HP is dead for soon three decades. There is a company with its name nowadays that makes shitty computers and some printers.

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gopher_space 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

You'll never buy a HP printer again once you experience their latest software. Every bad idea and dark pattern from the last decade or two rolled into a single package.

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red369 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I never had a very strong opinion about HP products either way, so I can't really discuss how much they have declined, but are they so dead?

I am typing this message on very average HP keyboard, connected to an HP EliteBook and some HP monitor. The other monitor is Dell, and sure, it's nicer, but it's also newer. I see the mouse is also HP. None of these are amazing, but none of those are particularly bad. When I have a permanent desk, I do often bring my own peripherals into the office to use, but I don't mind any of these enough to do that semi-regularly. If my company were to ask what corporate laptop I would want instead, I would need to look on notebookcheck.net to see what I am missing out on. I wouldn't even bother trying to improve on the keyboard, mouse or monitor.

Sure, I didn't purchase a single one of the products above, and I can't think of anything I own right now which is HP, but I don't intentionally avoid their products. I tend to use refurbished corporate laptops for personal use, and at least one has been a refurbished EliteBook.

Apart from their printers, which other comments say I should particularly avoid buying, are they much worse than their competitors? (I think printers are a problem area and I would just buy the Brother printer anyway)

Edit: I just want to add, this might feel argumentative, but I am just genuinely asking. Maybe their products are a significantly worse experience and I've just not noticed. Or maybe they produce products that feel similar but don't last. It all feels similar pretty similar to me, with some ergonomic differences which mean I prefer some to others, and some breaking and some lasting forever. I've never noticed a pattern, but I've never looked either!

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varjag 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Hewlett-Packard was instruments and test equipment company with some computer offerings appearing in 1970s. The latter were own designs, with bespoke CPU architecture and system software. Eventually they started producing PC clones which however weren't the core business.

Then early in dotcom boom era the company was taken over by new management and gutted for anything except the PCs and printers. That entity has very little to do with the ethos, capabilities and operations of the original company.

Test equipment business was spun off into Agilent, then split again into Agilent doing biomedical systems and Keysight producing T&M.

I realize this may sound like nitpicking but since the article refers to 1990 HP it should be understood it was an entirely different company.

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woolybully an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Also nitpicking: “bespoke” means made for a particular customer. I think here you need to”proprietary”.

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musicale 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

HP also split into HP Inc. and HPE in 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard

	▲	kragen 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, but neither of them has a high-quality product line.

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red369 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks! I only knew HP as the some computers and shitty printers company (and I realise that I swapped your adjectives, but I feel this way around is more deserved)

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jz_ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Two things that carry negative sentiment in relation to HP:

HP acquired Palm for $1.2 billion in 2010, stumbled with a mobile product launch that was killed without much runway or developer investment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270709 (article archived: https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jxp06mns) - This no doubt soured people who cared about Palm.

HP were known for carrying Intel's Itanium business, for which few tech people have nostalgia for (the second hand market prices have always been eye-watering too), compared to the older PA-RISC line.

I'll agree their consumer/business laptops were always been perfectly usable and long lasting. I dumpster dived an excellent condition pentium 3 laptop from a HP Office that was probably thrown out because of a password locked BIOS (which was not resettable by battery removal, only by getting access to someone who had the bios password serial->keygen tool). It was a great daily driver with Debian, and wifi worked fine with ndiswrapper.

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kragen 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That's the one Cringely was saying was headed for trouble 10 years ago.