HP Spinning Off PC Division

rwmidl

From the WSJ: HP Spin Off PC Division

Looks like this includes not only computers, but tablets as well.

Turgon

rwmidl wrote: »

From the WSJ: HP Spin Off PC Division

Looks like this includes not only computers, but tablets as well.

A sign of the times. There is no money in 'edge' anymore. PCs etc. It will be servers in time. Those supporting either should look to their options in the years ahead.

TheShadow

Here is what Bloomberg says.
HP Studies Options for PCs, Eyes Software Buy - Bloomberg

I remember when IBM spun off their PC biz, I am not as shocked this time.

Turgon

Im not shocked about anything HP does. They never recovered since they took Fiorina on as CEO 10 years ago. Things changed in a big way and a lot of stuff just didn't work out. She was let go years ago but I dont think the company recovered. 'You suck, sign here, take 50 million dollars, keep your mouth shut and leave.' Compaq disolved when HP bought them out. I used to like working with those servers. The HP ones I was less enamoured with. Same with the PC I still have, issues.

Zartanasaurus

They seem late to the party here. IBM figured this out 6 years ago.

Devilsbane

I'm more concerned about the fate of webos. I am very much in love with my palm pre.

WafflesAndRootbeer

This makes me sad. I hope I can pick up some good HP products on the cheap before they **** the company to someone who makes it into another Gateway.

Bokeh

Bye Bye WebOS

HP Killing WebOS Devices (Updated)

it_consultant

I don't understand spinning off the PC division. I understood IBM, but HP is the largest PC maker in the world. They have an excellent reputation with business customers. IBM never had the PC marketplace that HP does now. I'm an HP shop, I guess I will finally have to move to Dell.

WafflesAndRootbeer

it_consultant wrote: »

I don't understand spinning off the PC division. I understood IBM, but HP is the largest PC maker in the world. They have an excellent reputation with business customers. IBM never had the PC marketplace that HP does now. I'm an HP shop, I guess I will finally have to move to Dell.

I guess I will have to end up doing the same. Dell sure as hell (no rhyme intended) doesn't tickle my pickle with their products and HP has far better laptop lines than Dell has. When it came to desktops though, they really messed up by not being competitive with their products and using outdated tech for their retail desktops and low-end online sales.

Forsaken_GA

it_consultant wrote: »

I don't understand spinning off the PC division. I understood IBM, but HP is the largest PC maker in the world. They have an excellent reputation with business customers. IBM never had the PC marketplace that HP does now. I'm an HP shop, I guess I will finally have to move to Dell.

There's really not much margin there anymore, the business is so cutthroat.

Then add to the fact that tablet/smartphones cut into PC sales.

Everyone is feeling the effect of the iphone and ipad, the halo effect has been working in Apple's favor for awhile now, and it's hurting bottom lines for everyone else.

There's a reason folks like Dell and HP are buying network, storage, and service companies.

Claymoore

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

They seem late to the party here. IBM figured this out 6 years ago.

Which is why HP bought EDS 3 years ago. They may have finally decided against whom they are going to compete. Dropping consumer hardware (except printers, which basically print money for them) and focusing on software and services means they will compete against IBM and Accenture, and to a lesser extent Oracle, SAP, Salesforce. Good news for Dell, I suppose.

Zartanasaurus

it_consultant wrote: »

I don't understand spinning off the PC division. I understood IBM, but HP is the largest PC maker in the world. They have an excellent reputation with business customers. IBM never had the PC marketplace that HP does now. I'm an HP shop, I guess I will finally have to move to Dell.

Replace "largest PC maker in the world" with "largest oil-filled street lamp maker in the world" and I think you get where they are coming from.

the_Grinch

Typical, I have been really great a buying into dead technology. I backed HD-DVD, now I have about 50 discs that I can't play anymore (HDDVD Drive on Xbox360 died). Invest in HP Tablet...dead. Wish I would have waited and at least got it for $300 instead of $500. Should have gotten the BestBuy trade-in plan....

hiddenknight821

the_Grinch wrote: »

Typical, I have been really great a buying into dead technology. I backed HD-DVD, now I have about 50 discs that I can't play anymore (HDDVD Drive on Xbox360 died). Invest in HP Tablet...dead. Wish I would have waited and at least got it for $300 instead of $500. Should have gotten the BestBuy trade-in plan....

