HP what do you think?

[quarkx]

Well, unless you haven't heard, HP made a ton of statements yesterday including getting out of the PC business, killing the web OS and tablet, and a bunch more, sending the stock plummeting.

Well, I believe that they didn't give the tablet half a chance (even though it was way over priced- if you ever want to even make a dent in IPad sales, your tablet must be less than $200 USD- have an SD and a USB slot and run Honeycomb or better).
But getting out of the PC and hardware market, well that was a complete shock!

any thoughts?

 

[commodorejohn]

There's been some discussion on this over at the Vintage Computer Forum; several people have theorized that they're ditching the consumer-computing division in order to focus on the more profitable server lines they acquired from Compaq, attempting to transform into a servers-and-service company like IBM.

Not that this eminently sensible explanation has stopped certain kinds of people from crowing about the "death of the PC," mind you... :/

 

[ShambleS1980]

Dont shoot me down in flames here, But im glad to see the back of companys like Hp. I dont like these generic pc's they are almost always built down to a minimum cost the components arent very good, most of the time they come with motherboards that arent as upgradable as you would want. they lock down the bioses, and they go out of there way to make everything backwards so if you want to install your own motherboards or something then you need to get a new case.
They also breed generations of computer users who have no idea about what system they are running. and when asked what's your spec's they can only say "its a HP or del"
I guess my real issue is with the afore mentioned del. But honestly they should all just back up step away from this end user pc buisness and just make laptops. let the small buisnises build custom computers for the end user to the spec the user wants and using the components of a quality they need/can affoard.

Its a hell of a thing when company's go bancrupt because end users are so missinformed about components that they dont know "vista capable" means only the basic version can be used and "vista ready" means the whole 9 yards is able.
Granted that whole mess was compounded by the companys wanting to get rid of there older gen intel chipset boards, but if it wasnt for the generic "HP Vista Capable" pc's and all the other companys. the end users would seek out better knowlage as to what spec's there system really needs to do what they want it to do.

Any way this is one of those things i have an oppinion about (theres quite a lot of them lol) So dont take it as a post to contradic any one els. Its just my point of view

 

[desiv]

When you think about it, it's not a surprise..
The margins on PC sales are getting smaller and smaller..
You can compete (if you do it right) with Apple on the tablet side.
But can you compete with the Nooks and Pandigitals and (insert name) $150 tablets and make much money? (As much as HP wants to make per unit..)

And honestly, the majority of users can now do everything they want with a tablet or netbook type of device..

There is and always will be a PC market, but it's getting smaller and smaller...

But the less resources on the end user side, the more resources on the backend (server) side..

Cloud computing means you don't need a quad core desktop, but it means your cloud provider needs some servers and storage to handle that..

Serious PC gamers and businesses need PCs.. The rest are seriously looking elsewhere..

Last CIO meeting I sat in on, there were more iPads than laptops...
(And my Android tablet)

desiv

 

[cugar124]

HP leaving

HP leaving

HI Guys
Its strange I worked for PC World for years from the hay day of PC 286's - 486's up to about 5 years ago it was strange but we saw it go from nearly all machines being sold as Desktops to nearly all they sold when I left being Laptops.

I can understand the want of a tablet or a laptop but anyone who wants to game or code knows that these are a nightmare to get working for this you have to spend a fortune to do it.

So seeing the back of HP in the desktop market is a shame but maybe we will see others take up their share of the market that are more willing to build good machines.

Mind you Intel have a lot to do with user lack of Knowledge their branding is Nuts. I have a first Gen I5 and was nearly tempted to buy the next gen I5 till I looked at the specs only real world gain for ME was USB 3 SATA 3, which I can buy for £30 in the shape of a PCI Express card.

Just thought I would add my penny worth

 

[quarkx]

I just love that whole "Death of the PC" crazy talk.:ROTFLOL2:

because there will always be a need of some sort for desktops, but I think its a good thing, because less consumers (morrons.. opps did i say that) will buy the el-chepo $200 machine, and we will see some good quality and not so much "on board" crap put on motherboards (how I miss the days of a "Bare" motherboard with no onboard Audio or Video- which is usually crap).
HP at least took over a year to completely gut and kill Voodoo PC (after they swore up and down they would leave Voodoo alone as a separate entity), it's a shock to see Web OS -less than a month.

