Why HP Should Sell Its PC Business To Save It 221
packetrat writes "Hewlett Packard may not be in danger as a company, but its future in the PC business is in doubt, thanks to former CEO Leo Apotheker's maneuvers to turn HP into IBM. This article at Ars says Meg Whitman should go ahead and sell off the PC business — mostly because HP's management is so inept, it would likely do better without them. Agilent seems to be doing okay since it was spun off in 1999, but HP may have spun off its soul in the process."
To maximize shareholder value... (Score:5, Interesting)
They should just concentrate on the one really profitable thing they do - making ink.
Or they should just sell off their assets, and then pay the shareholders off.
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There are thousands of ink recipes out there, many much more stable than modern inks. There are also hundreds of ink cartridge vendors out there - modern inks may be naff but there's a lot of people selling the stuff.
If HP wants to survive, it certainly needs to concentrate on core products but it also has to diversify. Having said that, diversifying into areas HP aren't very good at doesn't help HP.
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HP used to do one thing. Engineering equipment like scopes and test tools and calculators. Then they added printers. Then they added PCs. Then they spun off their core being into Agilent. What's left behind at HP is not HP. Don't remember when they added workstations and minicomputers to the mix, but they aren't doing PA-RISC systems anymore.
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I wonder if there is a significant market for retro test equipment. With real, quality buttons and switches. And green high persistence phosphors. And RS-232 ports. And tubes (er, valves for you strange people that drive on the wrong side of the road).
Just think, your results would be so much warmer.
Nurse says it's nap time. Gotta go.
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What's wrong with ? I like the old boat anchors as much as the next guy but man, that shit weighed a ton! [wikipedia.org]
HP == Radioactive (Score:2)
HP name becoming radioactive.
HP used to be a quality brand, but that was at least a decade ago.
Now they represent overpriced ink, _crap_ PC clones and laptops and gross mismanagement.
Acquiring EDS only adds another horrible reputation to the pot. Perhaps they should buy the ghost of Packard-Bell to further enhance their image? SAIC? The 'Church' of Scientology? (I hear it's going cheap)
They shouldn't spin off their PC business, it is crap. They should spinoff their server business (and any other bu
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This is interesting and you make a good point there. From a pure number crunching perspective, they should sell their PC division. This is just because they lack vision, innovation and general guidance. This happens all the time when you put a shitty MBA at the top of a company that only understands profits.
Look at Apple. They had a visionary CEO, they are worth 10 times HP even though they move 10 times less PCs. They are gaining marketshare when HP is losing. They were successful at smartphones when HP fa
It's not that they lack vision (Score:5, Insightful)
In the PC space there is no road to real innovation. Operating margins are 5 percent at best, in a good year. You cannot differentiate with your prime products because another company owns the entire user experience. One failed product and you've left the shareholders with no profits at all. And if you experiment with new ways of doing things like Android on ARM Microsoft is going to pull your co-marketing dollars and leave you with no profits at all and no hope of getting any. The path is really just not there.
Apple did it, but look how: they built their own brand and earned a brand premium through differentiation and outstanding design. With those premiums they invested in innovation without being sucked into the trap of surrendering the user experience. With each new thing they could charge more and better premiums until they could reach escape velocity with an ecosystem that's uniquely theirs.
No PC OEM can pull that off without letting go of those no-margin PC revenues. No doubt it's a tough sell to the shareholders and the board. But it's the right thing to do. Ultimately HP cut the chains it or we'll get our innovation from new players like Samsung, HTC and so on rather than traditional PC OEMs. We've seen the future, and it ain't this.
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HP used to innovate. Not that their engineers are even allowed to today, but once upon a time they were creative.
If they haven't driven every competent person from their payroll already, there might still be some people who could come up with ideas that would improve their products. If not, they could try exclusively licensing some creative patents that are already out there, in hopes of building up some market differentiators. Projectors built into laptop screens. Trackpads that don't suck. Specialty
Re:To maximize shareholder value... (Score:4, Funny)
Hopefully, as much as anyone hates Apple, they'll be the only american company left that knows how to build a PC.
Relevant [theonion.com]
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> they are worth 10 times HP even though they move 10 times less PCs
You talk about crunching numbers but maybe your calculator is broken. Apple market cap may be 10x bigger but it does not mean the company is "worth" 10x more. It just means that people are comfortable paying a lot of money for stock that has a book per share value of 20% (compared to +70% for HP).
