching for the jumper settings, I gave up and salvaged another slower computer.
This is the same that will happen to Compaq soon enough. Ironic, isn't it?
Don't forget the third, minority category, scrawny and unbelievably strong.
Maybe because there is ZERO chance that HP gets slashdotted?
you know what the really suckie thing about that is...
when it comes to meta moderation everyone will assume that it was already posted and mark it as fair. I think that the moderation system should come with a REASON for when it is to be meta-moderated. then when the moderater put something stupid like "it is the same as what was on the link" they will be meta moderated to hell
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
you are kidding i hope. /. crowd could easily tip the scales
they just went through an extreemely publisised merger so their servers are probably already strained. The
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
It looks like Hewlett Packard have been working hard on this change while the whole stockholder vote/battle was going on.
Even so, I was still taken aback when the familiar Flash-driven "Powered by Compaq" icon at the Yahoo Mail site was replaced by a "Powered by HP" icon today.
What other changes have people seen?
HP-UX is the second worst UNIX I've ever been
forced to use (SCO being the worst). I used to
go into screaming fits every time I had to log
into a HP-UX box because the damn thing didn't
even support tty modes correctly.
At least OSF/1-Tru64 (at one time) had good
release engineering. But it started going downhill fast once DEC started massive layoffs.
RIP DEC. We didn't know how good we had it...
Are you kidding me? HP and Compaq, the guys who run the NYSE for goodness sake, will NOT get slashdotted!
Killing the Vectras, huh? That should make my latest quest even harder to complete.
Slashdot veterans should remember the PC Weasel. It's a card that emulates a video card and routes it out a serial port, so you can have a truly headless box. It also has a deal to connect in-line with your reset button so you can forcibly reboot the box from afar.
This is all well and good, but HP's bastard Vectra XU series (and probably more of their Vectras in general) have this proprietary connector between the front panel (where the button is) and the motherboard.
I appeal to the geek masses - surely someone out there has already found where the reset line is. My alternative is taking down a server for a few hours while it gets probed with a multimeter looking for the elusive pins, then fabricating a shim to go in between the cable and the board.
Key Decisions: The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms...
Decision: We will incorporate the strength of Compaq's Windows NT workstations to form the industry's broadest, most comprehensive product line.
Is it just me, or is the lack of mention under servers significant?
O well, Linux has come this far without depending on either HP or Q, it doesn't need HPQ either.
Infuriate left and right
UNIX
HP and Compaq both offered UNIX operating systems: HP-UX and Compaq Tru64(TM) UNIX.
Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP. Tru64 UNIX has some very advanced features -- including clustering and file systems -- and some of those will be integrated into HP-UX over time.
Rationale: HP-UX has a much larger market share and installed base of customers. It also has much broader ISV support than Tru64 UNIX.
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium.
n/t
Read this:
.NET to support UNIX & Linux? The only other middleware option of significance here is J2EE, and that already supports all the platforms anyway. Mono, IIRC isn't anywhere ready for production use.
"The new HP will be equally strong on UNIX, Windows® and Linux-based servers, requiring middleware solutions to support all platforms."
(emphasis mine)
How do they expect to require
On the other hand, I think it is good to see them affirm equal attention for the three dominant platforms.
(I can almost hear the OpenVMS folk coughing loudly now...)
--
<insert witty remark here>
Am I a hipster-doofus?
So Tru64 is being phased out. So what? You have to look at this like we are all in an ecosystem. The environment is changing, the ``dinosaurs'' are getting killed off and this leaves more room for other ``creatures'' to fill the void that is left after the big guys fall. I will be happy to take work migrating Tru64 systems to FreeBSD, OpenBSD or Linux as the client requires.
My impression of HP's PC line was that it was always amongst the best ones in terms of quality if not price and performance. My impression of Compaq was that their service was not very good, but expensive and their PC's were not very good quality or cheap but were good performers.
Does this mean that the quality will go down overall for PC's from HP?
