HP To Charge For Service Packs and Firmware For Out-of-Warranty Customers 385
New submitter josh itnc writes "In a move that is sure to put a wedge between HP and their customers, today, HP has issued an email informing all existing Enterprise Server customers that they would no longer be able to access or download service packs, firmware patches and bug-fixes for their server hardware without a valid support agreement in place. They said, 'HP has made significant investments in its intellectual capital to provide the best value and experience for our customers. We continue to offer a differentiated customer experience with our comprehensive support portfolio. ... Only HP customers and authorized channel partners may download and use support materials. In line with this commitment, starting in February 2014, Hewlett-Packard Company will change the way firmware updates and Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) on HP ProLiant server products are accessed. Select server firmware and SPP on these products will only be accessed through the HP Support Center to customers with an active support agreement, HP CarePack, or warranty linked to their HP Support Center User ID and for the specific products being updated.' If a manufacturer ships hardware with exploitable defects and takes more than three years to identify them, should the consumer have to pay for the vendor to fix the these defects?"
Well if HP didn't already have a terrible rep... (Score:5, Insightful)
... they sure as hell will now.
I'm not an IT person, but weren't there a few companies that tried this crap wwaayy back when? I seem to remember them all failing miserably.
Normally I do not encourage piracy ... (Score:5, Interesting)
... but in this case I won't fault anyone if they have to download the essential patches from pirate sites.
Re: Normally I do not encourage piracy ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Absoloutely not! Thats why i always use trustworthy sites like TPB rather than the manufacturers site as they love to ppackage all sorts of crap with their downloads. ;)
Re: Normally I do not encourage piracy ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Normally I do not encourage piracy ... (Score:3)
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Why not as long as the chechsums match?
As I said, if there's no trustworthy source of checksums, ie if HP don't make the checksums available to non-payers, to what am I going to match the suspect, pirated files?
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Doesn't Cisco do this too? Its a royal piss off.
Re:Well if HP didn't already have a terrible rep.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Well if HP didn't already have a terrible rep.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an IT person, but weren't there a few companies that tried this crap wwaayy back when? I seem to remember them all failing miserably.
If you were a reader of slashdot you'd know that Oracle is suing companies for providing patch access to customers without a support contract right now. And people are finding ways not to be an Oracle customer (right now) as a result. Naturally HP thought it would be a good idea, as they have too many customers.
Re:Well if HP didn't already have a terrible rep.. (Score:4, Informative)
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I'm not an IT person, but weren't there a few companies that tried this crap wwaayy back when? I seem to remember them all failing miserably.
What makes this more ironic is that HP recently went the other direction on their ProCurve line, offering full features and upgrades for life. I just deployed a cluster on mid-range HP switches yesterday and they were such a better deal than Juniper, specifically because of their software support policy.
But ... because of Juniper, Cisco, even Netgear to some degree th
Re: Well if HP didn't already have a terrible rep. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Well if HP didn't already have a terrible rep. (Score:5, Insightful)
More importantly, it is THEIR job to provide me with a working product. The warranty covers problems with the device caused in the field. If they sold me a product that has known issues then it is their responsibility to provide the fixes, regardless of whether or not I am in warranty. If I plug my 120v (US) router into a 240V (uk) outlet and let out the magic smoke and am out of warranty* that's fair. But if I'm sold an internet firewall that has a secret admin password that can't be changed, it's the company's responsibility to provide the necessary fix so the firewall works as expected.
This should be no different than how automobile companies are expected to act. If a serious flaw is found in a car, it doesn't matter if it is this year's model or from ten years ago, or whether you are the original owner or have purchased it used; you are entitled to that fix. Why some software vendors have somehow gotten it into their heads that they have the right to sell us lemons and then make us pay for the privilege of fixing their mistakes.
* actually, warranty probably wouldn't cover this sort if user-stupidity either, but you get my point ;-)
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I think as a customer you have to realize a company needs money to "keep the lights on". If you haven't given them money for more than three years, how are YOU keeping their doors open?
Yes, that's a valid question. What's in it for them? The answer is reputation. We're specifically talking here about patches that HP has had to develop anyway, to serve their customers with support contracts. The cost of distributing patches to customers can be low, if you don't have a massively overwrought web infrastructure as does HP. If you simply permit third parties to redistribute patches, it's virtually nothing. HP is hoping to strong-arm customers into giving them money, and no doubt it will work o
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One of the reasons in gong with a major brand is the implied support that comes with the name. Changing the support paradigm has an effect on sales, it is just delayed. 3 years out is about the timing businesses are looking to upgrade their systems. If patching/drivers becomes a serious issue in managements collective "mind", this will influence the buying decision for next time.
