Pull up! Pull up! Pull up! Ding ... HP ends eleven-quarter sales nosedive Think of HP, and what comes to mind? Business critical systems? Printers? Software? Lord no – it's laptops and bog-standard servers ruling the company's roost right now. The tech titan reported on Wednesday [PDF] that in the three months to July 31, it booked $27.6bn in net revenue, an increase of one per cent, year on year. …
When I think of HP I think of the massive HP:Invent campaign that they launched at the same time as closing down 60% of their R&D.
They then hitched the future of their big iron to the towbar of the then unproven Itanium from Intel and offloaded most of their field engineers.
After that they were surprised that customers wondered why they should pay for expensive HP support that they could get cheaper from the companies that the engineers went to or why they wouldn't pick HP's big iron for a system with a 10+ year lifespan when HP couldn't demonstrate a roadmap longer than about nine months.
Yes, I think "succession of hopless CEOs" sums it up rather well.
...Stupid loud-mouth empty-headed CEOs, just like MS's former balmy embalmer except without any entertainment value. I have had a personal boycott on HP until recently due simply to the annoying CEOs, Broke down last month, but even then just for a couple of 4-year-old *used* HP desktops.
...difficult-to-source HDD mounting screws, the blue silicon-isolated slide-in thingys. (No, the used PC didn't include the four extra ones under the front bezel.) They're $1+ *each* on eBay, if you're lucky.
...maker of laptops that have been HIGHLY recommended... -> to avoid <- .
...overpriced printer ink.
An ideal application for the JP-brand Decision Inverter. It's a simple firmware upgrade to the printer used to print meeting minutes. When the print job includes some keywords such as "Minutes" and "Decisions:", then the firmware will analyze the surrounding text and will reverse the meaning of each decision (e.g. by adding the word "not" as required). It's only about 500 bytes of code.
With this wee feisty update to the printer firmware, all the formal Board decisions will be inverted. Overnight, their decision making batting record will go from 98% dead wrong to 98% exactly correct.
Overnight!! No other changes required!! In fact, you need to freeze the Board membership and Management Hired Help right up to the CEO.
This one little invention may single-handedly change the fortunes of western civilization.
That's what happens when the marketing & PM types make it to the top without a counter-balance of technically trained/experienced executives........all clapping each other on the back and using accounting stunts to massage dividends.
Innovation my ass, more like ennervation.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
