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HP Keeping Their PC Business
First time accepted submitter yourlord writes "Hewlett-Packard Co. has decided to keep its PC division. So says its newly appointed CEO Meg Whitman. Whitman, the former eBay chieftain, categorically rejected a plan offered up by her predecessor, former CEO Leo Apotheker, to either sell or spin-off this division. HP announced the decision after the close of financial markets today."
Does this mean that they will be reviving the TouchPad?
The Touch Pad will return with hybrid WebOS and Android support. Ok maybe not, but pipe dreams are awesome.
The AC would have said more in his post, but the PSU/AC Adapter in his hp went out... again...
They make crap laden with bloatware and unnecessary background applications running incessantly, phoning home and creating all manner of 'functionality' that nobody can turn off, short of wiping the damn thing.
They are perhaps the very WORST PC VENDOR in this regard.
Deciding not to get rid of their PC division is probably a money-making course, but it's not worth celebrating.
I imagine Meg is sitting at the head of some huge conference table concocting a million ways of embedding advertising space into desktop OSes.
Of course that means they will be keeping their PC division.
They should sell their server division while it is still worth something.
HP as a brand is rapidly becoming radioactive.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Their Business Desktops are actually pretty decent. The Probook 5310m/5320m line make awesome Linux laptops, SSD, 3G inbuilt.
During the auction, no one met the reserve price.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The AC would have said more in his post, but the PSU/AC Adapter in his hp went out...
again...
Are you sure it wasn't the defective nVidia chipset blowing out again after being sent in twice already for repair?
Maybe HP could come out with a line of high quality function generators.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I popped an Ubuntu CD in one and after about 20 minutes was rewarded with a fine running laptop loaded with goodness. Problems like that are so easily solved.
Can't wait to see how Carly 2.0 is going to run the company in to the ground. If her behavior during the California elections is any indication.. ..Imagine a train wreck. On a bridge. A wreck that causes both train and bridge to come crashing in to the bay, on top of a world class luxury cruise liner on it's maiden voyage.
And sharks. The bay is full of sharks.
(Read the preceding in Christopher Walken's voice for full effect)
shock.... Didn't see that coming.
Who cares about such crap? I formatted my HP laptop without even booting the preinstalled copy of Vista.
In terms of what really matters - the hardware and price - it's a nice machine for what I paid.
Dilbert RSS feed
Richard Kerris is leaving HP.
I am not sure if the head of developer relations would leave if there were a future for developers there. At the very least WebOS is on shaky ground, because of that but also because consumers now will be wary of HP products... but perhaps enough "average" consumers never even knew what happened and so would buy new WebOS gear anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
remembered that FunnyMailbox comment where I said This was a diversionary tactic? Called it.
As I said in an earlier post, HP needs their PC's to get leverage to sell their two strongest product lines, laser printers and inkjet cartridges. I have no use for inkjet cartridges, but every HP laser printer I've owned, from high end to low end, has been an absolutely solid piece of machinery.
Aside from that nasty business with nVidia GPUs, HP's PCs are by far my preferred platform from a support perspective. Working in remote tech. support, you learn to appreciate a decent platform and a good support site.
Do you see what I did there?
I don't know. HP has been self destructing but looking back over Meg Whitman's career she seems to have the golden touch. Everything she ever worked on thrived. I think if anyone can save HP from itself it might be her.
...but it's not worth celebrating.
Yes it is. Now I don't have to find out the name of the company that will take all of the assets and practices, change nothing, and keep doing the exact same crap because it's profitable as hell and the average end user is ignorant.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
not being a troll, I really want to know, which servers are worth something? I suppose their blade servers are pretty good. but certainly the whole itanium line is near worthless.
no no no. He has lost the PSU three times already, and just the experience gained by that led to a very swift diagnosis.
That seems obviously false, unless you mean to imply that she didn't work on her own gubernatorial campaign.
The business plan that caused the previous CEO to be fired has been rejected by the incoming CEO. I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you.
HP certainly shot themselves in the foot with this. Who in their right mind would consider a HP computer if even they aren't confident about them?