A company can get away with this when they have a locked in market and customers with few alternatives. I don't believe this
oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
One more reason to avoid buying or recommending HP to would be buyers. The last thing I'd want to deal with is not being able to get a copy of a firmware update for someone's out of warranty system, server or not because I'm not "HP certified support" or whatever. In 2014, there is no fucking reason whatsoever to not have all issued patches available as direct downloads. This is especially true for legacy hardware.
Re:oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah.... this is going to bite them in the ass... hard.
We recently had an issue with HP servers showing temperatures of 255C on motherboard sensors...
They said this was a firmware issue and told us to flash the bios to fix this. We did... the sensor now shows -127C. Big help.
It actually required a motherboard replacement and they claimed this was -not- a warranty issue because the server was too old. In the meantime we've had 4 more servers have this issue, which makes them unusable in our environment (oil rig HMI).
Would they now not give us the fix without us feeding them a bit of cash? Fuck them.
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HP is well onto the course IBM was 25 years ago, shoot yourself in the foot, and repeat
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HP is well onto the course IBM was 25 years ago, shoot yourself in the foot, and repeat
Someone should show them the AA12, its the perfect weapon for this
I thought we were supposed to use C++ for this.
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HP is well onto the course IBM was 25 years ago, shoot yourself in the foot, and repeat
Someone should show them the AA12, its the perfect weapon for this
I thought we were supposed to use C++ for this.
If you did, you'd spawn a million copies of yourself, and shoot them all in the foot. Medical assistance would prove impossible as you wouldn't be able to distinguish between the genuine copies, and those that simply point and say 'That's me, over there'.
Re:oh well (Score:5, Funny)
"Big help" - Why are you complaining? This is great! Think of the electricity savings! Not only can you stop cooling these servers, you can actually use them to cool your other hardware!
You're not thinking outside the box, that's the problem with you young people.
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We did... the sensor now shows -127C. Big help.
Your tune will change quickly when the fridge stop working and you can chill your mountain dew in an instant.
Re:oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, it probably was a hardware issue...
Often, those sensors are on the SMI bus (which is (basically) an 8 bit serial bus), and a chip disconnected from the SMI bus returns all binary "1"'s. If they treat that as unsigned, it is 255. If they treat it as sign and magnitude, it's -127.
Either way the problem probably is the chip has been knocked and broken off the motherboard slightly.
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not being able to get a copy of a firmware update for someone's out of warranty system, server or not because I'm not "HP certified support" or whatever
If I read TFS correctly, your customer can access the required resources as long as they have a valid support agreement in place with HP.
It looks to me that HP is saying that hardware buyers are only entitled to a license for software patches if they pay some sort of annual rent. Some will pay, some will shop elsewhere.
Re:oh well (Score:4, Informative)
Not the same. HP will have the patches available for download because their customers with a valid support contract in place will be entitled to download them.
HP has already sold the hardware product and finally done the work to create and stage the patches that they claim will fix the mistakes they had in place when they sold the hardware.
The difference is that if you don't pay the extortion money for a valid support contract for your out of warranty server, they will no longer let you have the patches they already made to fix the bugs they already shipped you.
If only there were some other enterprise class server vendor that we could purchase from. But who? Where?
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Re: oh well (Score:3)
If you haven't paid them any money for THREE YEARS are you really their customer still? What are YOU offering them?
Not being picky, just saying if you're not PAYING, you cost them money.
Re: oh well (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't paid them any money for THREE YEARS are you really their customer still?
Who says I'm not paying them money? I could have spent a lot of money buying other hardware from them. Part of the reason I'm likely buying new hardware from them is that three-to-five-year-old hardware that still generally works fine is a good sign that they make a quality product.
But, an issue could come up with that old hardware that a firmware update fixes, and the company has a choice: get me the patch or stop getting money from me for new hardware as I drop them for somebody with better customer service. Why should I keep paying money for the same hardware?
The key is, software/firmware patches are like any other digital data, in that they have essentially zero cost to the manufacturer after they are created. It's not like I'm asking them to replace an out-of-warranty hard drive for free. And, I'm perfectly fine with a company that says "we will stop writing any firmware updates for hardware X months after that hardware is last sold by us".
