Dell CEO Tells All 416
zapatero writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an enjoyable read with new Dell CEO Kevin Rollins. He has quite a critique of the HP acquisition of Compaq: 'They had a great, profitable printer business before. They still have a great, profitable printer business. ... Their profits are 70 to 80 percent from the printer business. So that's the area where the profit pool still lives. It's where it lived before. It's where it still is now. So I just ask, what's changed?'"
Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely, you cannot say "I want all of the tax breaks and government s ubsidies of a company that is giving Americans jobs" while at the same time cherry-picking your labor pool from the cheapest of third-world labor.
If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is it offshoring is good cept when it effects my job, then it is the great satan...
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:5, Informative)
If you haven't, you don't know what corruption is.
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:3, Interesting)
some CEO's busted their ass on the line, and worked their way up. these are usually the better ones...
others, have acquired their positions solely due to who their parents were, and their birth SOCIAL STANDING.
be careful what you wish for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you put some meat on your argument, demonstrating with actual figures that the tax breaks and "subsidies" (what subsidies?) Dell gets in the US are better than what they can achieve elsewhere.
I suspect the primary reason companies like Dell stay in the US is that they want to be on a US stock exchange. For various historical reasons, the US stock market has been the most attractive for companies since WWII. However, that may be changing now, and companies like Dell may take you at your word.
Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
You're not required to be a US company to be traded on a US Stock exchange.
Telekom Austria, Swisscom, Novartis, UBS and a lot more foreign companies are traded at NYSE.
You do of course have to follow SEC rules if you wish to be traded on an US exchange.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect that this is not the reason that Dell is onshore, though. As a US company, they can get orders from the US government, and their brand would probably be damaged if they changed their domicile or registration to a non-US one.
Re:be careful what you wish for... (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, it's not tax breaks that piss me off. It's that these corporations are shirking their responsibility as a US entity.
Both people and organizations pay taxes to support a government to protect them, provide service programs, and allow us to pursue happiness.
People and organizations are taxed differently in the US. An American Corporation makes X dollars in a year, but, they spent Y dollars doing it. Thus, their tax basis is X - Y. If an American Worker, on the other hand, makes X, then he/she generally pays taxes on the whole amount.
In a company with most or all American employees, this makes sense. Employees are paid and then need to pay taxes. Since salary is usually one of the largest portions of "Y", the corporation is "taxed" via its employees.
However, if the employee is not an American citizen, no tax revenue is generated. For every corporate dollar of salary that gets sent overseas, we the people of the United States need to kick in another $.33 to cover the lost tax base.
Why should I have to pay more taxes because Dell or IBM or Microsoft sends jobs to China, India, etc?
I am not sure what the answer is, perhaps it is a tax plan that says you can offshore, but, the corporation will be assessed a tax for each job offshored equal to the amount of the taxes that would have been generated if the job stayed in the US. That, or maybe if Z% of jobs are offshored, Z% of X (revenue from above) cannot be "balanced" by expenses - ie - you must pay taxes on it.
Who knows.... it's Monday morning and I am not 100% with it yet.
- Tony
government contracts (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that is a weird kind of restriction. In the long run, the WTO may kill those US regulations.
Many governments all over the world are buying US equipment. If even only foreign governments decided to "buy domestic" for their IT needs, the US IT industry would collapse.
Hear hear (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you know that corporations pay less than 5% of tax revenue?
Used to be about 50%. In the last half-decade, it's shifted almost entirely onto the shoulders of the individual, because corporations have become experts at paying the least amount of taxes possible. Yay corporations!
Re:Hear hear (Score:2, Funny)
Could you cite a source for that, please?
Thanks,
Your 5th grade teacher
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)
From IRS [irs.gov]
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There are fewer corps! why does this surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be a valid argument if corporations had the same sort of income ranges as regular people. Unfortunately some few corporations exceed in income all of the wage earners in the country combined. Some have incomes exceeding that of GDP of many a small country. Clearly comparing corporation count to that of regular income earners is pointless.
Re:There are fewer corps! why does this surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real way to lower taxes? Less gov't.
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Informative)
How much of the Bush $2T 2004 budget pays for corporations, and how much for humans? It's probably a lot better than 7.4% paid for corporate services. Especially when you include that $200B Iraq War.
Your math is bunk (Score:5, Insightful)
The interesting number is, what percentage of the aggregate corporate income is taxed, not the number of corporations that are taxed. Most corporations are teeny non-revenue producing shells.
The method and conclusion used here is deceptive.
Re:Your math is bunk (Score:4, Funny)
Corporate executives like yourself are getting rich on the backs of children!
your facts are selective (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Informative)
I think this gives a good idea of how top-heavy the income tax system really is, especially in a society where wealth, and income, is very concentrated. This situation makes tax revenues very volatile, budgeting very difficult, and the top echelon very influential.