"Careful! We don't want to learn from this!" -Calvin & Hobbes
They make crap laden with bloatware and unnecessary background applications running incessantly, phoning home and creating all manner of 'functionality' that nobody can turn off,
I have a Probook 4530s that I am extremely satisfied with. As regards the crapware, I simply camped out in Programs and Features for about 1.5 hours as I read a book, and now have a clean setup. Some of those programs are actually pretty nice too, like the ability to see battery level at the EFI boot screen, and the baked in miniature Linux-based fast-boot OS (though I havent used it really at all).
And given how cheap it is for a really nice laptop (mine was under $500), it seems kind of odd to complain about the bloatware. Why do you suppose the prices are so low? Are you willing to pay $50 more for a crapware-free pc (if so, please give me a call, I will happily clean your PC for you remotely for $50--it really doesnt take that much effort). Also keep in mind that you are probably buying consumer laptops, which pretty much universally (Lenovo, Acer, Sony, Toshiba, HP, Dell) come loaded with crap. If you want a crap-free pc, you can cough up for the higher-end business models, and get a much nicer build to boot (Dell Latitudes, etc).
It's not really all that profitable. On a $500 laptop they make like $25 in Operating Margin (after everything is paid). They just sell a whole lot of them.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Good for CEO Whitman.
PCs are changing. But PCs, whether as netbooks, tablets, or -- gasp! -- desktops will remain around for a long while. They can be a steady, boring stream of profit if they just make good machines and have support people.
I won't support any HP product as long as leading TeaBagger Meg Whitman is in the leadership of HP.
Explaining the joke. HP was founded on one product. A bench DC power supply. They (H and P) came up with a clever use of a light bulb in their regulator circuit. The details escape me.
No. The first HP product was an audio oscillator (the 200A). Used to make the movie Fantasia. The light bulb was used for negative feedback, its resistance changing as the current changed.
subject says it all.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
HP Printer drivers. 'nuff said.
where PC = consumer Windows. Good specs, good prices, good technology and supply chain relationships.
It was a boneheaded move on HP's part to announce exiting their market-leading position in the first place. But then, I still wonder why Red Hat stopped selling their shrink-wrapped consumer distro about eight years ago (a space which newcomers like Ubuntu have taken over by default).
> Are you willing to pay $50 more for a crapware-free pc (if so, please give me a call, I will happily clean your PC for you remotely for $50--it really doesnt take that much effort).
If that's what your time is worth, you really aren't qualified to be touching any machines we buy.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
Touchpad... I hit print from the browser, it saw my 12 year old HP printer and printed no questions asked. Win in my book.
Are you sure it wasn't the defective nVidia chipset blowing out again after being sent in twice already for repair?
Ugh. That happened to mine too.
The sad thing is it was a defect across entire models. It doesn't matter how many times you had it repaired, it'll blow out again, because it's impossible to fix the heat issues.
What sucks is that they offered refunds for one laptop model, but not for my model, despite a 92-page thread on their forums from owners of that model saying "yeah.. mine has this problem too. Video chip burned itself out."
As an insider at HP, I'm personally relieved that this decision has been reach. I am bitterly disappointed that the BoD made their public announcement -- it has only hurt the company and deeply impacted customer confidence.
I'm also glad Apotheker's gone - a royal screw up and a waist of $25M+. He spent six weeks on a round-the-world "listening tour" and obviously decided it's better not to listen.
What really pissed me off was the BoD's explanation about why they made the spinning-off announcement: because they felt that they couldn't trust about 100 people to keep quiet while the review was done, so it was better to "be transparent". That speaks volumes about the lack of trust the BoD has in this organization's people, let alone it's products.
HP has definitely passed away with it's founders - a very sad observation about the company that is said to have started Silicon Valley. I hope that Apple doesn't go the same way.
I guess your right if you compare it to selling ink cartridges, 5% could be a lot more if they cut their own salaries but, wait.. oh I see now. Yeah let's keep it. (oh and fire that guy who came up with this stupid idea.)
Isn't HP in bed with MS in that regard? As in, any HP printer you buy will have a basic print driver loaded on plug-in to a MS Windows based machine
Yes.
Kill the Board members.
King of the World Barak Obama grants himself immunity of ethics, morals, laws even local laws.
Go Meg Go. Kill the Board.
Do it .. Sadam!