If you want to use "market cap" and "value" as synonyms, basically you can only talk about Berkshire-Hathaway (Warren Buffet) because it's the
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Apple has 80bn in cash. Probably a bit more now. That alone is about 20-25% of their market cap. That is a pretty hot commodity right now. Apple is Intel's worst nightmare. That money makes them own. A lot. They can do thing other companies can only dream of. They can lock out entire production lines. They can invest in their suppliers in return for exclusivity, without necessarily incurring the risk.
And did I mention that they have 3 really hot product lines (Macs, iPads and iPhone) and one that is still d
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> They are the only American computer company that is growing right now
Apple is not a computer company. All their profit comes from the Apple Store and from the iPhone, iPad and iPods. Have a look at the numbers for their Mac sales and you will see that they are not a big computer company. Never been.
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Apple will probably have $100 billion in revenues for this fiscal year. Around 18% - 20% of that comes from Macs. Their Mac business alone would put them around 130 on the Fortune 500.
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> Apple will probably have $100 billion in revenues
More confusion. Revenue != profit. If revenue was all that important, Groupon would be a catch.
Need more? Ask anyone who used to own Nortel or Enron stock.
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I keep forgetting how Apple is known for razor thin margins on all of its products and it doesn't add billions in cash to its stockpile every quarter.....
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Apple is making a lot of money. The point is: it's not a computer company.
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HP is also not a computer company then since less than 6% of its profit comes from the Personal Systems Group.
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This is interesting and you make a good point there. From a pure number crunching perspective, they should sell their PC division. This is just because they lack vision, innovation and general guidance. This happens all the time when you put a shitty MBA at the top of a company that only understands profits.
The problem is (was) not just Apotheker at the helm, but the steady stream of inept, incompetent barbarians that the board has brought in seemingly to burn the place to the ground, because someone had the brilliant idea to charge admission to the firefighters. Hewlett and Packard must both be spinning in their graves, writhing in agony watching their empire fall like Rome.
The best thing they could do for their shareholders would be to auction off every asset they own, divvy up the loot, and go their separa
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It's worth pointing out that PCs are, and have been a commodity market for quite some time now. The only way to be profitable is to be in the top 3. To do that means selling at razor thin margins, practically selling your product at cost. Which means that if there's a downturn in the market (likely, given the economy) or you overproject for the quarter, you run a very real risk of operating at a loss for the quarter. You can't consistently guarantee your shareholders a profit, so it's definitely worth look
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That might work for the Best Buy crowd, but don't forget that HP's real target market is the business sector. There, you really do need separate sub-brands (can't have secretaries using the same machines as the sales guys, y'know!) Dell does a decent job with this (e.g. their "Vostro", "Latitude" and "Precision" lines).
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Hails of derisive laughter, Bruce!!!!
Oh wait... you were SERIOUS????
HP Didn't Spin Off Its Soul (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HP Didn't Spin Off Its Soul (Score:5, Insightful)
It's soul was eaten by Carly.
Some will consider you flippant or flamebait, but I think you've spoke more truth than you'll get credit for. The leader's personality percolates and pervades through an organization, driving out (directly and indirectly) those not orthogonal to it. HP had a different personality after her tenure than it did before.
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Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA.
Really is it logical that a computer companies top person isn't an EE?
Is it logical that a software companies top person isn't a programmer?
Is it logical that a car companies top person isn't a automotive engineer?
At some point we have let the clerical staff take over the nation.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_spying_scandal [wikipedia.org]
Re:HP Didn't Spin Off Its Soul (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA.
My brother could contribute to the project. He was a pedigreed professor of finance who could teach anywhere he chose. After a few years he was offered tenure. He realized then that his job had become the mass-production of MBAs, very very few of whom were at all receptive to the most crucial idea he tried to impart to them: you should make money, not merely get money.
Seeing then that the fruit of his labors were ruining our society, he quit to start over becoming a EE. I admire him for that.
Re:HP Didn't Spin Off Its Soul (Score:5, Informative)
Re:HP Didn't Spin Off Its Soul (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA.
I'd read this book, and hope one of the case studies would be about Border Books, a fantastic company of the '80s and early '90s. Then the creators and early executives left and the whole board was taken over by MBAs who had never worked in a bookstore, had no idea why Borders was superior to (or even different from) Barnes & Noble, and didn't understand anything about how the internet was changing retail.
Then the company died.
