Hewlett-Packard

[jlb1705]

I remembered reading this WSJ article summing up the brutal year that H-P has had. I had meant to post it here and never got around to it. Here it is:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576535211589514334.html

H-P's One-Year Plan

Let's say you were given a year to kill Hewlett-Packard. Here's how you do it:

Fire well-performing CEO Mark Hurd over expense-report irregularities and a juicy sexual-harassment claim that you admit has no merit. Fire four board members, as publicly as possible. Foment a mass exodus of key executives who actually know how to run the giant computer company.

Hire new a CEO from German competitor, SAP, which sells business software, not consumer products. Tell the new CEO, Leo Apotheker, that Mr. Hurd "left H-P in great shape."

Draw public criticism from a major corporate-governance advisory firm, alleging Mr. Apotheker filled board openings with cronies.

MORE...

I was reminded of that article just moments ago when I read about this dumb fucking idea:

Gizmodo:
HP and Conde Nast Are Creating an Unholy Union to Print Magazines On Your Home Printer So You Can Not Read Them and Waste Paper and Buy More Expensive Ink

Two wrongs don't make a right. I think I learned that as a 4-year-old. Apparently, HP and Cond? Nast skipped out on that life lesson because they're combining two dying things?print media and printers?to create the unholiest of unions: your HP printer at home will print out Cond? Nast magazines for you to read.

It sounds straight out of the webpages of the Onion but it's true, Cond? Nast magazines like Wired, Details, Epicurious, Glamour, Allure, Golf Digest etc. will be "delivered" to people's personal HP web printers so that they can presumably read them without having to go to the magazine stand. This is real! You schedule when you want to read the mags and your HP printer starts spitting out the pages.

I guess this could work in a bizarro world where there is no such thing as tablets or laptops or computers or smartphones or the Internet or common sense but we're not living in that world! Instead, we live in an era where people are ditching their printers cause they're useless, people who have printers never print anything because printer ink is ass expensive and print media is dying (which is legitimately sad). But still, combining print and more print is the dumbest thing HP's done this... month, I guess.

But HP is serious about this. And since they want to revive the printer as some sort of news hub, they're offering a subscription service for printer ink delivery. It's like Netflix but for printer ink! Subscriptions for HP Instant Ink will start from $5.99 to $10.99 per month depending on the product line (shipping included). This will not end well.

 

[AKAK]

Dont' worry, I'm hooking up a deal with these guys Martin Luther and Johan Gutenburg that's gonna crush this magazine thing.