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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.

3 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Personally experienced _much_ worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (Posting anonymously for obvious reasons)
    When working for a spin-off of HP, we did a licence audit and decided we needed 500 or so C++ compiler licences for compliance. Order them. Expect a single A4 sheet back saying we're covered.
    Instead, we get a pair of huge 2m x 2m x 2m boxes, on shipping palets, containing 500 smaller A4-sized cardboard boxes, each containing an A4 paper licence. This was soul-destroying fail of the highest level and led me down the path to BOFH-dom.

    1. Re:Personally experienced _much_ worse by johannesg · · Score: 5, Interesting

      lol... paying for a C++ compiler.

      You're funny, I like you.

      People did this in the old days. I once paid for the ACC compiler as well (I guess that's the one), because GCC was "open source" which was utterly distrusted by everyone. How times have changed - now the place is full of Linux systems, the few remaining HPUX machines will be replaced as soon as is convenient, and Sun? The only one I've seen in the last five years is the one in the sky.

      ACC, while a bit shaky in its implementation of the C++ standard, at least produced great error messages. Typically it did not just tell you what was wrong and where, but also what it thought you needed to change to fix it. And mostly it got it right too!

      "In file xxx on line yy, function FooBarBaz is undefined. Maybe you meant to call function FooBarBoz?"

      Really, all it was missing was an interactive mode where you could just tell it to change the source for you...

  2. How does excessive packaging happen? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone named John Robson commented on the story linked by the Slashdot story. He said, "HP should be penalised for that."

    No need to worry, John. HP is in a Slashdot story. There will be very capable people, I think, who say to themselves, "Maybe I should apply for a job at HP. Nah, maybe not."

    The parent comment says, "My experience[s] with HP have been increasingly disappointing. Recently..."

    That's been our experience, too. HP seems to be getting a little better, however, now that Carly Fiorina has left. Before, it was REALLY ugly.

    How does excessive packaging happen? It happens because people become so unhappy working for a company that they slip into becoming robotic drones. Nothing matters. They just try to get through each day. Illogical packaging is only one of the many, many illogical things that happen every day. Those people never go to hell, because if they arrive there, Satan says, "You've suffered enough. You don't belong here."