HP Rethinking Wisdom of Spinning Off PC Division

bdking writes "After signing off on former CEO Leo Apotheker's proposal to spin off or sell HP's personal computer unit, the company's braintrust is reassessing the wisdom of dumping a division that contributes nearly 30% of revenue and holds together a valuable supply chain." HP appears concerned not so much for the revenue generated by PC hardware, but instead by access to various distribution and supply channels. It seems that just announcing a spin-off has affected their access to retail distributors.

Comments

Fire the board

[onyxruby]

Fire the board, they showed their stripes years ago with Carly, and again with other bungled decisions. They have got to be the most incompetent board for any company of their size in the world. The board lost the HP way long ago, and it hasn't changed that much since then.

The whole rotting thing has got to go and the culture has to restored from the top. Nothing less will do.

Re:Fire the board

[Jeng]

I was going to suggest that they fire the CEO and get someone who will do the job for less compensation and no golden parachute. I figure if they do that then their applicant pool would open up to up and comers who want to prove themselves while hopefully turning away those who just want a big payday.

But your idea of firing the board probably makes more sense.

Derp derp derp!

[Anonymous Coward]

When HP absorbed EDS they thought they'd finally be able to compete in the lucrative snake oil business of large scale "consulting" (a la IBM), but after a massive reorg and an almost precision extraction of any talent prevalent in the EDS husk they're left with nothing but the most clueless of drabs.

To watch them flail around and try to bail out of this self-inflicted situation by dumping their hardware division has been entertaining.

Oki and Xerox seem to be a better bet

[zerofoo]

I'm sure everyone has their opinion, but after throwing away a bunch of $2000 HP printers in the last year, we've had enough.

I started buying Xerox and Oki printers and so far, they have been fantastic. The Okis in particular seem to be built well enough to take a bullet, and the toner cartridges are huge compared to an equivalent HP printer, yet they are priced about the same.

I think we are done with HP forever at this point.

Re:My thoughts

[vlm]

their low-end printers are just as shitty as Lexmark's or Canon's

Somewhere in China there's a factory that makes the internals for ALL cheap printers and depending on incoming orders puts them in a slightly different case and slaps a different sticker on the box. Ditto the laptops, clothes, etc.

Its like being astounded that the quality of the clothes at walmart, target, and kohls are all about the same, when they all came outta the same political prisoner staffed sweatshop and arrived onshore inside the same shipping container. Its not like the more expensive store sprinkles their clothes with "cool dust" or something. At the bottom, its all just junk.

Since the support for all of them is going to be a call center in India where a dude tells you to reinstall XP even if you tell him you have a mac, you may as well just buy the cheapest one.

This does not explain why Brother's printers just absolutely rock. Work on linux outta the box, scanner/fax function works outta the box, supports ipv6 for something like a decade. Rare to have a mechanical problem, rarely jams. "Just works" kinda like HP stuff used to B.C. (Before Carly)

There is a swamp at the bottom of the barrel where it all sucks, but a step up from that and there's some good products out there.