That's what you get for stealing mas: Christmas! Jk. I know a friend who wasted all his money investing on HD-DVD too.

terryfera

the_Grinch wrote: »

Typical, I have been really great a buying into dead technology. I backed HD-DVD, now I have about 50 discs that I can't play anymore (HDDVD Drive on Xbox360 died). Invest in HP Tablet...dead. Wish I would have waited and at least got it for $300 instead of $500. Should have gotten the BestBuy trade-in plan....

I feel you on that one... luckily my TouchPad is only 3 days old so it's going to be going back where it came from. The HD-DVDs though are still hanging around.

the_Grinch

Though with them going out I might get some for the fam for Christmas (perhaps for a "steal" of a price huh? huh?). Shame great OS...

Everyone

the_Grinch wrote: »

Typical, I have been really great a buying into dead technology. I backed HD-DVD, now I have about 50 discs that I can't play anymore (HDDVD Drive on Xbox360 died). Invest in HP Tablet...dead. Wish I would have waited and at least got it for $300 instead of $500. Should have gotten the BestBuy trade-in plan....

I've got a Toshiba HD DVD player, like new, barely used. I only have 5 HD-DVD's, none of them have been watched since before I got a Blu-Ray player. I might be willing to part with them.

rwmidl

Everyone wrote: »

I've got a Toshiba HD DVD player, like new, barely used. I only have 5 HD-DVD's, none of them have been watched since before I got a Blu-Ray player. I might be willing to part with them.

I'm glad I never decided to use the DIVX feature on my first DVD player

Everyone

rwmidl wrote: »

I'm glad I never decided to use the DIVX feature on my first DVD player

LOL. My whole collection is making its way onto my PC. Kids love to scratch/break/ruin DVDs. They're all getting backed up and available to stream to the TV from my PC via a WD Live Plus box.

I never got a HD-DVD drive for the PC though, so can't do that with those, but since I have Netflix now, I can always get them from there if I really want to watch them again that badly. I did recently grab a Blu-Ray player for my PC though so I can back those up as well.

rwmidl

Everyone wrote: »

LOL. My whole collection is making its way onto my PC. Kids love to scratch/break/ruin DVDs. They're all getting backed up and available to stream to the TV from my PC via a WD Live Plus box.

I never got a HD-DVD drive for the PC though, so can't do that with those, but since I have Netflix now, I can always get them from there if I really want to watch them again that badly. I did recently grab a Blu-Ray player for my PC though so I can back those up as well.

I've been toying around with the idea of transferring all of our dvd/blu-ray to our home server. I purchased quite a few dvd's when I was single, and then when I got married we combined our collection. Needless to say, we have quite a few dvd's and now that we have a blu-ray player that is starting to grow. The only rub is I then would need to get some device to be able to play them from our server.

Devilsbane

Have you heard of DLNA? Basically it is a standard for playing media remotely.

I don't know a ton about it myself other than the idea of how it works. Save information to computer, use PS3 or an Internet TV/BluRay player (just bought one for the netflix and amazon streaming, but it is also DLNA compliant so I might be setting this up in the future.)

I hear it can be somewhat of a pain to set up, but once you got it you can save all of your movies to your computer and stream them to your TV when you want to watch them. No need to actually get off your butt and find the disc!

Everyone

rwmidl wrote: »

I've been toying around with the idea of transferring all of our dvd/blu-ray to our home server. I purchased quite a few dvd's when I was single, and then when I got married we combined our collection. Needless to say, we have quite a few dvd's and now that we have a blu-ray player that is starting to grow. The only rub is I then would need to get some device to be able to play them from our server.

I got these WD Live Plus boxes for free, they are great. Regular price is $100 on them. Only thing is they don't have wireless built in. I slapped a $25 Linksys USB wireless (N) on them, and they work great. I can stream almost any format you can think of off my PC to them, plus you can watch Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and a ton more on them too. I ditched my cable TV, 'cause I can watch pretty much anything I want with this setup.

Devilsbane

Everyone wrote: »

I got these WD Live Plus boxes for free, they are great. Regular price is $100 on them. Only thing is they don't have wireless built in. I slapped a $25 Linksys USB wireless (N) on them, and they work great. I can stream almost any format you can think of off my PC to them, plus you can watch Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and a ton more on them too. I ditched my cable TV, 'cause I can watch pretty much anything I want with this setup.

Sounds the same as my Sony BluRay player. Unfortunately Sony doesn't allow you to just plug in any old usb device. The models with built in wifi cost like $50 more.