An example of a company that does it right is SuperMicro. I have pretty much nothing but their motherboards in my servers at home, and I can't afford bleeding edge, so I buy older hardware (but often still new in box). I have had no issues downloading firmware updates for what are now 5-year-old motherboards. One update increased the memory a motherboard could handle by a factor of four. That's a huge added value that makes me likely to keep that motherboard for even longer, and make me want them to support it even longer, and yet they did this for free. That's why I spent more money buying their hardware for later builds. And, for those of you who might want to talk smack about SuperMicro equipment, take a look at the motherboards and cases in hardware from EMC, Dell, and Penguin Computing, and you'll see that many are re-badged SuperMicro. It's no different from Dell, IBM, and Intel re-badging LSI RAID cards.
company charges for paid support (Score:2, Insightful)
does not qualify as news
Re:company charges for paid support (Score:5, Insightful)
does not qualify as news
This is not pay for support. This is pay for firmware updates. Sure, they can charge for them when nobody else does... but I can also buy elsewhere. Fuck them, and Cisco can suck it too. Correcting bugs in 512k of firmware code is hardly adding a new feature, and doing what you are supposed to anyways is hardly premium support.
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This is not pay for support. This is pay for firmware updates.
How is a firmware update not support? How would you define support?
Who pays the cost to fix old, out-of-date drivers and firmware? Is HP supposed to do it out of the goodness of their heart? At what point do they stop patching problems? An easy metric is how many support contracts they have in place for a specific piece of hardware. And the people who do pay for ongoing support shouldn't have to be subsidizing those who don't want to pay.
Re:company charges for paid support (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit. A firmware update generally addresses some sort of bug or deficiency. By not patching it freely, HP is admitting that they sold you a flawed product. So I should be able to then demand my money back. It is their RESPONSIBILITY to fix it!!
As others have said, the worst company with this is cisco. The second worst is sonicwall. Fuck sonicwall and their paid updates!! I had to throw out a perfectly good VPN appliance whoes compact flash card had died because they would not let me download a firmware for the unit. Not because I didnt have a service contract with them, but because I didnt have a service contract for that one particular VPN appliance. I had another contract with another appliance which we purchased later.
If the fix is already made, then keeping it from former customers unless they pay up is spiteful ransom. A firmware update is addressing flaws in the vendors product. The vendor would do well to get them fixed, or you get a very bad reputation such as sonicwall has with me now.
If I had to maintain support contracts with every vendor i've ever done business with on the off chance that one day I will need an update, I would not be able to ever purchase anything new. Your old assets would become drags. This is similar to why I always try and find open source software alternatives for everything I possibly can. Specifically because in software world, it is very common to charge for every update. Result, I don't buy much paid for software when I have open source alternatives. With hardware, its a lot harder to change products when some bug is encountered.
All this is is a giant ad for dell servers, who I have never had a problem with getting drivers or updates for. If dell can do it, then sure as shit HP can. I was actually looking at HP servers for a friend, but I guess I will be recommending dell now. HP fails it. Short term profits trump everything and I am so sick of it.
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Who pays the cost to fix old, out-of-date drivers and firmware? Is HP supposed to do it out of the goodness of their heart?
No, they're supposed to provide perfect firmware and drivers from the start. Since it's easily fixable later and perfect software is known to be very difficult, we can cut them some slack and allow them to provide fixes in the form of updates rather than demanding a replacement machine. But for them, to demand payment to fix something that shouldn't have been wrong in the first place is going a bit far.
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More like company demands more money to fix manufacturing defects.
Is this maybe justifiable? (Score:2)
Re:Is this maybe justifiable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there something that I do not understand about this?
Yes. They want more customers to pay for support.
What THEY do not understand is that people will start buying Dell.
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But.. but... they are going to "provide the best value and experience for our customers"! Surely paying for vital security and bug fixes to make your product work properly is a better value experience than getting them for free!?
Their statement is like a parody of reason.
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it will certainly destroy the value of their second hand equipment.
All of my home computing is three year old refurbished corporate stuff precisely because it does have decent bug fixing and driver updates. Quite apart from being less than a third of the original sale price to buy.
Lenovo support is still free.
Wonder what is going to be done with all the thousands of tons of useless HP equipment at the end of its three year life? I hear that landfill is pretty much full these days.
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It costs MORE to put a system in place to verify your contract status before allowing you to download something than it does to just have the download publicly available.
If this was about saving money they'd look into a torrent.
This is about trying to turn an expense into a profit.
HP used to be greatl (Score:5, Insightful)
Hewlett and Packard were something special.
Now it's just a bunch of MBAs trying to massage their stock price.
Harvard Buiness School grads are noted for this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now it's just a bunch of MBAs trying to massage their stock price.
