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Hewlett Packard buys Compaq: $25 BILLION

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  • Hewlett Packard buys Compaq: $25 BILLION

    Sheesh....I wouldn't have given $25 million.

    Our experts highlight the events shaping tomorrow.


    Dr. Mordrid
    Dr. Mordrid
    ----------------------------
    An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications.

    I carry a gun because I can't throw a rock 1,250 fps

  • #2
    Compaq's consumer computers have been crap for quite some time other than the IPaq (perhaps the best of the WinCE breed if you don't think these are usless crap by design) and Armarda notebooks. Killing off the Preserios would be a very good thing. I think the Armarda's are nicer than any of the HP notebooks, but I still prefer Dell for notebooks (or Sony if smallest size matters).

    Compaq's server and clustering business is where the value is and they still make a nice profit there.

    Guess this means the DVD-R deskpros will now have HP DVD+RW instead, maybe that's why they did it, to help kill off Pioneer :-)

    --wally.

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    • #3
      I believe HP deserves an award for getting that Compaq Presario/Deskpro garbage off the street once and for all.

      Ding! Dong! The Witch is dead!!!

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      • #4
        Although I'll never buy another "branded" computer, it will be interesting to see what this acquisition does to prices. Dell, for one, has had to stay low with their pricing partially because of the low-priced units from competitors Compaq and HP, dominating the shelves at nearly every retailer that sells computers. These two competitors no longer competing might cause store prices to creep up. Hopefully HP's plans will be to give Dell a run for its money, which should keep prices consumer-friendly. Meanwhile, I'll be busy building my own.

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        • #5
          Must admit I was surprised. I had expected Dell to have done it. Only ever bought one Compaq, a Presario notebook. I swore never again. It was a pile of manure and I could get no service from them. Wouldn't have given 25 cents for the whole bunch!

          I've never bought any HP computer since they started with Intel (I bought, directly or indirectly, about 200 HP-85, 86 and 87 series computers between 1979 and 1988 for instrument applications and bloody marvellous they were, at that time, beating the original PC into a cocked hat: for me, the PC became interesting only after the 286 with the maths co-processor was launched). OTOH, HP LaserJet printers have been my mainstay. I prefer Epson over HP for inkjets, although both have shaky drivers. Other than printers, the only HP item I have here now is a prehistoric 2 x CD-R SCSI drive, which I still have on one computer, mainly because all 4 IDE slots are used (I have a modern CD-R/RW drive on another networked computer).

          My thoughts are for the 15k blokes who are on the street, w/o a job. I have little doubt that the very attractive young boss-lady of HP would agree with me that this will be just a start and more will follow.

          This is actually the second time that HP have surprised me, the first one being when they hived off what is now Agilent, the most profitable and serious part of the company, with a much better reputation than the computer side. This was the core business that Messrs Hewlett and Packard started in their famous garage. I used HP instruments throughout the whole of my 48-year professional career and still have a couple in my workshop.

          I also bought an HP-65 programmable scientific calculator with a magnetic strip-card storage device in 1974: a fantastic innovation, with a power almost equivalent to a computer. I still use its successor, an HP-41 with 4 expansion slots, optical bar code reader and so on, and I have an HP-32SII RPN scientific calculator in front of me (must be 10 years old) as I write for ordinary desk-top calculations and conversions.

          Now, they have brought this noble corporate name down to the level of the lowest of the low amongst computer manufacturers, IMHO. As my good friend Cicero said, O tempora, O mores!
          Brian (the devil incarnate)

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