In regards to these quotes, Buffet is defending Berkshire, which was caught up in a little bit of Washington politic
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)
So why, exactly, do you think that a fictitious pass-thru entity such as a corporation should pay taxes which reduce the amount that it can pay in wages and dividends which, at the end of the day, are taxed anyway? Unless you approve of double-taxation and prefer the government gets your company's money instead of you, as an employee or investor, your complaint makes little sense.
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Interesting)
As I said previously; you cannot have it both ways.
Re:Hear hear (Score:2)
Simply ditching the corporate tax code and grants and cash benefits system would make the entire corporate machinery more efficient. It'd also reduce overhead on the government side trying to figure out who's compliant with what.
Getting rid of it all would be a huge boon.
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Interesting)
If that was indeed a case, you would be right. However in order to exempt themselves from all responsibility for their actions, people who hide behind this ficticious entity insisted that laws be drawn to make corporation a "person" in all respects of the law. That way that ficticious person is responsible for any damages caused by its actions and not those who actually make the decisions that lead to those actions. You cannot have it both ways. What you described is called in legal terms a "partnership" and is wholly distinct from a concept of a corporation which is in most respects a living person. (yes its stupid but thats how billionaires like to make sure that some grandma whose toaster exploded killing her grandchildren wont get hold of the CEO's yacht).
So in a partnership, each individual is responsible for paying their share of taxes based on their slice of the revenue. In a corporation, the corporation itself is responsible for its own taxes and the CEO only pays tax on his "salary" which usually is $1 and he collects "dividends" and what not in convoluted transactions that result in his tax burden being nil.
Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Informative)
That a CEO is not personally responsible because his corporation is willing to "buy" that freedom from responsibility is not a valid argument and, if anything, makes it look like the government is on the take... that the government is willing to excuse you from personal responsibility as long as you submit to double taxation.
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you are starting to see the light. Government is not really on the take financially, however it wishes that corporations appear to contribute heavilly to justify their vast priviledges.
In reality, corporations have really no right to exist in a civilised society. They are instruments created by the priviledged to make themselves immune from responsibility and at the same time to avoid any tax burden. The double taxation is a red herring since as others pointed out here, the corporation already has a vast range of ways to avoid any taxes at its disposal (offshore havens are just one of many) and its managers have yet another set of ways to avoid their personal income taxes. This of course applies only to corporations that count, i.e. those who are large enough to have the needed power. Anything small in our current, perverted version of capitalism is by definition powerless.
In short, the corporation is (for those who have a clue how to play the game) the best of both worlds whereby no tax and next to no personal responsibility for one's actions can be achieved at the same time.
And of course one has to admire the results of propaganda by the corporatists in corporate owned media that results in someone being so overhwelmingly naive that he proposes to make the underhanded tax crookery practiced by the corporation and its beneficiaries totally official and above board.
You, Sir, are like a chicken that finds itself staring at its doom in a pot and so it helpfuly offers to pluck its own feathers so that those who are about to eat it need not to be bothered needlessly. Because plucking and cooking would constitute "double effort" and thus would be "unfair" to the cook.
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)
Because unlike corporations, these are not easilly capable of the same sort of abuses. All forms of partnerships and sole propriatorships are much harder to manouver in order to avoid taxes and personal responsibility.
In general I am against two things: corporations (too much potential for abuse in the name of protection from "frivolous" lawsuits) and pan-national business in general (because no business should rival elected government in power and reach). These are simple things really. I am not anti-capitalist at all, I am simply anti-highway-robberry-in-broad-daylight, which is what those accusing me here of being "brainwashed" seem to find desirable.
boycott them - starting with your computer
I see, so by this logic, if a citizen of Soviet USSR were to revolt against it, he should boycott his food, shoes and the flat he was living in since he was deprived of choices by the system he was living in?
I have nothing against purposeful capitalism. That is whereby, as Adam Smith wisely designed, the animalistic instincts of greed, agression and possessiveness that humans are unable to grow out of are harnessed for the collective good of the society. Not the kind where these instincts are used to create even more greed, aggression and possesivenes. You know the kind of thing various far right-wing nuts propose to make things more "efficient" while they mumble "and I will really fuck everyone in the ass then!" in anticipation to themselves.
sue you for all you're worth
That is a failing of a legal system not of the business model. Institionalized avoidance of responsibility because someone "might" bring "frivolous" suit forward is the same kind of idea as locking people up because they "look like" terrorists or invading countries "pre-emptively" based on ones "reliable hunches". Curiously enough proponents of corporate freedom from responsibility often subscribe to these notions. Funny coincidence, that.