You got that right.
Algorithm:
- Get hired for a big salary and a LOT of stock options.
- Make the company appear more profitable by cutting off investments in the future to reduce costs now.
- Declare victory and what a great guy you are.
- Cash in the stock options and move on to a bigger company where you can repeat the process for even more money and reputation points. PROFIT!
- Your successor inherits the house of cards and takes the blame when it collapses a few years later.
The Harvard Business School has a reputation for graduates who use this algorithm.
Interestingly, boards of directors keep falling for this. (You'd think they'd look at what happens to companies candidates had "turned around" in the several years AFTER they left when evaluating CEO, COO, and CFO candidates. But apparently they usually don't.)
= = = =
Similarly, if a high company official starts enthusing about the book "Crossing the Chasm" and you're an early hire, cash any vested stock options and get out, before you and the other early hires are laid off. (Interestingly, they usually fire them too soon, when they're still key to the company's success, and the company usually falls INTO the chasm rather than crossing it.)
Re:Harvard Buiness School grads are noted for this (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think they'd look at what happens to companies candidates had "turned around" in the several years AFTER they left when evaluating CEO, COO, and CFO candidates. But apparently they usually don't.
No, that is part of the scam. The MBA applying for the new job points out how everything went to shit after they left, so clearly their genuius is worth paying big bucks for and any other merely qualified applicant will surely fail in such a high pressure, highly skilled role.
Re:Harvard Buiness School grads are noted for this (Score:4, Insightful)
What's even more interesting is that interlocking directorates in the same industry are illegal in the US per the Clayton Act, however the article points out that 1 in 8 interlocks are indeed in the same industry. There's simply no enforcement of this. Thanks again, Obama.
And the previous four administrations. This didn't happen in just the past 6 years. It started a long long time ago, and the Clayton Act, like the Sherman Act, has been out of favor for decades, because it inconveniences people with money.
Thank you Supreme Court for making sure people with money will always have the best government their money can buy.
Re:HP used to be greatl (Score:5, Interesting)
You're mistaking this company for the original HP. "HP" nowadays is actually Compaq. The old HP that everyone knew and loved is now (at least used to be) Aligent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
They are now Aligent and Keysight.
So anywhere you read something about "HP" doing something stupid... Think "Compaq" instead, and it all makes sense.
Re:HP used to be greatl (Score:5, Informative)
Needless to say I was outraged. Not so much at the waste of cardboard and foam material. Not so much at the fact that they couldn't send 8 numbers by email. No, at the fact that the memory was already inside our equipment that we'd paid for, but that we needed to pay extra to actually use it. Fuckers. I now do everything in my power to make sure we never buy from people who use this kind of commercial behavior.
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Needless to say I was outraged. Not so much at the waste of cardboard and foam material. Not so much at the fact that they couldn't send 8 numbers by email. No, at the fact that the memory was already inside our equipment that we'd paid for, but that we needed to pay extra to actually use it.
So you're not angry that the vendor overcharges you for RAM, and for shipping, and is bad at packaging (HP sent me four cardboard boxes in a bigger cardboard box once just to send me four license keys printed out on paper as well, one sheet per box, one key per page) but you're mad that they've found a way to save money on shipping that actually saves you money and still permits them to sell you options which you don't even have to install? Would you like several large wheels of cheese with your inexplicabl
This is it (Score:5, Insightful)
Ladies and gentleman, this is it.
This is the end of Hewlett Packard.
Service packs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Aren't service packs and firmware updates fixes to defective computers/software? Why are they trying to charge for fixing something that is not supposed to be broken in the first place?
Re:Service packs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mod parent up!
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And they get a perverse incentive to deliberately deliver broken products from the outset.
No they don't.
All customers will have support contracts for a hardware purchase for 12 months.
The vast majority will then have them for another 2 years.
A sizeable chunk for probably another year or two after that.
Nearly all bugs are going to be found in the first couple of years, probably in the first 6 months, when pretty much everyone will have support contracts. Ie: they'll need to be fixed.
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And they get a perverse incentive to deliberately deliver broken products from the outset.
No they don't.
Yes they do.
The vast majority will then have them for another 2 years.
Which they paid extra for. Incentive.
A sizeable chunk for probably another year or two after that.
Which they again paid extra for. Yet more incentive. And still perverse.
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Not their first bad call (Score:2)
Devils Advocate (Score:2)
If a manufacturer ships hardware with exploitable defects and takes more than three years to identify them, should the consumer have to pay for the vendor to fix the these defects?"