 

[commodorejohn]

we will see some good quality and not so much "on board" crap put on motherboards (how I miss the days of a "Bare" motherboard with no onboard Audio or Video- which is usually crap).

Gah, sooo true. Onboard sound at least has reached the point where it's basically functional with not too much line noise until you really crank up the volume, but onboard video still persists in being a shrunk-down and usually poorly-integrated version of proper video-card chipsets from two or three GPU generations ago...ugh. Why even bother at all?

 

[quarkx]

Not too mention since the AMD/ATI merger, to get a even half-way decent AMD motherboard that will do Nvidia SLI is darn near impossible. Oh to get an AMD board with an Nforce chipset again.. to Dream..
Now all the ATI on board is just.. garbage, the net shows that there are some half decent "On board" stuff, but the local Computer store seems a year behind what is supposedly available.

I truly believe that AMD should sell of ATI and become a decent chip maker again. I don't need or want fusion. get back in the game boys, don't try to force more crap down our throats. AMD and Nvidia was unstoppable back in the socket 939 days, then nothing (strange, just when they bought ATI, they started to lose to Intel.. )

 

[desiv]

I just love that whole "Death of the PC" crazy talk.:ROTFLOL2:

Reading comprehension.. <sigh>

There is and always will be a PC market

desiv
(If that wasn't aimed at my comment, apologies.. I just get that a lot. I say the market is shrinking, and people jump to conclusions....)

 

[ShambleS1980]

I just love that whole "Death of the PC" crazy talk.:ROTFLOL2:

Reading comprehension.. <sigh>

There is and always will be a PC market

desiv

to play devils advocate here i belive he was refering to commodorejohn's post

 

[desiv]

to play devils advocate here i belive he was refering to commodorejohn's post

Yeah, I got that after I posted..
D'oh!

I've just gotten that before so I jumped to a conclusion..
Ironic, huh?

desiv

 

[quarkx]

Yes, it was to commodorejohns post, but you guys posted before I finished typing my post, i didn't even see them unitl after
I have this very crappy inspron notebook here at work that takes forever to actually type and post on. I can actually type faster than the notebook can keep up and display. It Inspires to be a real laptop
it's a very crippled AMD semparion. running at 750 Mhz triple clocked to 2100. it is running (chugging) on XP and running 1.5 gigs of ram. Flash kills it and you can't use the DVD drive to actually watch DVD's. Funny thing is Dell actually ship this with VISTA and 512 megs of ram. It actually took 1/2 hour to boot right from Dell.

but I am way off topic

 

[Ed.D]

Well I just wrote an emotional reply about the way I got shafted by HP after 14 years of employment and just need the share price to rise enough so I can sell all mine; but lost the content when I hit the submit button. No worries.

@ Desiv, your post reminds me of when I got my first A500 from new. All of us hobbyists and enthusiasts using these great machines and the big corps using mainframes. It seems we've come full circle and the clouds are now doing what the mainframes used to do.

 

[Retrograde]

....
I truly believe that AMD should sell of ATI and become a decent chip maker again. I don't need or want fusion. get back in the game boys, don't try to force more crap down our throats. AMD and Nvidia was unstoppable back in the socket 939 days, then nothing (strange, just when they bought ATI, they started to lose to Intel.. )

Hmm not sure about that man, I think the problems they with regards to competing with high end Intel consumer products started quite a bit before the ATi aquisition, maybe it became more obvious by that time though. One reason I think they are doing Fusion is probably cause they can't churn out highly clocked CPUs that can go head to head in a slugging match with Intel i9xx/i2xxx products, so they look for different market segments that aren't as exploited/show better future promise.

<semirant on>

A couple of years ago when I was in the server market we did extensive benchmarking of all kinds of Intel and AMD CPUs and configurations, and even the high end AMD chips (Istanbul and such) were barely on par w. Intel under good conditions, but just couldn't go up in frequency enough to have similar performance 6 months down the line. And in that business even 5% of raw computational performance matters over the course of a few weeks or months, when build constellations of 10, 20, 50 machines or more to run most of the day computing. (well there are other factors than just the CPU comp capability but it's a selling point too amongst other things)

Time will tell how Intels domninance is goin to pan out for the different markets but I don't think the pressure to provide better value for money will be at an all time high, so to speak.

