I've never really disliked HP pc's and thought their Kayak workstations were pretty decent machines. You may be thinking about Packard Bell pc's which in the past was regarded as junk pc's. If I recall correctly, they also were blasted for using used parts or something...
This is absolutely true, Doc. Compaq has millions of dollars of inventory sitting around and depreciating in the factory. Imagine how much money worth of PIII processors they lost when Intel announced plans to drop P4 prices! Be Direct. Crush Compaq.
Hasn't Dell setup their production system on the basis of a Japanese JIT system? Since Will doesn't like polls........... Give us your choice of computer and why: 1) Dell 2) Compaq 3) HP 4) IBM 5) Gateway 6) <i>Brown Boxes</i> 7) Custom built 8) Don't care as long as it works Mango
Mango, 7) Because I put into exactly what I want, not what someone gives me the choice to put into it. I can also upgrade more easily using parts I get. In the end, I can build a machine that is faster than anything Dell puts out or a machine that is cheaper than Dell puts out, or a combination of both. Oh, and is 6) a secret?
Inserting & deleting without proofing. I should have put in a disclaimer for people like you since the majority of users do not roll their own. Did you notice the investment community reaction to this deal? Mango
Compaq had a great Server before the Digital aquisition in 1998. They had purchased them from Tandem years before in a smaller, but very good aquisition. They solidified their position later by buying Digital and getting the 64 bit Alpha chips, the only 64 bit chips that really work in Servers right now. Those chips and Compaq servers run every major stock exchange in the world and most of the big name internet companies. Compaq's fault tolerent high end servers are second to none. Dell makes very cheap and affordable business networking servers that have caught up with Compaq's Proliants in how good they are. But they still can't compete with the high end stuff. People need to not compare Compaq with Dell. Being a former Compaq employee I can tell you that their business models are totally different. Before this aquisition, Compaq had pretty much decided to let go of the desktop business because margins were too small and move to Services for their big contracts. Total IT solutions stuff. Dell is pretty much just a box maker and that's their main business model, and they've perfected it by being the cheapest. Don't let Dell fool you into thinking they have a better machine. Their parts are some of the cheapest around. They just focus all their business on making those machines, whereas Compaq focuses on the whole picture. Machines, installation, and big service contracts. Another thing, Compaq did not buy Digital for their Servers, they bought them for there Services Dept. Dumb move either way, as Compaq had 9 billion in cash and shoud have invested in themselves rather than buy a floundering company going out of business anyways. Rumor has it that the deal to buy Digital went to Fiefer's desk with the recommendation not to pull the trigger, but he convinced the board otherwise. He and most of his staff wanted to get back at Digital after he had been let go there, or something like that. Anyways, this deal might not be all that bad for Houston as a whole. People working for Compaq's corporate operations (finance, strategy, managers...ect) will be moved to California or let go. Rumor has HP sending their entire tech and engineering dept to the Houston locations (249 location mainly) and that being the base of HP's engineering and tech stuff. So a lot of jobs move out, but a lot of jobs will move in. This sucks however for all the people who work in Houston now for Compaq as most of them will probably be faced with some tough decisions for their life. It'll probably take at least 4 years for these changes to be completely made, these huge mergers don't happen over night. It could take even longer, but believe me when I tell you that most people at Compaq, even people pretty high up that ladder did not see this coming at all. Just goes to show you, the upper execs and VP's will make millions on this deal while a whole part of Houston's work force will be thrown into upheavel. Anyways, we'll see how it'll work out. Compaq bought Digital in 1998, and while most people were going to be moved from Boston, there are still huge amounts of ex-Digital Compaq employees working in Boston. There will probably still be a huge bunch of people who are ex-Compaq HP employees in Houston working almost like nothing happened. Note: initial projections have 15,000 jobs being cut worldwide between the two companies. Probably mainly out of the Compaq workforce, but we'll see about that too, as these things have a way of balancing between two companies that merge, even if one is buying the other one out.
