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 "
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 $1200 a pop, at least make sure you put it in a pretty package, because it's not going to sell on the technical merits...
I wonder if all those products we paid for that run on AlphaVMS will run on Itanium VMS. It would be sweet though. Didn't DEC or Compaq come out with some sort of compatibility product during the VAX to Alpha transition?
Re:Woo-hoo VMS!!
by
jacexpo069
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· Score: 2, Informative
Indeed they did, you can see that here. Chapter 2 lists even the porting schedule to Itanium!
Actually, we still run quite a bit of VESTed code. Interestingly enough, it is expected that it will be possible to take VAX software VESTed to run on Alpha and then VEST it again to run on IA-64...
-- *** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
HP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to ItaniumHP also will deliver on the previously announced Compaq OpenVMS(TM) roadmap, including the port to Itanium
Imagine going back in time 15 years and telling someone that HP would be releasing OpenVMS.
Bullshit. Anyone that time travels back that far, for M$, 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.
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****
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" ?
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.
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.
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.
Re:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
by
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.
the big Q going back home
by
binaryDigit
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· 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
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.
"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.)
The Compaq name will dissapear...
by
c.r.o.c.o
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· 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
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· 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
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...
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
·
· 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.
This saved me days* of development work!
by
mekkab
·
· 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.
The unanswered question
by
SuperKendall
·
· 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
RED HERRING'S open letter to HP CEO Carly Fiorina
by
IvyMike
·
· 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.
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.
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?!
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.
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.
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:forget the calcs, what about test/medical?
by
AnimeFreak
·
· 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:What ever happened to HP's other stuff?
by
foonf
·
· 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
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
by
nowt
·
· 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)
Nice and Concise
by
Wanker
·
· 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.
--
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire
Re:Alphas & Tru64
by
sasami
·
· 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:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
Dolly_Llama
·
· 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
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?
by
forgoil
·
· 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?
by
wadetemp
·
· 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:The golden shine of memory
by
petis
·
· Score: 2
The Compaq iPAQ(TM) Pocket PC, re-named the HP iPAQ Pocket PC, will be our smart handheld platform
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...
Re:The golden shine of memory
by
Craig+Maloney
·
· 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:Looks like no Linux development for the NEW HP
by
ScumBiker
·
· 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
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
ROFLMAO... obviously you don't know anything about Bruce...
Re:Is it called HOMPAK now?
by
crawling_chaos
·
· 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
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.
I would have been happier with UNIX integration.
by
emil
·
· 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.
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
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."
Re:I would have been happier with UNIX integration
by
emil
·
· 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.
Why must we have so many different processors?
by
evilviper
·
· 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.
Slashdot Mirror
"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?"
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.
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.
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!
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
I went to the new HP site, clicked on products, and I saw a link for calculators; looks like they're still there.
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.
"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.)
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?
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...
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
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
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 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.
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.
Digital.com redirects you to Compaq.com which redirects you to HP.com!
It's a fun ride! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Bill
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.
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?!
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.
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.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
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.
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
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
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
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.)
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.
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
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.
"I think k$40,000,000 will be enough for anybody"
- Bill G, fifteen years ago
hmm...
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...
So long TRU/64! Thanks for the memories!
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 ---
ROFLMAO ... obviously you don't know anything about Bruce ...
Compaqard?
Hewlit ComParKQD?
Placard?
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.
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.
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
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."
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
Some tweaks necessary but not hard to grasp.
I swapped out roms but others are having moderate success booting linux all in ram. Search here for details.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)