Re: The Science Generations

[Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>]

Bill Frantz wrote:
> Off list 'cause it's off topic.
> Dale - My experiences don't parallel yours.  (BTW - I agree that HP makes
> good equipment.  HP has always been one of the industries class acts.  I
> just don't agree that you couldn't do small business computing on
> Apple/IBM/Osborne etc. because many people did it.)
> I never used an Apple ][ hard disk, but I worked in a room with perhaps 30
> IBM PCs with the first 5MB disks for about three years.  Don't ever
> remember any of them crashing.
> Yea, I remember doing that once in the eight years or so we ran the system.
> Better reliability than some 4 function calculators I had. The point is
> not that these systems were better than your beloved HPs.  The point is
> that they were good enough so many people used them for serious applications.
> Applications that earned these systems a place in the business.
> Applications that returned more to the business than the cost of the systems.

The phrase "your beloved HPs" gives your hand away.  The truth is, many
customers I knew would reiterate exactly what you said. But when I would
press for details, I would find that they were *very* lightweight apps,
and the ability to deliver day in day out was essentially nonexistent.
BTW, I don't see above where you said what would happen to the IBMs or
Apples when the power shut off while writing to the hard disk....
And Apples and IBMs *did* require surge protectors, not provided by the
manufacturer.  And neither Apple or IBM would repair their own stuff.
This last point is very important to me, but I can see where it would
be lost on non-professional users.

HPs were made for use in less than ideal environments, which is why:

1. When you use an HP or Apple in lots of areas of Southern California,
particularly close to the ocean where most people live, the HP will
perform for a long time and the Apple will corrode rather quickly.

2. When I went to a show in Anaheim once in the summer, and the air
conditioning quit, and the temperature reached 100+ fahrenheit in the
display areas, the HPs were the only micros still running.

3. As far as calculators go, try leaving several CMOS machines in your
locked car with windows up in the summer for, say, 3 or 4 hours while
you're inside of a mall, to name an example.  See which ones still have
their CMOS data intact.

To sum up, when you haven't had to depend on professional gear for real
production work at home or on the road, you can't make these kinds of
judgements knowledgeably.  The main gripe I have about postings like
this is that they argue on emotion about a technical issue.

HP is far from a *good* company these days.  Matter of fact, the day
that they introduced the HP-150 (touchscreen) computer, they yanked the
engineers off the new-item rollout team and replaced them with IBM PC
dodos who knew nothing about HP. This is very similar to what Volkswagen
did when they dumped the reliability ads for the Beetle and started
cranking up the sexy ads for the Rabbit.  That's when Honda started to
eat Volkswagen's lunch, 20 years and running.  I can see clearly where
this strategy put HP a lot of years behind the competition.  You will
recall, of course, that HP started this whole thing with the first-ever
personal (take it home and plug it in and start programming in Fortran
immediately) computer, the 2116A, in 1966.  Expensive, yes, but still
by every technical account a personal computer.

In case you haven't noticed, and in spite of HP being full of assholes
these days (I don't use that term lightly), HP has gained market share
in PCs (not just printers) against Apple and IBM by a factor of several
times.  HP is now #2 in the PC server market, for example.  How Compaq
got to be #1 I don't know, since when I worked in Pasadena we couldn't
leave the machines on all day, since none of them would last more than
3 weeks that way.