I feel for all those that are going to lose their jobs because of this. Bad time to lose your job in this industry.
So I spent a couple of hours researching communication device driver implementations for both HPUX and Tru64. "They" want prototypes by the end of next week, however I go on vacation next Tuesday.
Guess which proto I don't have to do anymore?!?!?!
(* okay, not days. But the initial developement effort was "rounded up" to days in true software engineering style. Its still a win-win situation for me.)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
How in the HELL is this redundant???
[snip remainder of bitching]
Maybe the problem is that there is no moderation option for (-1, Karma Whoring).
It doesn't seem likely that H-f**king-P is going to get slashdotted, does it?
Get off your high horse.
Both Compaq and HP have very robust storage portfolios, so we are in the enviable position of being able to develop a roadmap based on the best of the best.
I thought that was funny, reading that on a corporate website.
Not funny enough to post logged in, but funny nonetheless.
Click on the link in the article shit for brains!
Yes, the run it alright, right into the ground. Which is hardly any different from a /.'ing.
Yay! It's good to see HP continue the tradition of BSD in HP/UX. BSD has pioneered many innovations which are still in use today. Furthermore, if you don't have a PA-RISC, you can now run true blue BSD on your PC. Check out FreeBSD. Make the switch. Run BSD today.
When will we see OpenVMS on our iPaq's?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Saw this letter a few months ago, but it still seems relevant today. (Quote: "The merger is like two starving men agreeing to share a crust of bread.") Short but insightful, highly recommended.
Properitary UNIX isn't dying, it's just moving into the modern age.
Digital.com redirects you to Compaq.com which redirects you to HP.com!
It's a fun ride! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Bill
Correct me if I am wrong but the iPAQs are really only handhelds, with no keybaord. The models of the Jornadas span from handhelds, to fold out types (with keybaords), to laptop style. I consider the laptop type to be an expensive toy. However I also think that the handheld type is useless for anyone who prefers to type, rather than "be taught to write" with a stylus.
Yeah, you can probably plug a keyboard into the handheld iPAQ just like you can into a Palm devices, but there is a tradoff of sturdiness verses "putting the thing in your pocket".
Maybe a lot of spare parts places will start dumping their HP Jornada bits onto auction sites once they learn about this press release.
There is no mention of x86-64.
Wonder if they will have to when Microsoft releases an x86-64 vesion of Windows. Still, it must hurt.
Compaq has annouced plans to phase out the Alpha processors after EV7. What's going to happen with OpenVMS after that happens?
The most important question, for me: Will HP keep Compaq's service and support for business personal systems and servers?
Compaq's support is unequalled -- far better than HP's -- in my experience running the systems for many small businesses. The ability to speak to knowledgeable, motivated techs is the #1 reason I buy Compaq.
Before you jump in with your support experiences, remember: It depends on your relationship with the vendor. Buy 5,000 systems, you'll get one kind of support. But my clients buy 10-50; Compaq is the only company that offers them competent support. Don't tell me about Dell -- my support from them is only untrained bureaucrats.
Free domain names, $$$-free and restriction-free. Cool aTLDs, that make sense. Built in DynDNS. http://www.freenic.ntwrk
Please, enlighten me. Freenic.netwrk doesn't resolve for me; I'm guessing it's some upstart type TLD that my ISP's DNS isn't wise to?
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
Nobody has mentioned this yet, but HP has a lot of "slices" in the test equipment "pie"; for example, for scopes, frequency/logic analyzers etc, their only real competition is Tektronix(arguably, Tektronix has them beat here, but HP still produces some damn fine, and popular, equipment.)
Fluke has the handheld meter pretty squared away(HP doesn't offer anything there anyway) but HP competes with Fluke on bench meters(ie, big but highly accurate meters for production assembly, test labs etc.)
HP also has a pretty big presence in the medical area, has for a -looooong- time(my father, 30 years ago, worked for HP programming their medical diag equipment.) What about that stuff?