++++++++
I've found that generally, the shipped-with-windows driver can get you by for most printing, but if you have a multi-function and want to scan then it's the HP bloatware. Even on the models (I've used) with a web interface, they have a basic scan function through the browser, but anything else pretty much requires the install CD. Which then gives you not only drivers, but all the rest of the bloat, the background processes with totally non-descriptive names, the extra services (also with non-descriptive names), the 'Shop for Supplies here!' BS, the auto updater that calls home, and the rest. You can manually weed some of it out..but not all. If you try to uninstall parts, it bitches and moans that it is required for functionality (I don't think that HP Photosmart Essentials is a vital component, and I sure as hell don't want or need it. Same with the 'Solution Center'). At least that's my experience.
$50/ hr (most of it spent reading) equals $2000/ week, $8000/month, $96000 a year.
You expect technicians fixing your computer to be paid more than $96k a year? Wow, your sense of proportion is all screwed up.
And for the record, liking computer work as much as I like reading, it really isnt that big a deal to do computer work remotely whilst I read and wait for the uninstall process to finish.
Question: Is the fast boot Linux Expressgate? Because if it is you really ought to spend some time playing with it, its pretty fun and nice. I don't know if it is the same on the HP but my Asus Expressgate has a really nice appstore, it has around 100 free and pay radio stations (easy to sort by free or pay), a nice bookstore for eBooks, games, and a pretty zippy Chrome browser. It will also play any of the media off the HDD but of course that uses more battery than just using the web.
As for TFA I think its gonna take a hell of a lot more than not selling the PC business to right that ship. HP hasn't really been innovative in awhile and even when they have a killer product they have NO clue on how to capitalize on it! I mean have you seen their Brazos based all in one, its brilliant! Just about the perfect housewife or small office PC, its thin, light, doesn't use hardly any power, nice bright 20 inch screen, dual core with a Radeon chip, and all for around $300. They should crank these babies out in a few different screen sizes and advertise the hell out of them! Hell they even have built in WiFi and are brain dead simple to set up!
No just keeping the PC division isn't gonna help, what they are gonna need is someone to actually RUN that PC division with some vision and a brain!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
More like she is the classic example of the Peter Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle. Left in the world of B$=PR she thrives, left in charge things don't quite go so well. Like most current CEO's more time well be spent on inflating CEO compensation and enhancing the golden parachute than on achieving results. HP gave away it's business for free by outsourcing and contracting, there is now no way to stave off the ODM direct to public sales growth and quite of few of those ODM make everything electrical and electronic. Digital product consolidation is reducing the number of products and of course branding and new digital household marketing and sales deals will do even more damage.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Put that live cd on a USB key, it will boot faster.
If you use Windows' built in fax and scan, you can get most everything working right without the bloatware. But yes, their drivers suck.
Didn't she have Carly Fiorina stinking things up for her, and making the "issues" of the campaign about Meg Whitman's hairstyle? If I'm Meg Whitman, I have been gunning for this job just to show up Carly.
Just don't screw up Vertica. Leave them to do their thing.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Please Google:
IBM detained mother of ex-employee on the day of centennial
or
How Much IBM Can Get Away with is the Responsibility of the Media
or
Tragedy of Labor Rights Repression in IBM China
Put that live cd on a USB key, it will boot faster.
*What* live CD? You honestly think it took *20 minutes* to boot from a live CD?
I'm pretty sure that amiga3d was talking about installing it to the HD.
BTW, I can confirm that the OS install that comes on a new Pavilion is indeed loaded with all manner of "monitoring"/"easy$verb" apps that are either simply useless or, worse yet, duplicate (and often interfere with) standard Windows components, and thus it's generally best suited for overwriting with $your_preferred_linux_distro as soon as you can get it home (or at least a fresh Windows installation, please--Windows 7 is not really that bad, until OEMs start overlaying it with their garbagewares).
After that, and with the addition of a cooling stand, you've got a pretty decent machine.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It's not really all that profitable. On a $500 laptop they make like $25 in Operating Margin (after everything is paid). They just sell a whole lot of them.
So it's profitable.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
you have to be able to turn everything you touch into shit to win an election.
I am not sure why Apotheker was hired first place. He screwed up majorly at SAP and was universally hated there until the company founder gave him the boot after a short period of time.
We rolled out HP machines in my department in the late 90s, and had a 25% failure out of the box. One in four, DOA or otherwise unusable.
Why anyone would spec an HP makes me ask "Who's getting the kickback?".
