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

[John Wallace]

On Aug 21, 8:05 am, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <ZOydnUjs6ratzdLTnZ2dnUVZ_oydn... at bresnan.com>, GreyCloud
>
> <m... at cumulus.com> writes:
> > The bottom line is that all businesses in the U.S. are slowly getting
> > the message, or should I say getting their nuts squeezed by the
> > government by over taxation, and just moving to other countries that
> > would love to have their business and not tax them at all.  This country
> > has squeezed the crap out of businesses and most have either folded or
> > left the country.
>
> Ireland was a country which attracted many businesses with this model.  
> Look where they are now.  In other words, if one tries to compete with
> such countries by lowering one's own taxes, then one will probably end
> up even worse than they are---the same problems, but not even any
> business left.

Well said Philip. The race for the gutter doesn't have many winners.

Btw, for anyone interested in the history (and yes it's not Philip's
typo) it's Glass-Steagall, not Glass-Steagler. The UK's own equivalent
regulations, whose name I forget, were repealed around the same time
(as part of a programme known as the 'Big Bang'?). The rest is
history, which the honest UK taxpayer (and pensioner, etc) will be
paying for for decades to come.

Back to domestic PCs: I would be very surprised if HP's involvement in
the design of home PCs (Pavilion family?) went any further than an
email to the motherboard OEM saying "Processor: X, memory: up to Y,
slots: Z" or something very similar. The detail is left to the
motherboard OEM, and as noted above, the motherboard OEM's
subcontractors. The home PC industry is a budget fashion industry with
products having production lifetimes of a few months and it would be a
miracle if anybody bothered doing things properly. Fortunately nobody
really notices if the system isn't quite stable or misbehaves a bit
because you can always blame it on Windows oddities.

The business desktop/laptop PC market used to be slightly different,
with product lifetimes (or at least product compatibility) of two or
three years being a requirement (if you're willing to pay extra for
the 'benefit'). This is the former Compaq Deskpro desktop segment (as
opposed to the awful Presario segment). HP's new improved naming means
I've no idea what the current equivalent is called, but from that
market I support a small selection of 2nd hand HP dc7100 SFF ex-
corporate PCs amongst friends and neighbours; they seem like decent
boxes, so far.