And, of course, the most familiar category for slashdot people...HP calculators...but Fiorina(sp?) the Wicked Witch from the West killed that off a LONG time ago...way before any of this(at least a coupe months ago, right?)
One could argue that it wasn't mentioned in the press release because it may not "be an issue" since Compaq never had any of that stuff...maybe it's business as usual. What concerns me is that HP loves to tout their stupid barn in commercials, but they didn't tout in the PR release their test equipment business, which is, believe it or not, what was getting made in that stupid barn(and quite a while after the barn.)
If they -have- decided to dump the test/medical business, maybe they're embarassed and don't really want to draw attention to it exactly because it WAS their roots and they've basically abandoned them? Kinda spoils the commercials. "This is where it all started......BUT we've THROWN that out!"
I'm just completely disappointed by the whole thing; HP WAS an awesome company, so was Digital, in a bunch of ways, and like others have said, some of the coolest stuff has been flushed by execs with no soul; execs love to tout history/tradition/culture, but ONLY when it suits them.
Everything about the deal stunk, morale at both companies is probably going to go into the toilet(I know several -DIGITAL- employees, and they're NOT happy; certainly not a good sampling though), and who knows how investors will react. One BIG warning sign was that every time some hiccup in the merger process popped up, HP's stock took a nice little jump..it was like there were investors saying "oh, thank GOD, it's not going to go through"(sort of like the rich mother whose daughter gets dumped the night before the wedding to a sleazy shoe salesman; she's DAMN happy the marriage never happened.)
I guess a big part of it is that I'm just really, really tired of mergers. Haven't we seen enough fail? Isn't sometimes the solution just simply reorganizing the company? Why couldn't compaq cut the fat in areas where they sucked on their own?
Personally, I think the US consumer is pretty tired of megacorporations, which is why so many(mostly in the retail sector) are in trouble.
[siiiigh]. Folks, lets reward all the small businesses in the world and just ignore, no matter what the cost, the giant corporations trying to destroy the livelyhood of our neighborhood businessmen/women...
Decision: HP-UX will be the long-term UNIX for the new HP. Tru64 UNIX has some very advanced features -- including clustering and file systems -- and some of those will be integrated into HP-UX over time.
Wow! Tru64 UNIX has support for file systems? What'll those Compaq engineers dream up next? Symbolic links?!
I suppose there are as many opinions as there are writers, scenarios and locations, but over here I could write a book on customers that have been majorly unhappy with Compaq support. It may change with the number of installed systems of course, but from HP it's been good for 5 and 500 computers alike.
Then again, for me, it's not about software and support but about the fact that Compaq workstations have been a pain. Since the original HP Vectra (286), I've known to trust them. Compaq's done it's few good things but basically, they've either been too unstable with an okay price or too high priced.
With a large amount of various opinions all over the customer area I'm sure, how many people will have to do like me and just make the unwanted decision of stopping to buy HP stuff from now? I wonder if they've properly calculated this at HP.
Thanks for the great historical review, you reminded me of some pleasant memories and gave me more DEC arcana to enjoy. I only wanted to add a comment about my own nostalgia.
:-) (sorry, work requires it. Otherwise I'd have Linux on it, since Thinkpads love it!)
When I graduated from college in '92, the school's main computers were 2 VAXen (8550 and 8700). Just to put this in perspective: each machine had 64 Mb, later upgraded to 256; both shared a "disk farm" of washing machine-size units full of platters. 20Gb total. They also shared a T1 line to the outside world. And they comfortably served about 300 users, a mix of school administration and students.
When I remember this and see how slow my Thinkpad T21 feels, with PIII-800, 20Gb disk, 512Mb RAM and 100Mbps ethernet it makes me want to cry. Damn Win 2K...
But it may yet make a comeback. VMS' main disadvantange has been that it ran strictly on proprietary DEC architecture, and it was hugely popular just as long as DEC hardware was hugely popular. Now that it's being ported to Itanium, I think it has a chance to recapture a significant portion of the market share it used to 0wn.