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
TeaBagger may refer to:
* A person who bags tea.
* In 21st-century American politics, a supporter of the Tea Party movement.
* A person who engages in a particular sexual practice involving his mouth and man's scrotum.
So it's profitable.
Well, yes. but not, perhaps, profitable "as hell".
To wit; the margins on Laptops are fairly thin, although not as razor thin as they are on commodity desktops.
The fat margins are in the mobile sphere. IE: smartphones and tablets. This is why Mark Hurd wanted Palm and WebOS in the first place. It was a smart move and would have paid off handsomely if HP's board wasn't a bunch of dickheads that decided they wanted to dump him over a fake scandal.
So instead the morons got Apotheker who proceed to immediately shit all over HP with his stupid "software and services" ideas and within 6 months had cost the company billions in stock price and profits. Not to mention likely killing off HP's one shot at making it in the mobile space.
Now Whitman's gotta pick up the pieces and I dare say she has her work cut out for her. the laptop and desktop divisions will likely survive, but I don't see how she's going to revive WebOS unless they strike a deal with Samsung or HTC to make handsets for them.
With most of the core talent in the WebOS programming group drained away to Apple and Google (Mathias Duarte, one of the main WebOS UI designers is now at Google, and lead designed the new Ice Cream Sandwich UI) they are also facing a lack of design talent and experience. They have a shell of Palm's programming and software design department left to rebuild an entire brand with. I don't see it happening.
Which sucks, because I really like WebOS. (Still rockin' my 2 YO Sprint Pre!)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
That can easily be avoided by not buying a Windows machine or not using a vendor-supplied system at all. I have an HP notebook whose SUSE Enterprise installation I replaced with Ubuntu (no bloatware, but I'm more comfortable with Ubuntu), and it's easily the best computer I've owned (even accounting for the evolution of technology).
Meg and Todd were very clear in the investor call that HP would be trying "another run at" the tablet business, but that they'd be using Windows 8, not webOS.
Yeah, but I doubt anybody would be willing to buy the Integrity Servers line. The only way HP could sell that off would be by bundling the Blades, the Proliants and other servers with it. They pretty much destroyed a really good unixstation and server line by killing PA-RISC. Now everybody - MS, Oracle, Red Hat, Canonical, has dropped support for it. And that stupid CPU is priced stratospherically high, w/o really offering much of an advantage on Xeon or Opteron. Idiots in Compaq and HP deep-sixed the Alpha and PA-RISC for this piece of junk. At least, since this is Intel's CPU more than HP's, HP should let go of it and let Intel determine how, and if, to go forward w/ it.
Oh man. I was talking about work. I don't know what in hell that's got to do with politics. Maybe the lying, cheating and backstabbing are the same but work implies productivity. Politics implies parasite.
You obviously haven't looked at her actual accomplishments. It's pretty impressive. Unlike most CEO's she seems to have left every company she worked at in better shape than when she arrived. I understand this is Slashdot and they hate all republicans here but still, this is about work, not politics. For work it's nice to have someone with a successful track record. Which of the two political mafias they support is irrelevant.
But how likely is that, really?
I've seen win7 in a virtual environment and indeed it's not really bad, looks kinda like a bugfix of Vista. The problem is I've used linux since '99 and I can't go back. I have a new Macbook, well a 2008 model actually but I just got it a couple weeks ago, and I like Snow Leopard fine but I like Ubuntu better.
Personally I would suggest cleaning up the mess by Intel selling the Itanium division back to HP.
....will kill the Universal Print Driver. With fire. Then run it over. Twice.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
If I care not about my minions, their toil, their future, then yes, it's profitable - barely. But if shipping costs go up, they organize a union, I move in the slightest unprofitable direction, I try to innovate new products with risk, then all is lost.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It is splashtop linux, I havent been able to get a shell prompt on it yet (although I was able to view the filesystem through their customized mozilla browser; I did not have permissions for basically anything except "~", unfortunately).
Didn't she have Carly Fiorina stinking things up for her, and making the "issues" of the campaign about Meg Whitman's hairstyle? If I'm Meg Whitman, I have been gunning for this job just to show up Carly.
Mmmmm, they weren't running for the same office.
Unless Carly went waaay out of her way to mess things up for Meg. >_>