This fall the new AMD CPUs should still be quite competitive for gaming rigs I'm sure (since the GPU is so crucial), but many PC enthusiasts look at a single parameter when buying components and get too focused on that which is enough for AMD to sell less (like is the CPU clocked at 3.5Ghz or 3.8Ghz, is the memory clocked at 4x400Mhz or 4x450MHz, etc.). This doesn't reflect the total performance in a system under real application load but such are things... higher numbers = sexier for some.

<semirant off>

 

[cosmicfrog]

Good ribbiting riddance to em that's what I ribbit

bloody proprietary nonsense in a desktop for a home user pah on your capitalist ideals

why oh why when my GPU is just as fast as my CPU if not faster but the hardware/software combination dos`t take advantage of it, ok not strictly a HP thing but I need to get it of my chest

 

[SkydivinGirl]

HP is actually my favorite computer manufacturer. I agree that they don't use the best motherboards or the most expansive systems but most of the people they sell to really don't need or want to pay for that. There's always the custom built route for those who need it.

We are an HP shop at work and I've, for the most part, been very happy with their computers and their business customer service. I'd hate to see a good, inexpensive computer manufacturer stop selling systems. Of course, someone like Lenovo could pick them up and maybe even do a better job.

Of course, I was wondering what they heck they were doing when they purchased Palm and decided to use WebOS on everything. A successful tablet that can compete in the market needs an OS for which developers are writing programs.

Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens...



Heather

 

[ChrisUnionNJ]

I liked there desktop's I had mine for about 5 years I had 2..
1 died so I strip it and plan to house a 500 in it and the other one
I sold to the Club I work at to run the light's then it died 2 1/2
years later and on that one I made a profit..
Not to bad if ya ask me..

 

[Powerpie5000]

I really couldn't care less if HP packs up... Their PC's have been abysmal these last 10 years or so. I would Choose a Dell over any other brand of pre-built PC. I think Packard Bell should quit too.

---------- Post added at 10:53 ---------- Previous post was at 10:24 ----------

Now all the ATI on board is just.. garbage, the net shows that there are some half decent "On board" stuff, but the local Computer store seems a year behind what is supposedly available.

I personally find nothing wrong with AMD/ATI motherboard chipsets, CPU's and GPU's... Their CPU's are not up there with the likes of Intel but i suppose thats the reason why they're cheaper to buy. Saying that, the Phenom II's are not bad considering they are built on a relatively old architecture... How do you think a current Core i5/i7 would perform against AMD's latest performance chip 3-4 years down the road? Plus AMD have native SATA-III and USB3 which i'm sure intel are still lacking (they still use 3rd party chips).

I truly believe that AMD should sell of ATI and become a decent chip maker again. I don't need or want fusion. get back in the game boys, don't try to force more crap down our throats. AMD and Nvidia was unstoppable back in the socket 939 days, then nothing (strange, just when they bought ATI, they started to lose to Intel.. )

AMD have lost to Intel a few times before the socket 939 days with the 486, 586, K5, K6, K6-2 and K6-3... They were not as good as the Intel equivalents. AMD started to win with the Athlon Thunderbird, Athlon XP, Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2 which stomped Intel's PIII and all the P4 varieties (which were pretty crap chips including the dual core P4-D!).

Intel got back in it's game with the release of the Core 2 architecture (Duo and Quad chips). AMD had a bad time with their 1st gen Phenom chips but started to gain ground with the release of the Phenom II and Athlon II, but they're not as good as Intels i5/i7 chips. Now lets see what 'Bulldozer' can manage

Anyway what exactly is wrong with Fusion? If you don't like it then don't buy it, i don't see AMD forcing anything down people's throats. Fusion is good for laptops, the low-end market and for people who don't consider gaming a priority. Is it really that different from an Intel chip with integrated graphics?

Anyway thats my 2 cents on the matter... And AMD are no slouch in the GPU department

 

[Buzzfuzz]

As long as HP keeps making printers, I'm all good :-D
Gives them more time to focus on these and their server market.

I've never bought pre-build pc's, I always build them myself or select the parts and then let it them build, but even that seems to be hard these days cause the pc I have now the leds were connected all wrong, the case inside had scratches and about a thousand finger prints.

 

[quarkx]

HP is/as selling the tablets off at $99 and $150 They are sold out almost everywhere now. Just proves that the "Magic" price point for a IPad killer is under $200., no mater how "bad" everyone says it is.