Relative to Unix, it has no significant technical drawbacks that I know of. As far as advantages over Unix goes, it's at least much better documented, as the bookcases behind me can attest.
And the brethren went away edified.
Troll Business Plan:
1. Troll
2. ?????
3. Troll
I love my 1985 HP-11C as well... I wish they still made them, as I'd buy a few more for members of my extended family who are turning 12. What a great way to learn how to write simple programs; registers, stacks, etc.
Although their days were numbered even before the merger was announced, it will be truly sad to see this combination go. I never really had the chance to get down and dirty with such a system, but Alpha is legendary in performance. I remember when Intel chips were under 200MHz (maybe even under 100) and Alpha was over 500, and that was without any pipeline-shifting nonsense. Ahh, those were the days... It is sad that Alpha never really got off the ground. I wonder what exactly it was that prevented Alpha-based machines from taking a position like Sun or IBM's systems have...ubiquitous in the network world. I guess Alpha was pitched as more of a number crunching box. Anyone who cares to comment...
I just hope that IA-64 is all it's cracked up to be since it seems that pretty much every maker of quality RISC processors is dumping their product for IA-64 homoginization (at least, HP/Compaq...IBM's PowerPC will live on as far as i know, but how long?) Even Sun is considering IA-64 based products I believe. We will see, I guess.
I've always wanted to marry a rich woman. I'll happily spend portions of those big paychecks on geek toys. If she's good at screwing entire companies, she'd probably be pretty good in the sack with just me. I'll just make sure I have a good supply of bungie condoms. Anyone involved in corporate wide group sex has to be carrying at least one or two nasty little bugs.
Yeah - I get all the chicks. Why do you ask?
I think that all of the machines running HPUX should be turned into Hockey PUX.
...
It's an even worse OS than AIX (pronounced "aches").
I'd take Tru64 over Hocky S^HPUX any day
This roadmap concerns me! What OS will .test use now!
(to continue the Talking Heads theme :)
deus does not exist but if he does
I never understood people who liked VMS. Nearly everything about it annoys me to death.
The shell command to change directory has about 39 different types of punctuation. The CXX compiler is utter crap. The graphical user interface sucks. LSE is crappy editor. Record Management System was a probably a nice idea 15 years ago but I suspect that even then it had no real world value.
I doubt it is as secure as people claim... Just last week a friend of mine found a shared memory bug that allowed him to read other people's memory.
I have to admit that I do like VMS ACL support. That's the only redeaming quality I can think of. And it's not enough...
I hear they're starting work on a VMS clone. In typical GNU fashion, it's going to be named with a recursive acronym -- HIV, for HIV Isn't VMS.
Wow, maybe that name change will get another chance. Since I am looking for work anyway, I probably ought to dust off those old VAX VMS internals books and revise my resume ;-)
Revised Troll Business Plan:
1. Troll
2. Troll more
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
NASDAQ/NYSE: TROL
Could HP be so bold and finally f*cking support iso9660 on HP-UX?
Nah, that'd be too bold...
Sigged!
It seems that Jornada PocketPCs will be replaced by iPaqs but what about their handheld PC line? I would hate to see them phase out the 700 line... I've had a Jornada 720 for over a year and it is indispensible.
Does anyone know what the story is here?
sudo eat my shorts
From what I remember, Tru64 was the first 64-bit clean OS. It was based on Ultrix which in turn was based on BSD.
Is anyone else impressed that they even posted all this information in such a short and concise manner? How many merger/aquisitions have we seen where nobody admits to letting ANY products die for fear of losing the last two customers using it?
At least they're pretty much laying it down for us rather than letting everyone find out when it's time to upgrade. (Oh, that? Nah, we don't make that any more...)