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There's a new book called "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" that might be what you're asking for:
http://www.amazon.com/Car-Guys-vs-Bean-Counters/dp/1591844002 [amazon.com]
I haven't read it yet, but the reviews I've seen were positive.
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Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA.
My experience is that nowadays all MBAs know is how to reduce costs and thus move your product downmarket. They can talk for hours about how to save 5 cents in shipping costs, but have no idea how to produce a superior product that would allow you to double your price and people happily dole out the cash (apropos of Apple and the late Steve Jobs).
You sure these guys had MBAs? (Score:2)
My experience is that nowadays all MBAs know is how to reduce costs and thus move your product downmarket. They can talk for hours about how to save 5 cents in shipping costs, but have no idea how to produce a superior product that would allow you to double your price and people happily dole out the cash (apropos of Apple and the late Steve Jobs).
Strange, I earned an MBA in 2008 and my experience is exactly the opposite. Apple was an example frequently used by professors in product development and marketing classes. Apple was also a common topic for student research papers in these areas and even in macroeconomics classes (ie how does Apple plan for or adapt to the business cycle - they don't, they just rely on superior design and superior marketing to power through economic downturns).
I attended a business school at a state university, I believe
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Yeah, but leading an inspired R&D team is not something anybody can do. On the other hand, anybody can go down a budget and knock 10% off every line and fire the manager who misses the mark by the largest amount, then lather, rinse, repeat the next year.
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Yeah, but leading an inspired R&D team is not something anybody can do. On the other hand, anybody can go down a budget and knock 10% off every line and fire the manager who misses the mark by the largest amount, then lather, rinse, repeat the next year.
Neither can any engineer be a useful member of that R&D team. Every year there is no shortage of computer science graduates who couldn't write a non-trivial working program if their life depended on it. There are people of marginal skills in all fields of endeavor, management or engineering. To look at these people and draw some conclusion regarding the entire field, or to draw a conclusion as to what they were taught, is quite silly.
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The examples are worth squat. Many (if not most) MBAs cover at least one case of a company who succeeded by implementing a very aggressive profit sharing program. How many companies out there do you find implementing profit share plans?
Same with higher quality. You might spend weeks paying lip service in class to Apple and other upscale manufacturers, but out there in the real world MBAs are, more often than not, one trick cut-costs ponies.
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Not just business, but also government has been destroyed by MBA.
Its not MBAs (Score:2)
Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA. Really is it logical that a computer companies top person isn't an EE? Is it logical that a software companies top person isn't a programmer? Is it logical that a car companies top person isn't a automotive engineer?
I confess that I once had the arrogant engineer's stereotypical perception of MBAs. This made business school so much more fun for me. I was constantly amused by having my former beliefs turn out to be complete nonsense.
Having an MBA and experience in the industry that your company operates in are not mutually exclusive. I am an engineer that recently earned an MBA. About 1/3 of my class were engineers or scientists of some sort. For those whose experience was managerial in nature many managed things dir
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The problem with mathematical models is that they tend to cause you to ignore reality in favor of the model.
There was this wonderful model for evaluating CDSes, and it said that Wall Street was made out of solid gold a few years ago.
Models also tend to encourage people to weigh decisions in favor of things that are easily measured as opposed to things that aren't easily measured. At work they're going nuts with Six Sigma, but it is all about coming up with arguments that will win elevator speeches. If you
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The problem with mathematical models is that they tend to cause you to ignore reality in favor of the model.
The shortcomings of modeling were thoroughly discussed, an incomplete set of factors plus garbage in garbage out. One of the steps is to compare your predictive model to the real world to see how close to reality it gets. Only once you believe you are "close enough" do you introduce factors that do not exist in today's real market, ie your new product and/or services. Even then the results are not to be taken as gospel. Given all these shortcomings, it is often still better than having an "expert" just thro
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Someone should write a paper or a book about the destruction of American business by the MBA. Really is it logical that a computer companies top person isn't an EE? Is it logical that a software companies top person isn't a programmer? Is it logical that a car companies top person isn't a automotive engineer?
At some point we have let the clerical staff take over the nation.
Amen. I've been thinking this for years. John Ralson Saul helped guide my thinking in his book "Voltaire's Bastards", and I've been digesting and developing these ideas ever since. Amongst my anecdotal stories buttressing my ideas is that of an MBA with no food processing experience being appointed to run a food processing facility. He sat in his office for hours staring at charts, and he had little real conception about how his plant functioned. He managed to change a formerly profitable facility into
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While it's true Alan Mulally isn't a "car guy," he's not exactly an MBA either. He started out as an engineer making airplanes for Boeing and migrated up to management. He could very easily have been a 'car guy' if he wasn't a 'plane guy.'
