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HP Shatters Excessive Packaging World Record

Posted by timothy on from the please-say-this-isn't-true dept.

An anonymous reader writes "HP customers will be familiar with their bizarre packaging practices (5 pounds of packaging for 8 license keys!); lets just say this story is not an isolated incident ... " I've seen some excessive packaging, but perhaps nothing to top this.

8 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing new here by alcourt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sounds about typical for HP. Back many years ago when I was primarily an HP-UX SA, excessive packaging was the norm as well.

    --
    "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
    1. Re:Nothing new here by Stripe7 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Standard practice indeed. I went to a customer site once and was taken aback when I saw his cubicle filled with HP boxes. He had over 400 HP servers and he had the same couple of sheets of paper in a box for each server. I am not sure if it was more than 400 little boxes I remember about a dozen or so huge boxes containing little boxes each with a couple of sheets of paper.

    2. Re:Nothing new here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      But... but... HP and Dell scored top marks from Greenpeace. Clearly the packaging was needed to protect the license papers which means you'd kill more tree for more paper if they are damaged.

      [This also show that Greenpeace ranking is irrelevant]

  2. HP network printer / scanner by epine · · Score: 3, Informative

    My experience with HP have been increasingly disappointing. Recently I contemplated the purchase of an HP network printer / scanner. Most network printers with an integrated scanner implement the scanner as a host-based scanner over USB. The HP unit I found seemed to be the exception. Until I read the data sheet more closely. The network scanner degrades resolution to 200dpi. For full resolution scanning, dust off your host-based USB interface. What I found annoying about this is that the brochure blithely advertised "network scanning" as fully supported.

    I have a colleague who swears by HP at the enterprise level, but at this point, I wouldn't buy a consumer level appliance unless I had first exhausted the alternatives.

  3. PC's from IBM by mikael · · Score: 3, Informative

    Happens with a lot of companies I have known. One company ordered around 40 new PCs' from IBM. The PC's arrived from IBM in a pair of 2m x 2m x 2m cube boxes on the inside of the container. The driver asked if our IT department happened to have a forklift truck available as it would save time unloading.

    Well, we didn't, so we had to cut open the boxes and make a little door so we could get in - they had been filled to the brim with styrofoam peanuts and promptly flooded the back of the container before spilling onto the parking lot.

    Then, one by one we got the monitors and main units out - all two hundred of them. By the time we were finished, there were enough styrofoam peanuts on the ground to visualize the airflow around the building. They would form streamlines and vortices all around the parking lot. It was our job to chase after every single one for recycling.

    Now, mail-order companies seem to enjoy putting the smallest items in the largest boxes. Once ordered some new memory cards and hard disk drives. Each order arrived in a large desktop PC sized box filled with large plastic air-bubbles (empty sealed plastic bags filled with nothing but air), styrofoam peanuts or foam padding. In each case, the padding took up about 20 times as much space as the original item.

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  4. Re:It's not the heat, it's the stupidity. by OolimPhon · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... What many people fail to realise is that linen which is still a prized fabric is actually made from hemp and linen can last quite a long time...

    I don't think so. Linen is made from Flax fibres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen as a simple wiki reference can confirm. My grandparents grew up in an area where flax was grown for linen production.

  5. People still do this too by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's called the ICC, Intel C Compiler. The reason people pay for it is because it is the fastest damn compiler out there. Every time I see compiler tests done there is always some back and forth, some are faster at one thing, some at others. Newer ones are generally faster than old ones... Then, at the top of the pack, is ICC. It produces the fastest code in EVERY test.

    Now if this were Intel marketing material, ok, but this is every test of the compilers I've ever seen done by third parties. Intel's compiler just knows how to produce extremely optimised code for their processors.

    As such, it is no surprise that people buy it.

  6. Re:Can also be done with Xylene! by gnick · · Score: 4, Informative

    It can also be done more cheaply with Xylene (paint thinner). I just love to see huge chunks of styrofoam melt into a goo! :D Plus if you're really out for a good time, the resulting goo should still be flammable...obviously there are safety and environmental issues there though.

    Back in high school, we used to mix Styrofoam and gasoline. We'd hit the furniture store dumpster after closing on delivery-day and load the cars up with all the Styrofoam we could stuff in. Then go out to the desert, pour a couple of gallons of gas in a waste basket and start chucking in the Styrofoam. Pour our the resulting sludge and light. It burns hot and burns for a long time.

    Very environmentally unfriendly and you're likely to inhale way too much vaporous gasoline, but good fun for juvenile fire-bugs.

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.