Tru64 going is fine with me but it had some advanced features that Linux doesn't. As long as they're phasing it out they may as well GPL it and have some coders work on getting some of those features ported to Linux for inclusion into 2.5.xx, I mean HP actually looks like it wants to support Linux. Oh well, I doubt anything like that would ever happen.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
Good work, Mr. Forsh. Note to all Open Source fanboys: Your business plan is a road to nowhere, just look at VA Software. Pretty soon, Taco and the rest of the /. crew will be forced onto the street selling anal sex to dirty GNU/Linux hobos.
But even before the DEC Rainbow, came the 'Robin' or VT180. A VT100 Terminal coupled with a Dual Floppy Drive/CPU Box that ran CP/M on a Z80 processor.
After backing up my data (which I tend to do once in a while anyway), I did a hard-reset to it. It works fine again now (uploaded my stuff again of course). I suspect that the internal filesystem got fragmented/corrupted or something like that, because I came down from 25% disk usage to 8% disk usage. Not sure.
If your Palm is not phyically dead (I mean a hardware failure), try to reset it (usually with a pen).
Hope this helps...of course we're talking about different platforms. (I don't really like Palms, hardware and software wise)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I can't say that I am one of those big fighters for open source, though I must say coding your own software is easier if you have the code for certain parts of the OS (depending on what you do, different parts are relevant). In fact, I really hate it when I can't get to know what that OnPaint() really does when I want to inherit a GUI control.
But onto my read message. Where does the source go when the OS are killed? I persume it will go into hiding, never to be found again, which really is a shame. There is one thing when a company tries to sell a product, but when they stop doing so, it's only fair to their customers that they release the source. It more than likely won't have any impact on the OpenSource movement, but to some it might be very very important indeed.
As an ex hper, and my brother's division verifone recently dropped from hp - I can only say that letter is absolute gospel. That women should have been thrown out on her ass a long time ago.
I for one am entirely happy with the way this thing has panned out. My little Compaq Armada has been a tank, and I sure as heck don't want one of those HP Omnibooks (well, the low end cheapos) to replace the Armada line. I applaud HP's wise decision to maintain the better of the two lines, but at the same time hope that it won't become a curiously melded or designed-by-a-far-larger-committee exercise. I think the merger was the right choice, overall, and I look forward to a future of better products than either Compaq of HP could have offered separately.
$0.02 for sale
HP spun off the test/medical equip division into a seperate company. Visit www.agilent.com.
so, you asked for sun and the itanium.
:-)
to my understanding, and all i am fine to tell without violating any paperwork, sun plus itanium is not goint to happen. sun currently puts a lot of work in the ultrasparc 5 cpu, which will among other features bring asynchronous data processing -
which means that the sub-units of the cpu are no longer running at a common clock frequency, each can go as fast as necessary/desired. this will finally kick the intel-infested "Mhz-Benchmarking" out of the door, since you cannot measure Mhz with a CPU that is able to vary clock and has various clock multipliers throughout the "boats" inside the cpu.
powerpc cpu in a sun is even less likely.
the only advanced intel-related thing i expect to see is AA64 aka x86-64 in the cobalt appliance line, or maybe a blade-server running linux.
don`t expect to see anything intel based in the future, unless sun gets bought by HPack or IBM. (no one else would dare, and HPack is IMNSHO doing the SGI thing already, too.).
so, enjoy your time, Apple starts building Rack servers - i cannot wait for my flashy looking white plastic with blue apple IBM Regatta Mauler from Apple
HP iPAQ? but that doesn't even rhyme!
How about HP hPAQ or
HP iHP (ok thats a stretch)
But then again this is advice going to people who came up with such clever monikers as 'deskjet' and 'Pavillion' maybe this'll grow on me...
enough said, he answered a couple less interesting things - where`s his answer on the interesting points ?
I think we can expect great things from RoboTroll, very strong fundamentals. I can see synergistic convergence through both horizontal and vertical integration. I'm issuing a strong buy recomendation on this stock. Make sure to load up on this in your 4o1K.
The only downside is the very great risk that slashdot will go titsup.com. This will be an obstacle in the RoboTroll roadmap. But there still is usenet!