I took an old wrt54g and flashed it with wrt-dd to turn it into a wireless bridge. Took about an hour and a half (first time ever doing this so I wanted to read the instruction very carefully), but now I have a virtually free solution. (The WAP was donated to me 2 years ago when the owner upgraded. The ethernet cable I bought for $3).

rwmidl

Everyone wrote: »

I got these WD Live Plus boxes for free, they are great. Regular price is $100 on them. Only thing is they don't have wireless built in. I slapped a $25 Linksys USB wireless (N) on them, and they work great. I can stream almost any format you can think of off my PC to them, plus you can watch Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, and a ton more on them too. I ditched my cable TV, 'cause I can watch pretty much anything I want with this setup.

Ok, spill the beans. How did you get it for free? For our main tv, I had CAT-5e put in because I knew at some point, I was going to have some network solution to play movies/music. I've also been looking at picking up a refurbed iTV and flashing it with XMBC. My only issue is I only have two HDMI connections on my tv, and my stereo receiver doesn't have HDMI/HDMI-Pass Through, so I'd either have to a) manually plug/unplug devices if I wanted to utilize HDMI b) purchase and HDMI switch (I've heard mixed reviews on them) c) get rid of the blu-ray player or d) purchase a new receiver that supports HDMI.

Everyone

rwmidl wrote: »

Ok, spill the beans. How did you get it for free? For our main tv, I had CAT-5e put in because I knew at some point, I was going to have some network solution to play movies/music. I've also been looking at picking up a refurbed iTV and flashing it with XMBC. My only issue is I only have two HDMI connections on my tv, and my stereo receiver doesn't have HDMI/HDMI-Pass Through, so I'd either have to a) manually plug/unplug devices if I wanted to utilize HDMI b) purchase and HDMI switch (I've heard mixed reviews on them) c) get rid of the blu-ray player or d) purchase a new receiver that supports HDMI.

I got a $100 promotional gift card for Dell.com when I upgraded my cell phone, and another one when I upgraded my wife's phone. I found it on their website, and used each gift card to buy 1. I had to do it as 2 separate purchases because of their stupid rules with those promotional gift cards.

Sounds like you need to upgrade your receiver. I was in the same spot you're in, TV only has 2 HDMI ports, receiver had none. So I upgraded my receiver a few years ago. It has 4 HDMI inputs. It also has a NIC port, you can do internet radio on it. I had it hooked up at my old house, but hardly used any of the features that required a network connection.

I used to have cable, DVD, HDDVD, and Blu-Ray connected via HDMI. Got rid of the cable, so the WD Live Plus is in its place. I could drop down to just the WD Live Plus now if I really wanted to.

rwmidl

Everyone wrote: »

I got a $100 promotional gift card for Dell.com when I upgraded my cell phone, and another one when I upgraded my wife's phone. I found it on their website, and used each gift card to buy 1. I had to do it as 2 separate purchases because of their stupid rules with those promotional gift cards.

Sounds like you need to upgrade your receiver. I was in the same spot you're in, TV only has 2 HDMI ports, receiver had none. So I upgraded my receiver a few years ago. It has 4 HDMI inputs. It also has a NIC port, you can do internet radio on it. I had it hooked up at my old house, but hardly used any of the features that required a network connection.

I used to have cable, DVD, HDDVD, and Blu-Ray connected via HDMI. Got rid of the cable, so the WD Live Plus is in its place. I could drop down to just the WD Live Plus now if I really wanted to.

Yeah, I'm afraid you are right about needing to upgrade the receiver. Just with the economy how it is, I'm being really careful on where and what I spend my money on.

The wife and I have talked about ditching cable, the problem for us is I love watching college football so that equals ESPN (no Xbox and my cable company isn't a partner with ESPN360). My stepson loves watching the Disney channel...so we're kind of stuck.

Everyone

rwmidl wrote: »

Yeah, I'm afraid you are right about needing to upgrade the receiver. Just with the economy how it is, I'm being really careful on where and what I spend my money on.

The wife and I have talked about ditching cable, the problem for us is I love watching college football so that equals ESPN (no Xbox and my cable company isn't a partner with ESPN360). My stepson loves watching the Disney channel...so we're kind of stuck.

I don't really watch any sports, so not sure what alternative there is for that. My kids are much happier being able to stream Netflix, they have all the kids shows and movies they could ever hope for and then some available to them now.

Devilsbane

I have Dell liked on Facebook (contests and such).

Status update today...

If HP spins off their PC business...maybe they will call it Compaq?

hiddenknight821

Devilsbane wrote: »

I have Dell liked on Facebook (contests and such).

Status update today...

LOL Good one there.

Zartanasaurus

Devilsbane wrote: »

I have Dell liked on Facebook (contests and such).

Status update today...

That's pretty good.