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site admin | March 3rd, 2009 | Comments are closed
These are my links for March 2nd from 10:48 to 21:40:
SV Watcher posted the text of a message that went out to HP employees from Mark Hurd today. Looks like the official corporate values are pretty much the way I remember:
Clearly things have happened here that are unacceptable. But we will not react to speculation. Instead, we will continue to gather and review all the relevant facts. I can assure you we will get to the bottom of this and take appropriate action.
HP’s values are at the core of this company. These have not changed and will not change. HP’s shared values are a set of deeply held beliefs that govern and guide our behavior.
• We are passionate about customers
• We have trust and respect for individuals
• We perform at a high level of achievement and contribution
• We act with speed and agility
• We deliver meaningful innovation
• We achieve our results through teamwork and
• We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.
He also mentions that he believes the current board flap has nothing to do with the strategy or operations of Hewlett-Packard. I agree, provided it gets resolved promptly and fairly.
Gene Becker, who’s still at HP, is starting to think about what the HP Way 2.0 might look like. But a set of values or ideals is just words on paper until people begin to live and breathe by them, and people will learn them by their shared experience. The board affair is a great “teachable moment” in progress, the question is – what lesson gets taught?
The HP board is holding an unscheduled meeting over the weekend. Patricia Dunn has apparently offered to resign if they ask, but isn’t volunteering to step aside. Perhaps there are more facts here in her support, but let’s see what lessons we learn. So far it looks like “Don’t get caught”.
See also: What would Bill and Dave do?
Ho John Lee | September 8th, 2006 | 2 comments
I seemed to have missed this feature when the most recent line of Photosmart cameras came out a few months ago:
They say cameras add ten pounds, but HP digital cameras can help reverse that effect. The slimming feature, available on select HP digital camera models, is a subtle effect that can instantly trim off pounds from the subjects in your photos!
Just the thing for making your own Katie Couric-style portraits…
HP has a culture problem.
Put aside for a moment the (probably illegal) methods used to obtain the personal phone records of the HP board members.
Yes, HP’s private detectives were using social engineering and pretexting, but honestly, does it surprise you to hear that a senior executive got carried away trying to identify their secret “enemies”? Didn’t think so.
The surprising part is that this wasn’t an Oracle (sending private investigators out dumpster diving for evidence) or an Apple (filing lawsuits and requesting subpoenas to learn the names of leakers), or some other Valley company built around tightly controlling founders.
The surprising part is that this was at HP, the company formerly known as “Hewlett-Packard”, where by tradition Bill Hewlett left his change on his desk, demonstrating his trust in his co-workers. This is like expecting Gerald Ford and getting Richard Nixon.
HP has been getting its act back together for the past year. Less talking, more doing. This affair won’t have any short term effect on the operation of the company. But it how it is resolved (or not) will have a long lasting effect on the internal values of the organization and the external perception of the company by partners, customers, and competitors.
If Patty Dunn worked for Mark Hurd, I think he would be nearly obligated to fire her at this point, or at least move her to the “penalty box” of sidelined executives. However, board directors aren’t exactly employees, and she’s the chair. It’s difficult to fire your boss.
But…would you want to do business with (or work for) a company whose management thinks it’s OK to conduct illegal searches because it thinks you did something it doesn’t like?
What would Bill and Dave do? (After they stop spinning in their graves.)
Yes, I know it’s a vastly different company now. That’s a good thing. This is still wrong.
More at Newsweek, MSNBC, Smoking Gun, TechDirt, Fred’s House, Infectious Greed, Intuitive Life
Someone pointed out to me that the latest HP site redesign changed the logo back to something like the “old” logo, dropping the “invent” that was tacked on underneath a few years ago. Perhaps this reflects more getting back to basics, “doing” rather than “talking”. In any case, it won’t be missed.
The press release about the site redesign still has the old logo, though.
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an ad from HP noting the 25th anniversary of the HP12C calculator.
Unlike most contemporary personal computing technology, the old HP calculators have been nearly indestructable and are utterly reliable. This may have limited the market for HP calculators, in that there aren’t any consumables and there isn’t much of a replacement cycle either, but it’s a relic of the old-school HP that also made indestructable electronic bench equipment and atomic clocks (and mostly turned into Agilent). HP still seems to sell enough new units to keep them in production.
