Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] News Alert from NYTimes.com: Hewlett-Packardto Buy Compaq (fwd)

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2001, Mike Miller wrote:

> I'm not so interested in their PCs.  A little while ago, Compaq bought
> Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), makers of the Alpha machines.
> Those are speedy unix machines (we have some here at U Minn running
> VMS - blech!)  HP also makes higher end machines, but I don't know
> much about them.

In large part because HP at some point apparently became *embarassed* by
the fact that they mad nice, sturdy, high-end Unix boxes), and decided to
help Intel design the chip (the itanium) that never arrived and so would
therefore lead to their eat their workstation business getting eaten for
lunch by cheaper Intel-based boxes.

Really, words fail me when I try to describe how HP screwed things up in
the 90s. The PA-RISC architecture was well-respected, but going to the
next level required some investment, and HP tried to piggy back on
Intel...and Windows NT, to some extent.  In the last lab I worked at, we
had one of the last classically great HP Unix boxes, which was basically
the Computer that Would Not Die.  It's like 11 years old now, and is still
chugging along as the main file server for that lab.  This despite the
fact that nobody there was a big fan of HP-UX, and that it had become
probably the slowest processor in the lab.  But it won't die.

People will pay money for stuff like that, and a lot more than they pay
for this month's hottest PC hardware.

> So this will position the two companies well to compete more
> effectively with Sun and IBM.  That has to be part of the motivation
> for the merger/acquisition.  Someone tell me if you understand this
> better.

Well, the part I find weird is that Compaq controls Alpha and HP controls
PA-RISC, but they will probably end up using IA-64 (which HP admittedly
had a hand in).  I'm sure there's a workstation business unit that will
survive this merger, but the mighty have fallen quite a ways in this case.
The last I read was that everybody who was happy about this deal thought
they would have a real chance to compete in *services*, which still has
some big-time profit margins.  We shall see.

jking

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