If it took longer than the warranty period (remember, you still get free access as long as the warranty is valid) - why not?
Look at this the other way. Lets say you sell something you warrant to work for three years. Some four years later, there's some kind of security flaw - why should the company not need some extra funds to
Re:Devils Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
Car analogy! Have you ever heard of a safety recall? You will note that it isn't only new vehicles, or vehicles still under warranty that get recalled. It's ALL the defective vehicles, and the manufacturer has to pay for the repairs. Why you may ask? Because they designed something that is faulty and thus poses a risk not only to the people who bought the car, but to everyone else on the road. Why should software security be any different? If you get compromised, it doesn't just affect you, it can potentially affect a lot of other people.
Now of course for bugs that aren't security related you maybe have a point, if the back seat cupholder tends to break in a car the manufacturer may not be held reliable to fix it, as it doesn't pose a safety risk, but of course not fixing it is sort of a dick move....
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That's a pretty good analogy (as car analogies so often are for some reason), but I can see where HP could still provide real security fixes for free while providing patches simply to work with newer hardware, could fall under the blanket agreement.
The real question in my mind is, if you buy support just to download a patch and then cancel again, are you obligated to uninstall the patch, and will they provide the patch reverter to do so. :-)
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Except that due to the extreme complexity of computer products, it's practically impossible to make anything non-trivial that isn't initially riddled with defects.
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After all, when is the last time you heard of a recall of a 1978 Chevy? There is a sunset period beyond which no one cares anymore. With the speed of computer development, that period is much shorter than cars.
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Yes, but cars are heavily regulated, computers are not... In addition, there is a time limit beyond which they no longer do recalls and the manufactures no longer have to pay for them.
After all, when is the last time you heard of a recall of a 1978 Chevy? There is a sunset period beyond which no one cares anymore.
That sunset period is ten years.
With the speed of computer development, that period is much shorter than cars.
The sunset period reflects the period in which the product may be in use, not the period in which the product is state of the art. Many servers are regularly in place for ten years. The average age of [a] personal computer was 4.5 years in 2006. [statista.com] The average age of a car in the US is now 11.4 years [autonews.com] and the lifespan of an OTR truck is 4-5 years [glostone.com]. It seems reasonable to have a 10 years sunset lifespan on computers to me, especially given that their useful lifespans are increasin
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Lets say you sell something you warrant to work for three years. Some four years later, there's some kind of security flaw - why should the company not need some extra funds to develop a fix? To my mind this change is something that will lead to better support for older products, because you can keep on paying and demanding fixes for your payments...
Let's say that I buy a brand new HP product, and then inside of 1 month I notice a bug in the firmware. It doesn't stop the system working, because that server is not hosting anything on its secondary RAID array other than a set of backup disks that I can put on a different controller (i.e. it causes a problem, but I have an easy and 100% effective workaround). However, I report the bug to HP. On that server, I download all available firmware updates and apply them as they are released.
3 years later, that s
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If they say "we'll keep fixing and updating for 3 years, then forget it, on to the new stuff", then what?
Just consider that, before you throw out the baby with the bath water. Why exactly do they have to provide updates forever?
Frankly, Microsoft has done everyone a huge disservice by supporting XP for so long, people have gotten this idea
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under this model, isn't it in the manufacturer's interest to delay fixes until after the warranty expires?
No, because they still want customers, and no patches quickly equals no customers.
Re:Devils Advocate (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad assumption. The people making purchasing decisions (especially at large organizations) do not base their decisions on unimportant things like "quality" or "technical factors", they very frequently make those decisions based on 1) initial cost and 2) who they play golf with. I've seen this in action, where the people who actually know things are standing on their heads trying to get management to understand why buying $x is a bad idea for valid technical reasons, and some retard MBA makes the wrong decision because a sales rep bought them dinner at a conference once.
Thanks for posting this! (Score:4, Insightful)
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I now really revel in having the foresight to use HP for networking gear, and Dell for servers. This division of labor has kept me happy for 15+ years.
HP already does this for consumer level customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Its happened twice this year that I've tried to find drivers on the HP website for notebooks aged 3-5 years, and found they're not on the HP website. After phoning HP I'm told that warranty isn't valid and for this kind of support I must pay an hourly fee. Only after threats of a lawsuit and an hour of my time occupied, the rep has been able to e-mail the drivers to me, instead of actually listing them on their website for the other owners of the same models.