I’m not sure exactly how old my calculator is at this point, but it dates back to some time in the early 80’s, in the days before personal computers and ubiquitous internet access on college campuses, when being able to run repeated calculations without heading to the computer lab was both a luxury and a competitive advantage. At the time I also had an HP 15C and 16C, which were well-used in various projects before going on “permanent loan” years ago.
At this point my remaining 12C has been around the world several times, and the batteries haven’t been changed since sometime around the dot-com boom.
Some very good calculator software applications (including emulations of various HP calculators) are now freely available for PCs, and nearly-disposable plastic calculators are often distributed as promotional novelties.
I suspect that calculators like the 12C may be turning into something like fine pens. There’s little intrinsic, functional rationale for them at this point, but I enjoy using it nonetheless. It turns on and off instantly without a fuss, it is dense and substantial without being too heavy, has the best keyclick feel ever, and is a much better at being a calculator than a cellphone, PDA, or notebook computer is ever likely to be (…once you learn RPN). Like everyone else, I often write with a word processor of some sort, but I like to draft on paper from time to time, because writing with a good pen can make you think differently than typing into a display. I find that working with calculator and paper can have a similar feel. Sometimes computer productivity tools are better at creating the appearance of substance than at facilitating the creation of actual substance.
Peter Burrows points out the new and improved HP board election rules:
Today’s Good Governance Award Goes To…
…the board of Hewlett-Packard. That’s not a sentence I would have forseen myself writing, given some of the nonsense that’s gone on in Palo Alto in recent years. But yesterday, HP announced that board members from now on would need to win a majority of shareholder votes to be re-elected to the board. If they don’t, they’re required to submit their resignation.
HP press release:
Under the policy, any nominee for director who receives a greater number of votes “withheld” from his or her election than votes “for” such election will tender his or her resignation for consideration by the nominating and governance committee of HP’s board of directors.
Lew Platt Memorial Service
Lew Platt Memorial Service
Tuesday, October 18 at 3 p.m.
Stanford Memorial Chapel
Parking Instructions: It is recommended to carpool and arrive on campus at least between 2-2:30 p.m. as this is expected to be a large memorial and parking is very limited near the Stanford Memorial Chapel.
Free parking and shuttles are being provided at Galvez Field (at Eucalyptus Grove near Stanford Stadium). Directions: take El Camino past Stanford Stadium to Galvez (across from the corner of El Camino and Embarcadero and the Palo Alto Town & Country Shopping Center and Palo Alto High School).
See also: Thinking about Lew Platt
From CNET:
Hewlett-Packard is preparing to open a research laboratory in China later this year with a focus on computer security and services among other projects, according to an HP Labs executive.
The plant is expected to compliment six other HP Lab sites, including Palo Alto, Calif.; Cambridge, Mass.; Bristol, England; Haifa, Israel; Tokyo, Japan; and Bangalore, India.
“This plant along with the one in Bangalore will help us serve our next billion customers,” HP Labs Associate Director Howard Taub revealed Wednesday during a meeting with CNET News.com reporters at HP’s Palo Alto facility.
I’m glad to see HP Labs finally heading back to China. This will be sort of the second time around. The original HP Labs operation which started in Beijing in the 90’s basically ended up with Agilent after the spin off from HP, and around the same time Microsoft Research and others set up shop and glommed onto a lot of people. That, plus lots of organizational flux, seems to have ended up costing 6 years on the ground for getting plugged into the local research scene.
See also: China is run by Engineers
Every now and then there’s another round of rumors regarding a possible merger or takeover between HP and EK. They’re both venerable American corporate institutions, with a long history of innovation, and increasingly overlapped interests in the digital photography and imaging space. They also share a core challenge in adapting to the commoditization and changing demand models of the imaging and printing businesses as digital communications supplements and replaces photo printing. HP can afford to buy EK if it wanted to, and former HP Imaging and Printing head Antonio Perez is now the CEO at Kodak, supported by a number of HP alumni.
On the downside, Kodak is a company in need of a basic transformation. It probably needs to exit the chemical film and paper business at some point, and concentrate on its substantial brand and new digital products and services, along the lines of IBM exiting the PC hardware business, or perhaps Coca-Cola separating out the bottling business from the branding and marketing business. Given Kodak’s roots in the film business, this is a hard cultural change to make.
