

Losing the HP Way - technoslut
http://www.cringely.com/2011/08/losing-the-hp-way/

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thaumaturgy
I've seen HP lose its way from another perspective -- technical support --
over the last couple of decades. I am genuinely sad to say that I couldn't be
happier that HP is getting out of the consumer market.

HP might not have been a printer company, but they built a strong reputation
early on for workhorse printers, and the driver software wasn't usually too
bad, either. My first job in the tech industry was in the data processing
department of a good-sized East Bay school district. We must have printed tens
of thousands of pages _per month_ on an HP LaserJet 4. Never had so much as a
hiccup from it.

I knew less about their computers at the time, but if memory serves, they had
a good reputation there, too.

But there was this sort of gradual degradation in every single one of their
product lines. The best thing I can say about their chintzy-as-hell newer
printers is that the printers themselves aren't quite as bad the software. The
software is _terrible_ , and it gets worse every year, not better. In some
cases, you can't install HP's driver software for two different-but-similar
models of printer on the same computer; the software interferes with itself.

Their computers are a joke. We've found a lovely variety of manufacturing
defects and design flaws. There's a guy on eBay doing a decent business
manufacturing and selling aftermarket copper pads for graphics processors for
HP laptops because their thermal pads are notorious for shrinking away from
the aluminum heat sink. We've had several laptops that have seriously had
_every single major component replaced_ \-- motherboard, screen, hard drive,
memory -- and these aren't abused or old laptops.

And their support is just as bad. We, at one point, spent almost 40 hours in a
single week on the phone with HP support for one client or another. 40 hours
of lost productivity; 40 hours of cost for at least three parties; an entire
work week, poof. I wish I could say the support was any good, but it wasn't.

We do our best to steer all of our clients away from HP. If they do genuinely
get out of the consumer market, I can only hope that we'll see a net increase
in worldwide productivity.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be Hewlett or Packard and see that
happen to the company I built.

------
molecule
"Who would want to buy the HP PC division?"

Maybe a dominant tech giant seeking to control every level of its customers
web-browsing experience:

Chrome Browser, ChromeOS, Chromebooks, Android OS, Motorola-Mobility
acquisition...

~~~
gallerytungsten
That's an interesting idea, but I think HP's PC division is too much of a dog
for Google. Maybe Microsoft; given Apple's rise, perhaps they'll claim they're
the underdog to fend of antitrust accusations.