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Insightful)
I have news for you. I do not presume to guess your age but odds are that I have been in the "working" world probably longer then you. On top of that I do own a buisness and to make things funnier I used to be a shareholder of a corporation. Like most people with any sort of integrity I learned as I went and my present views are a culmination of my experiences in my rather longish career in IT industry. I say this so that you can cease your rather amusing barking. "Liberal!", "Student!", "Ninny!", "Government", "Arghhh!". Do stop or you are likely to start biting people on their legs soon.
Corporations provide a wealth of jobs and products and services - more so than any other business types
Most businesses are corporations because they would be silly not to take advantage of such a great deal but this deal is far sweeter if you are large enough. Should the corporation be returned to its rightful place as a special social charter, most would happilly be partnersbips and sole propriatorships and provide just as many jobs and products. Besides it would help your cause if you were to provide any proof to your claim, since you do not seem to realize that products of major corporations are mere assemblies of components from bewildering numbers of sources many of which are not corporations but in fact partnerships etc.As for businesses being bigger than governments, so what? You anti-corporate ninnies never realize that governments are the worst type of monopolies
It is patently obvious that discussion with you is pointless. Let me solve your problem for you. No you cannot be Bill Gates. No you will not con everyone out of millions for your one-of-the-kind 20-fold patented software. The super-duper-pan-national-mega-corporation you are dreaming of starting up in your basement will not be larger then CocaCola. Thus you do not need to defend every stupidity and excess large pan-nationals engage in, so that when yours finally makes it grand entrance, you get to play by those generous rules. Give it up. You have "Wage slave" written on your forehead. How do I know? Because only someone destined to be one could be so eager to defend his master.
As to government being a monopoly? On what? Lawmaking? Regulation? Law enforcement? You bloody bet! And that is how it should be. Sure, democratic process can have major flaws but most people will take it over hereditary-feudal-lordship, corporate edition, anytime.
Re:Hear hear (Score:2)
Re:Hear hear (Score:2)
Do you honestly think the IRS should let us get away with this?
Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you approve of double-taxation and prefer the government gets your company's money instead of you, as an employee or investor, your complaint makes little sense.
I am sick of hearing and reading this nonsense. Governments do not "get" taxes, States do. Governments are citizens appointed by citizens to administer the State's money and the State's laws. I do like the State having money, that way I can get quality social care, medical care and education, everything for free, if I ever need it. (Even b
Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Funny)
No, it's not - a pair of Levi's what ?
Re:Hear hear (Score:5, Interesting)
So let me get this straight.. you propose that abusive ficticious legal entities which in order to protect the business elites are considered "persons" and thus are "responsible" for damages they cause instead of their owners, be exempt from any taxes on top of that? So those who benefit the least from the way our crazed version of capitalist society operates are to pay the most in order for these corporations to quarduple their income? And than to force this system upon the rest of the world in a classic "race to the bottom" fashion? All in name of "efficiency"? I mean "efficiency" and not the conditions of living of citizens are the goal of this entire excercise called "society", no? Am I reading this right? So lets see, real citizens create conditions for the ficticious citizens to prosper, pay for the infrastructure of the society, education, medical care, roads and security and then the ficticious citizens are to make vast profits free of taxes and invest them in foreign locations and/or dispesne them in tax free ways to those strange beings known as CEOs or Directors. Right? Thats the plan?
Get a grip man. Corporations are your enemy. Small "inefficient" businesses employ vast majority of workers worldwide and their output constitutes vast majority of world's products. Great majority of those businesses operate within a single country. Most have deep roots in their communities and are active in them. And they very rarely move. Large corporations are the leeches that suck the planet dry and play goverments across the globe against each other, states in those countries against each other, cities against each other and individual workers against each other to achieve their only goal: to enrich the CEO and in some rare instances their large institutional investors. Boosting the said CEO's ego by acquiring rival corporations also plays a large part. They are an abberration of captialism that is probably making Adam Smith spin in his grave.
Remember this: the most "efficient" corporation is one that collects revenue for nothing, employs noone and all of its other expenses are picked up by individual taxpayers while the corporation itself pays no taxes. I dont want to live in a world where your "efficient" corporations rule.
Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I didn't know that, and it's certainly completely untrue. If corporations paid 5% of their revenue in taxes, that would be a very high number since net margins are typically 10%; you non-Math majors, that means the income tax rate would be 5%/10%=50%, a very high number.
Regardless, even if corporations went from paying 50% of all tax
Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking from first hand knowledge, 50% is not out of line when compared to individuals. Let's take a look at some REAL numbers (Canadian dollars and tax rates but concept should translate).