Let's put it this way: I'd trust Alan Mulally to work on my car. I wouldn't trust Meg Whitman within a country mile of my PC.
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Ford was doing really good, until they adopted the idiotic "MyFordTouch" system to replace all physical controls with a single touchscreen. That one move caused them to drop from near the top of the JD Power ratings to near the bottom. It doesn't matter how good the rest of your car is if you have to mess around with some stupid touchscreen just to change the radio volume or change the fan speed.
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It certainly took a hit from Carly, but it's real problem has been the board of directors ever since.
The morons didn't even INTERVIEW Apotheker before they hired him. They didn't even look into his reason for leaving(actually being canned) by SAP.
They are continuously at odds and busy with infighting rather than running the company. Meg (who was one of those morons on the board) is going to continue with the insane plans Leo got the axe for coming up with. That's insane.
The investors need to clean house
Who cares and why? (Score:3)
Good HP is long dead.
New HP deserves death.
None of this is news.
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It's like someone who got blasted with a couple Sieverts worth of radiation all at once. They're sick for a while, then everything seems to get better for a while, but everyone knows it won't be long until their hemorrhaging out every orifice and on the way to being dead. Seriously though, when did the exposure occur? What, if anything, was the event that signaled HP's eventual demise as the company we know today? I think most of us agree that it's going to happen, I'm just curious what the point of no
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As an HP employee, I guess I should er, thanks I guess?
No seriously, why does "New HP" deserve to die? We still do some pretty cool things.
Crippling inkjets and holding the ink to ransom is not cool dude. Die, you evil turkeys! Die!!!
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As an HP employee, I guess I should er, thanks I guess?
No seriously, why does "New HP" deserve to die? We still do some pretty cool things.
Crippling inkjets and holding the ink to ransom is not cool dude. Die, you evil turkeys! Die!!!
But, in defense of New HP, isn't that the same as Old HP?
And it might be annoying, but it's not that important. There are lots of competitors, and the (especially consumer) printing business is not as important as it was 10 years ago.
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Eh,
I don't get that. Now you're glorifying things without looking at past failures and current successes.
Firstly, HP's NetServer products, for those that remember, were a complete failure when compared to Compaq's ProLiant Servers, and after the merge we rightfully went with that line of servers. If you then look at the current C-class blade product line and the attached Flexfabric stuff, you'll have to agree that it is, in your words, exquisitely engineered stuff.
You're going on about a printer, but if you
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Most likely a sheep swayed by listening to someone else complain about something and they took it to heart. It's usually just a good idea to ignore those type of people who can't offer anything to substantiate their opinions.
HP Printers... (Score:2)
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They bought EDS for the market presence.
There is only one thing EDS is good at. Selling hot steaming bullshit to fortune 500s and governments for truly insane prices.
There is nice steady cash flow in it. But EDS is like a life insurance company. Sure they have computer people, but the place is run by and for the sales people.
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I'm not certain on that. HP produced a pluggable hierarchical scheduler for Linux and a clustering patch. Neither were adopted. Neither were even that widely used. If there's more than a dozen Slashdot readers who even knew these products existed, I'd be amazed.
I'm not saying the contributions were poor. Quite the opposite. I liked their scheduler patch. It was absolutely wonderful if you wanted to do any kind of research into the dynamics of that part of kernel operations. The potential for teaching OS the
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I liked their scheduler patch.
On that... I admit I don't understand a whole lot about it; but I remember reading about this on /. and other coagulations of news. The gist was that the current state of linux threading was badly in need of a re-design and that this patch was the ticket, or at least a viable contender. Wtf happened with that? Why did the linux gods reject the deal?
HP's management seems confused (Score:3)
Yeah, if the global market leader isn't sure about the business, then they really should sell it to someone who actually cares about the business and will grow it. Indecisive waffling is not good for any business.
HP hardware is not what it used to be anyhow. Noisiest freakn' servers on the planet. You'd swear they go out of their way to find extra-noisy turbo-whine fans for their rack mount hardware.
Memristors? (Score:3)
I wonder if HP has dreams of patent riches from Memristors?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/10/memristor_in_18_months/ [theregister.co.uk]
Interesting technology, that.
