[HN Gopher] The HP Garage (2009)
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       The HP Garage (2009)
        
       Author : swatson741
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2020-11-03 18:26 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.hpmuseum.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.hpmuseum.org)
        
       | someonehere wrote:
       | I attended a friendly get together there with someone who was a
       | caretaker of the home briefly. It's weird drinking margaritas in
       | a historical landmark. Especially in its garage.
        
       | kps wrote:
       | HP, when it was controlled by the founders, was famous for three
       | things: (1) uncompromising product quality, (2) cutting edge
       | research, and (3) treating employees well -- they wouldn't even
       | fire people for incompetence, just reassign them, on the grounds
       | that a hiring mistake was the fault of the company.
       | 
       | Today, they're just a label on minimum-cost consumer junk.
       | 
       | Comparison to current SV companies is left as an exercise for the
       | reader.
        
         | zwieback wrote:
         | I won't try to convince you of the quality of our consumer
         | products but we also build industrial printing presses and 3D
         | printers that are actually kind of cool.
        
         | 908B64B197 wrote:
         | > they wouldn't even fire people for incompetence, just
         | reassign them, on the grounds that a hiring mistake was the
         | fault of the company.
         | 
         | I wonder how often the problem isn't with a hire but with the
         | team.
        
         | JorgeGT wrote:
         | The HP-15c I was handed down from my dad certainly is a
         | testament of (1). The thing will just keep going.
        
           | FullyFunctional wrote:
           | The HP-11C (which I bought ~ 30 years ago to replace a HP-15C
           | that took one too many drops) is still going strong on the
           | ORIGINAL battery from the factory.
           | 
           | I marvel frequently that while CPUs, storage, and displays
           | are unphantomly better, the physical design and feel of the
           | keys on the 30+ year old calculator is still _unsurpassed_.
        
           | qz2 wrote:
           | It's a shame really. Their new calculators are crap made by
           | the lowest bidder (Kinpo Electronics) who make TI and Casio
           | stuff too.
        
         | qz2 wrote:
         | HP ejected the three major "old HP" concerns you mentioned in
         | 1999 into a company called Agilent and proceeded to make a
         | complete universal fuck up of everything that was left.
        
           | kps wrote:
           | And then Agilent spun off most of the original HP domain to
           | Keysight.
        
             | Aloha wrote:
             | I consider the real owner of the HP heritage to be
             | Keysight.
        
               | qz2 wrote:
               | They still sell a big chunk of original HP parts as well.
               | I got a couple of bits for a 25 year old power supply a
               | few months back.
        
           | rodgerd wrote:
           | And the person responsible for that fuck-up ran for
           | government on the basis of her business expertise.
        
             | qz2 wrote:
             | Well fortunately she fucked that up before she got
             | anywhere!
        
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