story teller wrote:This is truly shocking news. HP will discontinue its hardware business from October! They will not be supporting any products from that date. Supposedly, they are not making any money selling desktops, laptops, tablets. HP is the largest computer manufacturer in the world. Google and Apple are killing everyone. No more hp desktops, laptops, towers, tablets etc. I am so depressed.
On a more positive note, you can get the HP tablets for a steal now....
How will this affect the computer hardware business globally?
Good riddance. It will be better for the computer industry globally. HP hasn't made a great computing product since their LaserJet I, II, III, and IV printers.
And Carly Fiorina signed the death certificate for HP.
They destroyed Compaq after the merger; the Compaq model for servers was very good, and HP continued to water it down until it was no longer worth the exorbitant price. Don't get me wrong; HP makes a decent server only because they are still using much of the CPQ framework, but, IBM servers are far superior. ILO and Smartstart are the only things keeping HP servers in anyone's rack, but now, everyone has such management tools, especially if you run enterprise-class Linux and choose to visualize and have redundancy- you simply don't need ILO and SmartStart even a fraction as much.
Besides, no computer company makes its own products anymore. They all sub-contract out to Chinese factories that make the computers to their specifications versus getting the cheapest parts that they can. So it's largely come down to a battle of branding, save for support, integration, price, and management tools. But still, IBM rules the roost. Apple is second. Dell? Their quality changes with the wind. HP? Consistently less reliable than the three I just mentioned. Not to mention poor, over-heating, flexing, under-powered designs.
There is NOTHING like an IBM. I have 17 year old thinkpads still going strong, still usable. Servers older than me, still in production, being used, that are now running Linux! It's like they say; noone has ever been fired for buying IBM.
Best,
Hill