[Info-vax] FWIW: HP to spin off PSG?

[JF Mezei]

Something else I heard from 2 different sources: It is now surfacing
that Hurd wasn't so great after all. Short term cuts which are now
starting to rear their ugly heads. It looked good on paper while Hurd
was there, but it was a time bomb, and Hurd left before the damage from
all those cuts started to be felt.


Another aspect which I find strange. If you look at Apple, they are
shifting from traditional "PC" products to "mobile" products. (aka: from
Macs to iToys).

This is an area where they feel there will be growth, and also where
Microsoft has consistently failed to succeed.

While it isn't much of a surprise to find HP wanting to ditch the
traditional PC business, it is puzzling that they would not wish to go
into the mobile market.

If you ever go into an Apple Place of Worship (store), take a look at
the gadgets the employees have. They are glorified iPod Touch units
fitted with extra hardware to be used as a wireless handheld  point of
sales terminal. They swipe your credit card, scan the product code of
what you are buying, enter your name/email address and voila. You get a
receipt via email and/or printed one (comes out at the nearest printer
in the store).   I suspect Apple ay eventually find a way to sell such
devices into commercial markets.


Shouldn't HP be in that business too ? Seems to me that HP would have
greater potential since HP still has ome enterprise business (Apple
doesn't really have it anymore since they ditched their office servers).

At the end of the day, they could develop some Linux based devices and
use the talent they would have inherited from Palm to develop commercial
mobile devices. Or did Hurd already fire all the talent from Palm too ?