Didnt work out well for IBM's products (Score:5, Interesting)
After IBM PCD was sold off to Lenovo, the quality has decreased.
Their well-known Thinkpad product line transitioned from a no compromise option to a lesser product. First, the high-quality Flexview displays went. Next was any non-widescreen display, followed by the split into the current models seen today. In trying to globalize a US brand, they killed what made the Thinkpads unique - being able to pay a good amount of money, and get a no-nonsense, no-compromise product.
As for HP:
The damage at HP was done during Fiorina's time. You want to blame anyone, you pin it on her. Not Hurd, or Apotheker.
Engineering a product for the Third World and then simply changing the product manuals/power plugs for the First World always results in an inferior product. Selling it off to an interest in the Third World guarantees this outcome.
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IBM gained by dumping the Thinkpad line. It's a Lenovo problem now.
What happens to something after you dump it doesn't matter, because you got rid of the problem before it happened.
Products don't matter, profit matters and much as I like old HP test equipment and old Thinkpads, neither company OWES me those things.
Myopic thinking with a long-term guaranteed loss. (Score:2)
By your logic, you'd be fine if everyone sold junk - even if it meant there was no alternative.
That's the way you kill products and companies, especially Thinkpads.
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There is no alternate universe where the bottom doesn't fall out of the generic PC market and kill the quality of all IBM and HP PC's, should they still be making them. That is a fact of life that IBM and HP had to deal with in their own way. IBM spun off their PC's and HP kept them and ran them into the ground. In both cases, quality went down. It was always going to go down. You can't go from an average sales price of around $1000 to an average sales price of around $500 without losing quality.
People used
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Apple only loosely competes with PC makers.
Sure, at some level their devices do the same sorts of things, but if somebody buys a PC there is a 99% chance they want to run Windows on it. I don't know anybody who buys Apple products to install Windows on them.
The PC makers do compete with each other, which is what keeps their prices down. Collectively they have WAY more market share than Apple. Googling around the only figures I could find were from a few years back, but back then Dell sold 4X as many desk
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Thinkpad has only to be better than enough of the competition. They don't need to be vastly better to sell.
The competitors are working hard at sucking too.
BTW if you want quality, spring for a MilSpec Toughbook or Itronix or similar. You can use some of those to smash Thinkpads in your spare time and they'll still work.
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I understand, but this article was about a way to save HP's computers, not trying to save HP.
Of course, unlike the ThinkPad, I'm not sure why people would care about saving HP's PCs. ThinkPads were top-shelf; Compaq/HP was decent midrange, but never standout.
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The quality would have gone down at IBM also. You can't get blood from a stone. The Windows PC market is running at an average sales price of $450. You can't build a quality PC for that price. That is actually cheaper than the original iPod from 2001, which in 2011 dollars is about $500.
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I like to think I build quality PCs, and I usually spend around $300. Granted, I'm usually not buying cases or power supplies with that money so it goes a bit further, but you can get decent ones for less than $150.
Much of this depends on what you want to do with your PC, however. If you're looking for some gaming rig with dual video cards then yes that money doesn't go far. If you're looking for something that runs Excel you'll do fine with a very modest investment.
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Depends what line your dealing with. I've got an x120e and I don't see anything about it that's low quality, it was rather expensive compared to some of the competitors, but it's just a well engineered machine. A really good keyboard for the type, nice screen, good battery life and I rarely if ever find myself waiting for things to load despite it using a 1.6ghz dual core processor.
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You burn the recovery DVD from the recovery partition. If you blew it away, you can buy the physical media for a few bucks. The exact part number depends on the exact version and language you need: Linky. [lenovo.com]
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perfect match (Score:5, Funny)
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And DVDs.
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Strong brands do work. Look at Apple. With Apple you pay top dollar for good design and good quality (even if they
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My dead Mini and my wounded one beg to differ.
Looking good is no substitute for working well, being well equipped, or being durable.
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Apple leads in all PC quality surveys, as well as all PC customer service surveys. If you are too stupid to work the Genius Bar and AppleCare ($149 for years 2 and 3 on a mini) then maybe you *should* buy from HP.
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The iPhone 4 does not have a poor antenna any more than the earth is flat or President Obama is a socialist.
Perfect oportunity for Dell (Score:2)
Google Should Buy it for Corporate Chromebook (Score:2)
Makes as much sense as Google acquiring Motorola for the same platform and patents for android.