Nokia started with rubber boots. At the same time, they were in the paper industry, too, and even nowadays, there is a company called "Nokia" that makes really good paper towels.
:o)))
The mobile phone business came into the picture with another little company that merged with Nokia. The company was called "Mobira" and many a Finn still remember them and their "portable" (really freaking heavy boxen) phones
Sigged!
ULTRIX is a red-headed stepchild. It's not related in any way, shape or form to OSF/1-DEC-UNIX-TRU64. Well, other than the fact that it's a Unix system.
-- ac at work
Compaqard?
Hewlit ComParKQD?
Placard?
Is when Tru64 disappers i highly doubt the people at hp will be able to port over AdvFS....it is undoubtably the best filesystem EVER.
Also I'm sure on this but isn't tru64 microkernel and HP-ux monolithic? That would cause more than a few problems in the port of anything
I appeal to the geek masses - surely someone out there has already found where the reset line is.
:o) ; when I was setting them up, my boss insisted we have Watchdog cards installed (he was used to Windows, and thought Linux would have the same problems.)
The servers at the ISP where I work are all HP Netservers (running Linux
I ran into the same problem you did - the reset line isn't accessible from the front panel. So I called HP, explained what I was trying to do, 10 minutes later a tech had emailed me what I needed to know. (not that it mattered - the watchdog cards have never been needed.)
So, the simplest solution is to ask them. You might be surprised.
the iNada!
HP-UX is profoundly weak in several areas. If Carly had come out and said "the new TruHP UNIX will unify the strengths of HP-UX and Digital OSF/1 UNIX on ia64," I would have thought her to be much more reasonable.
Really, the tru64 kernel should simply replace the HP-UX kernel, with the important addition of Veritas support.
Now would also be a good time to redesign the software packaging mechanisms and implement something like RedHat up2date.
But instead, HP throws us the same old trash. I hope their market share continues to erode.
Re:Even Carly couldn't kill VMS...
She killed HP's MPE OS. She killed HP's calculators. She sold the PA-RISC design team to Intel.
She didn't kill VMS yet, but Just Wait. VMS is alive till they can figure a way to transition them to HPUX. They are not making the same mistake of not offering a transition like they did with MPE. VMS is Dead, but the death certificate hasn't been signed yet by Mrs Carly.
Very Sorry.
They did, however, forget to add those same customers will have way more money than brains.
Carly, what's the Linux story for the new HP?
Ceding that space to IBM?
Compaq's done it's few good things but basically, they've either been too unstable with an okay price or too high priced.
You certainly pay a premium for the quality business-line Compaqs (formerly Deskpro, Armada, iPaq and now Evo); I avoid the cheaper consumer line at all costs. But those expensive business line machines have always been very reliable, and more than pay for themselves in reduced downtime for users, fewer support calls for me, and reduced time per support call due to their well-trained technicians.
Our commitment to the Itanium Processor Family remains very strong, and we continue to see Itanium as the future 64-bit microprocessor.
Does this mean HP/UX is still going to get ported to IA-64? I thought defeat was admitted on that one when they closed the NJ-FPK facility.
my corporate investment group for voting yes on this merger. The company I work for had enough votes that if they had changed from yes to no, the merger would have failed. So, our yes vote is now going to cause us to throw away over $3M in work and planning on an imminent server and workstation rollout that now has to be canceled becuase of HP's planned elimination of Vectras and Netservers. Way to go guys. lets hear it for working together to cost the company money on both the investment side, when the merger tanks, and our own side in wasted R&D. :P
Hewlett Paqard
So true.
Gates, at least, is a true geek at heart.
He may be the Darth Vader of computing. But he could concievably be turned from the dark side.
Bill is a man of many talents, questionable morals, and great luck.
And he has actually done a great deal of good to the geek community, even though this is overshadowed by his many horrible misdeeds and underhand tactics.
If he gave up his plan for world domination, I personally wouldn't hold a grudge against him. (Though I wouldn't trust him till he had proven himself to be a changed man.)