HP faces a similar challenge in its consumer facing businesses. Under Carly, “Hewlett-Packard” became “HP Invent”, and the associated global branding campaign raised consumer awareness and perception of HP’s products. Unfortunately, very few people are willing to pay a premium for a better-but-nonstandard PC, printer, or cameras, steadily making these businesses more about branding, shelf space, and buying opportunities than about technology, features, or innovation. In the near future, HP may also face the choice of becoming a branding and distribution company versus being a technology company.
Having worked for “HP the technology company” in the past, I’m rooting for a return to innovative engineering and technology as business drivers at Hewlett-Packard. But while there are a lot of smart people left at HP, I’m not sure that enough of an organizational culture of innovation is still intact to bring about a new round of businesses, or even to partner effectively with the startups that are trying to bring interesting new products and services to market.
Aside from that, Mark Hurd seems to be well focused on stabilizing the existing HP businesses, so if an EK deal made any sense now, it will make more sense after HP has a working plan for what it wants to be, and perhaps EK does some cleaning up.
Here’s Business Week on the latest HP-Kodak rumor:
Call it the rumor that won’t quit. Every couple of months, speculation bubbles up that Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)is poised to acquire Eastman Kodak (EK). The chitchat erupted again on Sept. 1, helping drive up Kodak’s stock 5%, to $25.50 — its largest single-day jump in over a year. The stock climbed another 3%, to $26.24, on Sept. 2.
“IT WOULD DEFY COMPREHENSION.” But the Kodak speculation doesn’t hold water upon closer scrutiny. Indeed, two HP insiders have told BusinessWeek Online at various times over the summer that there’s nothing to the oft-surfacing Kodak rumors, saying it isn’t even being discussed at HP.
Ho John Lee | June 8th, 2005 | 1 comment
It’s been a few weeks now since I’ve started using a new IBM Thinkpad T42P as a replacement for my HP 4150B. Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. I’ve taken it on one trip to Asia and a few meetings so far, along with daily office use. The Omnibook 4150B has been a total workhorse, logging more than 500K air miles in 5 years. I’m still using it around the house, but the case has developed a hairline fracture which I suspect will not withstand another serious road trip, thus finally prompting a search for a replacement.
T42P good points:
Battery life – I routinely get more than 6 hours run time with the 9-cell battery
Weight – I got the 14″ rather than 15″ display to improve portability. It’s definitely lighter than the old Omnibook, and I’m carrying fewer extra widgets, which also saves weight.
Noise – HDDs have generally gotten quieter over the past few years, and the fan is also very quiet
Build quality – no loose plastic pieces, solid metal hinges, and very little chassis flex.
Think Light – this seemed a little gimmicky, but has actually turned out to be useful on the airplane
Built-in wireless – I got a unit with built in 802.11 a/b/g and Bluetooth. The performance of the 802.11 b and g modes has been quite good; I haven’t had an occasion to use the 802.11a mode yet. There’s no obvious way to connect an external antenna to the built-in hardware, but I can always put another radio in the PCMCIA slot. The IBM Connection Manager widget for managing roaming profiles also works pretty well so far
Undecided / not great:
Trackpad – the T42P has both a pointing stick and trackpad. I’ve never gotten the hang of using the trackpad reliably, so I’m on the verge of disabling it so I don’t keep bumping into it accidentally.
Fingerprint scanner – this is a cool concept, but I haven’t reached a level of comfort where I’m willing to rely on it to sign on instead of logging in the normal way.
No business card holder – this is nitpicky, but there’s no slot for placing a business card or other identifying marks on the unit. Obviously, putting your business card isn’t going to prevent people from stealing it, but it can help distinguish one computer from another — and there are a lot of similar looking computers around at airport security, conferences, meetings, etc.
Keyboard – the IBM keyboard “feel” is a little different, mostly good. However, I seem to do something from time to time that causes the keyboard to “beep” loudly when I type something rapidly/badly. It might be some control key combination, I haven’t figured this out yet.
Key placement – the IBM keyboard also swaps the usual placement of the Fn and Ctrl keys, and has a slightly different placement for the Esc key. I trip over this at least a couple of times a day. There’s a hack for swapping the keyboard mapping, but I haven’t tried this yet.