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That's interesting, my experience was the exact opposite. I was recycling my HP desktop for a colleague to use and realised that I hadn't created recovery media after sticking Linux on it. I called HP expecting to be charged for the media (it was 18 months out if warranty) and the bloke just sent it out free of charge. It turns out I now have two copies - I found the original media when clearing out a cupboard a month later.
Maybe the difference was consumer grade laptop vs business grade desktop, even if it
What? (Score:5, Funny)
HP can't sell enough servers... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Now you're saying you don't want to buy from HP again, but you don't need to, your existing hardware is enough and probably will be for another 3 years. You aren't actually an HP customer anymore, it has now been too long and you won't buy in the near future either.
HP has done the math and figured that customers like you are
I knew there was a good reason.... (Score:3)
Now for the big problem: HP or Dell. Dell is firing 15,000 of it's employees --- and HP's new support policy sucks (REALLY sucks).
My question is
I do know this much: If I need to "throw away" otherwise perfectly good equipment as HP will not provide basic user accessible support for it -- I will not replace the equipment from the same manufacturer with the same BAD policy. I have three 'old' Proliant (580, 585 & 360) servers in use now. If (when) they fail -- the equipment will not be replaced with modern equipment from HP (assuming this policy remains in place).
Couldn't resist (Score:5, Funny)
Now for the big problem: HP or Dell.
There's always Oracle hardware [oracle.com].... OK this is self-confessed flamebate!
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Oracle started requiring a valid support contract to download these sorts of things years ago. A lot of people stopped purchasing Oracle/Sun hardware specifically because of this.
The view held by most system admins, and historically the way it has been is that firmware updates for your servers are free of charge. Actual hardware issues (failed disks, PSU's etc.) will require a support contract to be in place or you are on your own.
While I am sure that this will maximize HP's profits in the short term long t
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Now for the big problem: HP or Dell. Dell is firing 15,000 of it's employees --- and HP's new support policy sucks (REALLY sucks).
Why not Lenovo? It's not like you can actually trust the PCs you get delivered from HP or Dell not to carry malware. In the bargain you might get some PCs that actually work.
In which countries? (Score:3, Interesting)
Regardless, other have said, it will weight in favour of other suppliers for new purchases.
Stupid (Score:2)
No one needs to use their products. This puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
Indifferent to anything else, this is a stupid business decision. Who is management at this company and why are they incompetent?
Apotheker's dream come true. (Score:3)
A few years from now, HP will no longer sell hardware.
Who, now? (Score:2)
I just recommended a laserjet multifunction printer to my dad (he was burning through ink in am inkjet and his scanner was getting flakey under OS X).
What should I recommend people in the future? Particularly the Linux/OS X crowd? Or am I just jumping a little too early?
(I'm a little nervous as the installation process for my Laserjet m1217 on Linux Mint involves downloading a proprietary blob from HP.)
If I were an HP enterprise customer... (Score:3)
I would demand a refund for any defect found in firmware/etc.
This is only going to lead to court cases where the defect report was filed during the warranty, but the fix comes out after warranty expiration.
Don’t buy from HP. Or Dell. (Score:3)
They charge too much and their hardware is always out of date.
I decided to buy some seriously high-end computing equipment for research, and I compared HP, Dell, and Red Barn. For the same price, Red Barn gave me newer hardware, more hardware, faster turn-around on quotes, better service, faster build times, and faster customer service. http://rbtginc.redbarncomputers.com
Re:Government Regulation?? (Score:5, Insightful)
It shouldn't be a legal mandate either. Keeping already released patches available should be a courtesy that all vendors willingly do. The good will encourages repeat buys. Eventually, vendor support will be so expensive and so unappealing that people will just run a free unix on commodity hardware because they get better help from internet forums than they do from vendors.
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It shouldn't be a legal mandate either. Keeping already released patches available should be a courtesy that all vendors willingly do. The good will encourages repeat buys. Eventually, vendor support will be so expensive and so unappealing that people will just run a free unix on commodity hardware because they get better help from internet forums than they do from vendors.
I won't touch Cisco gear with a 10 ft pole, and this is exactly why.
Re:Government Regulation?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't touch Cisco gear with a 10 ft pole, and this is exactly why.
On the other hand...
When working in a Fortune 500 company there were some mighty expensive premium contracts with Cisco. Among them was an agreement I learned about when we had an outage late in the afternoon that affected about 15 people. We have hardware that could have affected hundreds of people, but in this case the outage only affected a few.
Cisco found the closest duplicate replacement part in another state, chartered a flight to a nearby airport, had a taxi driver on standby when the plane arrived, and delivered it to our door within about four hours of reporting the fairly minor problem.
