Let me start with a disclaimer that these are my own ideas, and my conclusions are taken from HP external information, I am not speaking as an 'HP insider' nor for HP here: Gavin Scott wrote: > > > So anyone who thinks that HP is a computer company these days hasn't looked > at the economics of the printer supplies business :-) maybe I did not understand this completely, but isn't the plan to have Superdome customers pay-per-CPU-power-demand rather similar to the economics of ink cartridges ? Glenn Koster wrote: > > 2. The delays in the IA-64 architecture. How long have we been hearing > about this now? How long yet before it becomes a marketable reality? How > much of a bite will HP take for contributing to the design but not obtaining > any royalties or competitive advantages because of it? I am not sure if you are 'barking at the right tree' (German idiom) for the delay part of this. I think you have a point regarding the 'royalty' aspect. IMHO, the 'old HP' that Wirt refers to, has been sort of a 'dolphin in a see of sharks' when you come to reflect on its business partnerships with other big corporations in the past. I believe the 'new HP' is going to 'play ball' a bit different. > > 3. The diversity of HP's product offerings with no substantive plan in > place to market them in a cohesive manner. HP-UX, Linux, Windows 2000, > Windows NT, MPE/iX... All offerings on different and diverse hardware with > nothing but a Band-Aid to hold many of them together in some situations. This sounds just like one of our 'solar' competitors :-) My view is that HP's product diversity is great, but I agree that our vast product portfolio creates quite a marketing challenge. We may not be (yet) as fast moving as Wall Street or some shareholders would like us to be, but rapid changes could carry a danger of 'burning the bridges', which can conflict with 'customer loyalty', a value that is as strong in the 'new HP' as it was in the 'old'. Just my private 2 Eurocents, Götz.