I would like to see HP/Google enterprise hosted google apps appliances hooked up to Chromebooks as a replacement for the Microsoft Quagmire.
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Why should Google/HP sell Microsoft Windows PCs?
Just sell the hardware with Linux Distros, Chromebooks, or sell the hardware no operating system installed to organizations with corporate licences. They could even farm out the Windows drivers and support to a third company.
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Better yet they could flip MS the bird and sell only 'naked' PCs.
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Yeah, the only logical buyer for HP's PC business is the company that should have owned it all along: Microsoft.
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Google is 75% Mac users, including Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt. Chrome OS is not even close to a replacement for Mac OS X. Chrome OS does not even replace iOS yet.
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ChromeOS isn't really intended to replace iOS or OSX. It is intended to not have long-term local storage - the whole point is to be a platform for accessing cloud services.
The idea is that if you drop your laptop on the way to work you go into the supply closet and grab a new one and log in. You wouldn't go to a service desk to have your stapler or telephone repaired, and the ChromeOS concept is extending that to a PC.
Once your local apps start having local storage that is more than a cache, then you need
Memristors (Score:2)
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Only if HP actually does something with them. The way that company's been going, I expect that actual innovations using memristors will be accomplished by other parties, and HP will just play patent troll and either extract licensing fees or try to block superior products from reaching the market at all.
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that's wht "from licensing" means.
There is life after HP (Score:2)
I work for a company that was spun off by HP then spun off by that resulting company. Twice removed we are now doing quite well. You lose the benefits and negatives that come with being part of a large company...but the net result can be positive. HP has become a REALLY large company, even since I left there 3.5 years ago (for their twice-emancipated child). I think it is very possible that HP is too large (both in scope of products/services and number of people) to be effectively managed by a single CE
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HP killed TouchPad by not making their own software for the 10 years previous. They can't correct for the fact that they put their balls into Microsoft's hands by putting WebKit and Linux on some ARM hardware. They just simply did not have enough software to compete with Apple and Microsoft at their own games.
Agilent is not exactly a beacon... (Score:3)
I'd hardly say that Agilent is a good example to raise. They are seriously mismanaged, and simply are tied to a business with a much longer product cycle. It has taken more years for them to reach the same level of apparent rot, but only because instruments have a 10-20 product life, while computers have a 0.5-1 year product life. Agilent has had to resort to re-badging their PXI instruments from their rivals (i.e. they buy their PXI 26.5 GHz spectrum analyzer from Phase Matrix, who is now owned by National Instruments). The place has driven off or laid off most of its key talent. Agilent is a festering hulk, it it just not quite as bad as HP is.
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I think the problem is founder loss.
Few companies can maintain their vision for long once the founder (and maybe their hand-groomed successors) leaves. Once the institutional investors take over, if you can't fit it on a spreadsheet then it doesn't count. As long as the numbers say you'll do good for the next 4-8 quarters then you get bonuses - whether you're destroying the company or not.
Occasionally you'll get a strong CEO that bucks that trend, but they're very few and far between.
Whether you like Appl
Client PC's are sociology now, not specs (Score:2)
HP has no future in client PC's. They have to get out ASAP. They don't know a damn thing about competing for the consumer's attention. Consumer PC's are sociology, not specs. Nobody cares what is inside a MacBook Air, they just want one.
What used to be the PC market is now just servers. HP's notebooks are a server in a notebook, they are not comparable to Apple's notebooks. HP should be running for the back room I-T business it knows.
A friend of mine who is a petite woman was told by her doctor not to carry
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Yup, this pretty much nails it.
I'm not even sure the PC and laptop as we've known them will still be around in 5 years. I think the smartphone might displace both of them. When you're at your desk you'll dock it with your keyboard, mouse and monitor and use it in "desktop" mode. When you're on the road and need to produce content you'll dock it into a MacBook Air-like docking station with integrated keyboard and monitor and use it in "laptop" mode. And if you just want to browse and read you'll drop it i
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I'm not convinced of this.
The PC and the handheld really are very different platforms, and what works well for one does not always work well for another. On the handheld you want big fat buttons you can hit with your thumbs. On a PC you want lots of info readily visible, and the precision of a mouse.
The corporate world is still on Windows, and that is a vicious cycle. People make apps for Windows since that is what people run, and people run Windows since that is where the apps are.
Sure, you can find con