I understand the contract is in place because we had hardware that affects hundreds of thousands of people. The Cisco crew was adamant that the contract had a clause that required a six-hour turnaround on any of that class of hardware. If it had been a major device at a major data center those same four hours could have felt like an eternity, so for those people where an outage can cost thousands of dollars every second in lost productivity and sales I can certainly understand the need for the contract with the devil.
Re:Government Regulation?? (Score:4, Insightful)
For far less money than the Cisco support contract, you could have just bought several spares of each model of Cisco device, and have had the replacement on-hand a quickly as you could walk over and grab it.
Perhaps you missed the first part of my post. Fortune 500 data center.
If you are talking about consumer devices and even common office server room equipment that is quite true. We had lots of commodity stuff lying around. We also kept a bit of less common stuff around, such as spare UPS racks; the $30,000 price tag is low enough cost that we could keep a few of them around when equipment shuffles.
Note that some critical equipment gets mighty expensive. You can find a good deal on low latency, high volume interconnect that can handle ten million concurrent connections for around $250K, but you'll probably want to pay around $350K for the better ones. It would be insane to just keep a few of EVERYTHING lying around, just in case. Far cheaper for the Cisco contract that will get us any replacement we need, quickly.
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Car manufacturers have a legal requirement to make sure parts are available for a certain number of years after the last one rolls off the production line. If you buy something expensive like a car or high end server that seems like a reasonable consumer protection.
Re: Government Regulation?? (Score:4, Informative)
Such things are covered under the Sale of Goods Act as manufacturing defects, since clearly any bugs would have been there when the car was built. The SOGA says goods must last a "reasonable length of time", which for a car has been generally viewed by the courts as at least 15 years.
Therefore any manufacturing defects discovered in the first 15 years of the car's life are covered by the warranty. The manufacturer can either do the fix for free, offer you a replacement car or refund part of the purchase price proportional to how long you have had the car (so after 10 years you might get 1/3rd of the money back, or whatever the market value of the car is).
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Dev: Well, we've found a rather nasty exploit in Product X. Sales: Great! We've got 50 mil in support contracts ending in two weeks. Sit on it until then. Dev: ...
And get the developers to put another obscure hole in that we can release to the wild in 12 months time...
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From a search on equipment that I own:
Important note: HP ProLiant Server firmware access
Starting February 2014, an active warranty or contract is required to access HP ProLiant Server firmware updates. View your existing contracts & warranties or get help linking contracts or warranties to your HP Support Center user profile. To obtain additional support coverage, please contact your local HP office, HP representative, or visit Contact HP. Click here f
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someone should edit the top post...
"...beginning September 2013, Hewlett-Packard Company will change the way firmware updates on HP Integrity and HP 9000 products are accessed..."
No. It's also standard Proliant servers. Read the mails quoted in other posts here. The summary just links to a mail received by somebody owning HP9000 stuff, that's why it only mentions HP9000 products.
Re:Did you even read the notice? (Score:5, Informative)
The notice is about HP 9000 (read PA-RISC and HP-UX) and HP Integrity (read Itanium and HP-UX). HP 9000 was end-of-saled years ago and you know Itanium. The products are a dying remnant that some companies may be trying to stick to. Honestly, sometimes just people need to let go.
So if you're yelling loudly about your network or PC stuff not getting BIOS-upgrades, go back to fix your comments.
(What a coincidence, the captcha word is "extort")
No, it's just that the link went to the email received by a customer who is using HP9000 stuff. The change DOES also apply to the usual stuff like HP Proliant DL380 etc. For example, the mail I received today (as a Proliant user) was:
"Update: HP ProLiant Servers: Access to Firmware Updates & Service Pack for ProLiant
You are receiving this communication because you have been identified as a customer using HP ProLiant Servers and HP Services.
HP has made significant investments in its intellectual capital to provide the best value and experience for our customers. We continue to offer a differentiated customer experience with our comprehensive support portfolio. HP, as an industry leader, is well positioned to provide reliable support services across the globe with proprietary tools, HP trained engineers, and genuine certified HP parts. Only HP customers and authorized channel partners may download and use support materials.
In line with this commitment, starting in February 2014, Hewlett-Packard Company will change the way firmware updates and Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) on HP ProLiant server products are accessed. Select server firmware and SPP on these products will only be accessed through the HP Support Center http://customer.hp.com/r?2.1.3... [hp.com] to customers with an active support agreement, HP CarePack, or warranty linked to their HP Support Center User ID and for the specific products being updated. We encourage you to review your current support coverage to ensure you have the appropriate coverage to maintain uninterrupted access to firmware updates and SPP for these products. "
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The change DOES also apply to the usual stuff like HP Proliant DL380 etc.
