Posts by PaulCharlton

Autonomy's Mike Lynch loses battle against extradition to the US on fraud charges

Re: Like Malware vs Anti-Malware

I lost $100K in employee stock options in this fiasco so I have, or at least did have, some skin in the game, and you're absolutely correct: HP's senior management team (including the CFO who should have resigned) and board (including Meg but primarily Ray Lane) bear 100% for the responsibility for this. They are the ones who owed HP shareholders a duty of care (Lynch didn't) and were collectively totally derelict in their duty. They should go to jail not Lynch. What's the point of due diligence when the CEO can't be bothered to read the due diligence report!?! What was the point of the CEO? Or even the CFO?

Demand for HP printer supplies in free-fall – and Intel CPU shortages aren't helping either

Did Jessie Smollet program your printer?

I have an HP Inkyjet. An OfficeJet Pro 8740. And the three color cartridges rather mysteriously "ran out of ink" and refused to print any more pages until they were replaced, all on the same day. What are the odds? The same day? All three?

Here's a hint to the boffins at HP Inc: if you want to program peoples' printers to force them to buy more ink even when there is ink still in the cartridge, then you should be far more subtle with your programing. Make them become "empty" with at least one day after the other. And do it in the last month of the quarter.

Server winners and losers: HPE, Dell EMC still sitting pretty at the top, but uh-oh Lenovo

Re: All hail the white box makers

That's mainly because they are selling servers with more stuff in them and in segments which pay more.

No 2017 bonus for you, HPE tells employees

But will there be a bonus in 2018?

Tough on the employees. Thoroughly deserved by the management team.

HPE straps AMD chip into 2P/2U server box with Epyc results

Re: DL 385

In it's day the DL385 was a bit of a shit-kicker. A bit like a Holden or a Colby. AMD just didn't refresh it enough and then lost interest - and no, I'm not suggesting they refresh as much as Intel. But this does look like this is a chip off the old block (sorry!). Let's hope AMD can keep their focus on staying in the game for the long-term this time .... Target market? People who don't like buying from monopolies .....

HPE CEO Meg Whitman QUITS, MAN! Neri to replace chief exec in Feb

Re: Whitman did the right thing

@ Teiwaz

It was brioche.

Re: Whitman did the right thing

@ Voland's right hand

I'm guessing you are a Dec-ite. The "DEC/Compaq merger" as you describe was Compaq acquiring DEC. And yes, it was bogged up. Compaq bought DEC for its Tech Support and didn't want the rest of the business. But because Pfeiffer and Mason so mismanaged the acquisition, got greedy with Alta Vista and started cherry-picking bits they couldn't resist, nearly all of Digital was integrated into Compaq quite by accident.

Part of the problem with HP/Compaq was that there was so much focus on the current business (PC, printers, ink, X86 servers, HDDs, memory, etc) that acquisitions really weren't allowed to thrive. There was more or less only one GTM mechanism, one channel structure, one sales force organization, one sales compensation scheme. Even organic new businesses were typically suffocated at birth. "Building sh**" was never the the issue: focusing on selling it was.

Re: It's sad what HP has become...

@ Marketing Hack

Which is why you'll not find Wall St. criticizing any of her moves or motives. It has also been a boondoggle for many execs through retention bonuses ..... which was precisely the motivation for Compaq selling itself to HP in the first place.

Hewlett-Packard history lost to Santa Rosa fires

Re: Minor nit, and a shameless plug (was: The unthinking ::snip::)

It's much worse than that. The facts are:

- The USA has an death-rate by fire-arms which is 63x the UK (homicides and unintentional deaths excluding suicides).

- The USA has an intentional homicide rate which is 5.3x the UK.

EU announces common corporate tax plan

I don't think this will pass. How does this benefit Jean-Claude van Wanker of Luxembourg? I mean, he's got a very nice gig allowing businesses to relocate their corporate HQ's to Luxembourg in return for whatever they want to "donate" to them. I think he should block it. That is, as major EU participant with the Presidency of the EU Commission and a population smaller than ..... Leeds. That's democracy, EU style.

Revealed: How Dell can afford $67bn for EMC – by selling $650k laptops

We - Compaq UK - once shipped an obsolete Compaq D286 in the UK for £250,000. It should have been £250 .... it did make us nostalgic for the old days though .... fantastic margins. We did fix it later of course.

Intel restructures financial reporting to 'provide visibility'

Re: Set the wayback machine to [?]

Yes. The year before. Intel changed it's segmentation in its 29th March 2014 filing.

Intel: 99-and-a-half just won't do.

HP storage results borked by bleeding currency rates

You should wonder why analysts feel the need to make excuses for HP.

• It’s up to HP to mitigate the impact of the currency; if the currency impact was favorable it wouldn’t get a mention.

• In the past 16 quarters, HP Storage has only shown positive year-over-year growth in three of them, and in those three case growth was 1.0% or less. Was currency also to blame in the past 16 quarters? I think not.

• With enough negative quarters in tow it eventually becomes possible to start to appear to “outgrow” the competition, but that’s only because HP is “growing” from a very low base.

• So if HP Storage “appears” to be doing comparatively better than EMC, IBM & NetApp because it outgrew each of them, well that’s the first time that it has happened. Ever. One quarter marginally outgrowing EMC doesn’t make for an eternity under-growing EMC.

• To put last quarter’s revenue of $784M in its proper context: it’s the 2nd lowest quarter of revenue in the last ten years (the lowest was only the quarter before that) and it’s 20% down from its’ 3Q peak in 2011 of $976M. In contrast, EMC is up 6% over the same period.

And ask yourself what exactly is it that HP Storage will be able to do after the split that it couldn’t do today?