HP To Combine PC, Printer Divisions

itwbennett writes "Apotheker wanted to sell off HP's PC division, Whitman vowed not to, and now HP is combining the PC division with the printer division in an effort to cut costs, unnamed sources told the All Things D blog. Given that both divisions reported declining sales last quarter, is HP hoping that two wrongs make a right?"

Re:What's next? Free printer with every ink purcha

[TheRaven64]

I don't know what the revenue breakdown is between consumer and pro markets, but HP's printer division also produces really high-end devices. The sorts of printers that print huge banners and posters - they'll take paper a couple of metres wide and of any length. These are really expensive, but you buy the ink in huge bottles for about the same price as a tiny cartridge for their consumer printers.

Re:people still use printers at home?

[Anonymous Coward]

if i need to print a few pages every few months i'll do it at work?

You haven't eliminated your need to print at home, you're just stealing the service form your employer rather than paying for it yourself...get off your high horse thief.

Re:Makes sense

[Reece400]

You can download nice drivers for most printers from their website too that are just the basic driver. I never ever open those cd's they send with the printer anymore, even if you try using device manager to install the drivers off the CD it ends up running an installer and loading a whole slew of stuff.

State of HP

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to work for said behemoth...so take this as you will. HP has a driver that works with ANY HP printer, it is called the Unified Printer Driver, or UPD. Light weight and trouble free...if you have driver problems, give it a try, it will make you happy again. Combining the PC and Printer divisions is not the only changes being made, they are also combining some of the sales forces, streamlining the Enterprise Services divisions and attempting to focus on Cloud, Security and Big Data. I believe Meg has the best intentions, but it may be too late. HP is such a behemoth of bureaucracy and idiotic busy work that I doubt it can be saved, more likely it will be like watching a large air ship crash...really slowly waffling and coming to rest on the ground without much of a crash, or it may crash like an F-16 doing MACH 3 and hitting a brick wall. Anyway, I digress. HP has too many old timers at the helm that won't allow the company to become more agile, they have to fill out form H-1165537u3 in triplicate in order to sell a customer with cash in hand a $400 laptop. I happen to work for the Enterprise Services group and have been working on a deal that is worth $40,000.00 US, and it has taken nearly 2 months to get through the paperwork (digital as it may be) in order to help a customer implement something that will take about 6 days. That is what HP has come down to. Peace & Love!