Too bad this will never happen, but one can dream, yes?
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Does this mean HP will dump all their Jornadas on the market at a cheap price? I use my Palm day to day, but I'd like a Jornada too if I could get it for next to nothing.
Where should I look for dirt-cheap Jornadas? Ebay?
* * * * ****** *******
.* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
* ******* ****** *
* * * * * *
* * * * * *
* * * ****** *
HTH. HAND.
From,
your friends on uiuc.test, and their mothers.
Better luck next time.
Olsen hated PCs. His views on them were, literally, a major component in DEC's downfall.
So I see the Itanium 64-bit processor mentioned throughout but no mention of the AMD Opteron/Sledgehammer. Is this just because that chip isn't on the market yet, so once it is, HP/Compaq will make an announcement; or are they just not planning on using it? Also, there is no mention of AMD in the personal computer section either. If HP/Compaq switches to all Intel computers, then is AMD finished? Dell refuses to use the AMD processors, I don't see an AMD based offering from IBM, Gateway looks like they're on the way out, so HP/Compaq is really the only "major" computer manufacturer that uses AMD chips. If they were to become Intel only, would that be the beginning of the end for AMD (by end I don't mean completely phased out, but woudl they become more like Apple, commanding a very very small percentage of market share?)
was there no comment from Gateway's CEO ?
I'm sorry, but Tru64 is being canniballized with lots of pieces going to make HP-UX better. Probably not the kernal, but many other pieces will be used, so its hardly the same old trash. They won't get rid of the HP-UX name because it sells, and they don't want to alienate ISVs so it must stay HP-UX. And Veritas support isn't needed with Tru64's AdvFS ported over.
Plus, HP-UX created the POSIX standard for installation. RPM causes many people major headaches.
I think you mean meddlewear there.
Why does even company need to have it's own CPU? Sun, IBM, HP, Compaq, SGI, et al.
The Alpha CPU is the single most advanced CPU on earth, and nobody but Compaq is making use of it. Why not manufacture Sun Boxes with Alpha processors instead of SPARC? SGI boxes with Alphas instead of MIPS? Apples with Alphas instead of PPCs?
They are all doing with hardware what was previously done with the OS... Vendor Lock-in. It actually hurts both the vender and consumer. Right now, we standardize on I386. BeOS was made for PPC, And i386. Solaris is made for SPARC, and i386, etc. Doesn't everyone think we would be better off if everyone stanrdized on Alpha, the most advanced, rather than i386, the most crappy and hacked together?
Alpha, per the power, were widely known as the only CPU that was cheaper than Intel for the performance. What ever happened? Where did we go wrong? And most imprtantly, what can any of us do to change it?
Of course, it's quite possible that when ia64 comes out everyone will run for refuge, and end up landing on a non-intel architecture in the future.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Abridged version of an article from CNET. Here's the link:l egacy=c net&tag=lthd
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-903128.html?
The Jornada 560 will be discontinued in three to six months, and the next handheld will be an HP iPaq device. The original successor to the 560--the unannounced 570, which was put on hold because of a component delay--is being canceled. A similar device using the XScale processor will get the HP iPaq name. Devices using XScale chips are expected in the summer.
The already announced Jornada 928 is still in the company's plan but is being re-evaluated.
HP will continue to sell the Jornada 720, which resembles a mini-notebook. However, the gadget will eventually become an HP iPaq branded device.
The iPaq 3700, 3600 and 3100 series will be phased out, but the 3800 series will remain.
I've looked into linux for my J720 but haven't had time to really do anything with it... does it still require swapping out the ROM for a flash-rom? Can you but the old one back in and get CE back if you need it? Is there an actual distribution available yet (like Familiar for iPaq)?
I've tried finding answers to these questions myself but Jornada Linux info is spread all over the net...
sudo eat my shorts
And what about the BackSpace vs. Delete fuck-up in the VT100 keyboard? That's one of the most dumb and painful PITAs every Unix expert has to face every once in a while...