Yup, we got the same mail today. We have a bunch of ageing Proliants, and are currently engaged in a procurement round for a new generation of servers (we buy them by the ton, almost). Guess which company just ruled themselves out of the process?
Well ... duuhh ...! (Score:2)
Have a nice little brick here. Supposed to be a procurve switch, but no power, and hp refuses to honour any and all support requests. They're supposed to have lifetime warranty, but evidently not. Not so surprising the support for the rest is going to pot too.
If the switch is dead then obviously it's "lifetime" support has expired...
- Jesper
Why is that? (Score:4, Interesting)
I use old HP servers for fun, development, and test sandbox work. I get most of them for free (salvaged from customers who replace them) and upgrade them with parts from eBay. So having to pay for firmware updates is certainly something that will annoy me on a personal level.
Having said that however, I don't understand why you would make such an obviously emotional decision. If you really want to ditch HP (and I am not a stockholder so I am not protecting them) you should do an actual TCO calculation to see if the new support arrangement actually has any real consequence for you. If you already buy servers "by the ton" then odds are you already have a support agreement which will provide you with full access to the entire HP repository of updates.
I don't find it problematic that HP want's to charge prices for firmwares. In fact, I wished more companies did so. In reality you already paid for "lifetime updates" when you purchased, say, a G7 server. So let me just mention the possible benefits of a functional post-warranty market for updates:
1.) Over time, paid firmware update will decrease the price of the new server and/or its initial support contract. Rather than paying for "lifetime updates" the initial owner gets to pay only for his/her actual usage of updates.
2.) A functional post-warranty firmware market (with a culture where paying for this service was widely accepted) would mean more vendors would support their hardware for longer. Simply because customers would be willing to pay for updates. I have often wished it was possible to update the firmware for stuff, like network printers, small routers, older laptops, graphics cards, as well as servers. Have you never been in a situation where you wished you could throw 20 bucks at Asus to get a recent formware for ?
3.) Most hardware today is changed because of lack of support - not because of actual failure (or even the prospect of failure). Which is likely why HP seeks to make an actual business out of their post-warranty support. Paid updates could, if prices are reasonable, prolong the lifespan of gear - reducing e-waste and spent man-hours. There is no reason a server witrh the build-quality of a HP G7 or a BL c7000 should last only 3 years. It will easily last 8 if maintained properly, and if support options are available and fair.
Hell, I just fired up an old HP c3000 with 6 servers, 40 Xeon cores and 92 gigs of RAM. It uses a bit more power than new servers - sure - but the hardware was acquired for free, using it means delaying e-waste, and it gets the job done with no problems at all. But I am sure it would all have been a nightmare if updates were not available. New ILO2 firmwares, updated RAID controller firmwares, new version of LightsOut ... I would happily have paid a bit of money for that.
You should stop making decisions when you're emotional about something.
Calculate your TCO, including support and quality. Then decide if you should ditch HP or not.
If HP (and others) jkeep the price for these updates fair, I see no problem with this. In fact I welcome it, hoping it will gain attention from smaller vendors in the consumer space as well.
- Jesper
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1.) Over time, paid firmware update will decrease the price of the new server and/or its initial support contract. Rather than paying for "lifetime updates" the initial owner gets to pay only for his/her actual usage of updates.
2.) A functional post-warranty firmware market (with a culture where paying for this service was widely accepted) would mean more vendors would support their hardware for longer.
All completely wrong.
There are many vendors today who don't charge the premium prices that HP, Cisco, Dell, etc., charge, yet support their product for free for more than 5 years. I'm not talking about something that requires a physical replacement (i.e., warranty repair/replace), but rather firmware updates, posting new knowledge base articles, etc.
As an example, we just bought a Cisco computer with 4 processors (32 cores), 1.5TB of RAM and 16 900GB SAS drives. The price from Cisco was around $120K, whil
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2.) A functional post-warranty firmware market...
What bullshit is this? There is no market. First, the firmware is copyrighted. HP has a legal monopoly on distribution of it. (As Oracle is setting about proving in court.) Second, no one else has access to the necessary information to write their own firmware. HP is necessarily the only possible author.
Where the fuck do people get the idea that "if you paid money, you participated in a market"? Monopolies are not markets. Monopolies are the very antithesis of markets. A necessary condition of havi