No recovery media – there is a recovery partition on the HDD, but if you upgrade the drive, or if you accidentally or intentionally trash the WinXP install, there’s no way to recover the factory install without contacting IBM support. I may request a set anyway, in anticipation of snags while setting up dual-boot Linux on the system.
To be fair, a lot of the improved experience I’m getting is in going from a 650MHz P3 with 256MB RAM to a 2.1GHz Pentium-M with 1GB RAM and a faster bus, and running a 7200RPM drive vs a 5400RPM drive, rather than any IBM (now Lenovo)-specific system design advantage. Similarly, the USB ports are 2.0 rather than 1.1, so the outboard peripherals are faster.
It’s depressing that it takes so much computing resource to mostly do nothing but run WinXP with OfficeXP with reasonable response time. I occasionally find myself SSHed into an antique Linux box running Emacs when I want to do serious text editing and it totally crushes Word for actual text manipulation power, sans formatting and nice print output. I’ve repartitioned the disk on the Thinkpad to leave room for a Linux install when I get some time for some tech hacking.
I’ll also put in a mention here for Bill Morrow, who hosts Thinkpads.com. The user forums there are the best online resource I’ve found for IBM Thinkpad info of all models and vintages, and with many posts by knowledgeable and motivated users.
I purchased my T42P from Bill rather than the IBM online store, in part because I had problems getting a system configured on the IBM site (similar to the problems I had earlier with the HP online store), and found his prices to be competitive while providing me some confidence that I was actually getting what I was trying to order.
In the end, what sold me on the Thinkpad this time around was a combination of the longer battery life and being able to order from Bill. The system performance, feature set, weight, and build quality for the HP nc6220 is generally similar, but the actual battery run time for the HP model is significantly shorter in both published reviews and anecdotal user comments. I was still considering just living with it, but I couldn’t get the HP web site to kick out the configuration I wanted, as it was convinced I wanted to buy one of the promotional configurations. The IBM site was slightly better, but I found it difficult to tell whether I was substituting one option for another, or getting an additional piece of equipment.
Bill stocks a variety of high end T42 configurations, and I was able to verify that he had what I wanted in hand, and received it overnight after placing the order. In theory this could have all been done, “friction-free”, on the internet, a la Dell. However, given the choice, I wouldn’t want to be 12,000 miles from home out in the boonies in India or China or wherever, and be counting on a semi-disposable computer. Sometimes you just need something that will hold up, and Dell isn’t it. Obviously, I was willing to pay more to get something more bulletproof. Here’s hoping for another 5 years of reliable service…
See also: Notebook Migration in Progress…, More on Notebook Computer Shopping
I’ve been putting this off for a while, but I’m finally biting the bullet and migrating to a new notebook computer. Aside from moving into the new system, this is also tangled up with assorted technology upgrades. My setup is a bit more complicated than the average user, so productivity is taking a hit this days.
I’m still running my nearly indestructable HP Omnibook 4150 on the network this evening, but I just moved my primary desktop to my new IBM Thinkpad T42P this afternoon. So far, so good. I haven’t had “that new computer smell” for a long time, and it I am already very happy with the reduced weight, faster performance, nearly silent operation, and really long battery life. The built-in wireless is also working well.
As a long-time former HPer, I started out looking for an HP product that would work for me, and almost purchased an NC6220. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince the HP web site to sell a unit with a 7200RPM drive, on top of which all of the current HP notebooks have much shorter battery life (~3 hours). So far I’ve run the T42P for over 5 hours on a single charge, without using a second battery in the internal bay.
It’s going to take a while to learn the IBM-isms — this may be an activity to do on the plane later this week.
See also: Experience so far with the IBM T42P
Today I saw a demo of Andy Fitzhugh’s Virgil software. He is combining GPS trackpoint logs with digital photos to generate metadata which can be used to group photos together by date/time, physical proximity, and also to prepare queries to various search engines based on location.
He uses a Garmin Geko clipped to his camera bag to generate a track log, and then uses the EXIF time stamp to match photos to locations. He also has a method for tagging existing photos with a location. The mapping display is generated by queries to the Microsoft MapPoint service, which also returns a vicinity-based list of points of interest.
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