I pay $1400 per month for rent. I buy groceries, $400 per month. I pay electric, water, cable, telephone, internet access, $350 per month. I have a car, lease payments $450 per month,maintence and gas add another $250. Household, car and life insurance adds another $250 and clothing, another $150. Let's add another $150 per month for entertainment. So basic expenses total are approximately $3400 per month or $40800 per year.
I earn approximately $92,000, taxed at a rate 48% or $44160. Using your formula for corporations, I am really paying 86.25% in taxes (taxes paid / gross income - expenses or 44160 / 92000 - 408000).
So now the question is, who should change the way taxes are calculated?
Re:Hear hear (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you live in a very strange country you don't pay 48% of your income in tax. Most income tax systems are progressive, so you pay tax in bands, paying 48% only on the top band of your income. You can also deduct items from your income according to your circumstances.
Re:Hear hear (Score:4, Informative)
I would include a nice table showing everything for the lazy, but since stupid /. prevents that. How about this: over the last forty years, the Corporate Income Tax provided the following percentages of that years IRS collections:
in 2003, 10%
in 1993, 11.18%
in 1983, 9.85%
in 1973, 16.42%
As you can see, the percentages have held fairly steady over recent years, including "the last half-decade" (nice try, Bush hater). The big change in percentages happened back at the end of the 70's.
"+5 Interesting" my sweet fanny!
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:2)
Yeah, get out of the US dell! Take all that goddam money that flows back into the US OUT OF HERE! We don't want your taxes! And we want you to keep US employees no matter what! It worked for Western Europe so it'll work for us! Oh wait...
Globalization is rarely so cut and dried.
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:2)
Could you enlighten me how exactly is that money flowing back into the US from the off-shore banks and tax havens that exempt the corporation from taxes, or perheaps from the workers making all the products Dell resells who collect their paycheques in China, Thailand etc and spend all their money in ... wait for it... China and Thailand (big surprise here).
Re:Do let's be consistent, shall we? (Score:2)
If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.
Can you be more spesific. Or spesific at all?
Re: (Score:2)
What's changed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's changed (Score:4, Insightful)
What you're saying is that HP couldn't compete on hardware, so it bought compaq to get into the higher-margin services business. If that was the case, then...why didn't HP just spin off the printer business (which is what Hewlett wanted) and keep going into services & hardware?
Because, like the Dell guy says, printing is subsidizing everything else.
Oh, and IBM didn't transform itself by buying also-ran competitors. It transformed itself by listening to its customers and providing what they needed & wanted.
Re:What's changed (Score:5, Informative)
Actually not true. First a couple of links.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/18/technolog
http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/13/technology
Figured from may indicate that HP made 884 million and Dell made 731 million for the second quarter.
The analysts are worried because Dell's profit margins are shrinking while their revenue keeps growing.
"Oh, and IBM didn't transform itself by buying also-ran competitors."
Also not true. IBM bought lotus, informix, and a slew of other companies.
Re:What's changed (Score:2, Funny)
But they just don't make those calculators like they used to.
HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Insightful)
3 things:
1) The "legendary" DEC service & support models. Nothing -- and I mean NOTHING, not even IBM -- can compare. Nobody's support is like DEC's. Their support is SO good, it's absurd. I can really consider the dedicated support team I've got as an extension of my admin staff.
2) Two profitable businesses: Alpha/OpenVMS and NonStop (a/k/a Himalaya). As fashionable as it is to bash VMS, guess what, it's still around, and it's still VERY profitable.
VMS shops will continue to use VMS for a long, long time. In fact, as I recall, DEC/Compaq/HP is obligated to continue support through at least 2017. Cool stuff. (Isn't that when the lights go out on Broadway? Ba-dum-bum.)
NonStop is what runs, well, everything. Most SS7 networks are *highly* dependant on Nonstop. Yeah, sure, it's ridiculously expensive -- but it works. If you need 99.999%+ uptime, nothing else provides it --- not even the mainframe.
If you look at this merger through PC eyeglasses, yeah, it probably doesn't make much sense. But then if you look at it with the enterprise market in mind, it makes LOTS of sense.
Now, I'm not wild about the prospect of using the Itanium chips, but I have to say, the idea of running OpenVMS on the same systems with HP-UX, along with Linux, is definitely cool. Even nicer is that HP-UX (which is arcane in a lot of ways) will get some "real" features like TruClustering. Can't wait to see that!
Interesting times are ahead with HP.... I think they're a real powerhouse, and especially now that the integration of both companies is really rolling along, they're going to be a Big Force in the enterprise space.
I think it's going to come down to IBM and HP. Sun's just dropping the ball on SO many fronts lately (Bring back the Blueprints Engineers!!) that it's hard for me to count them as real players in the market right now
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Informative)
SS7 [wikipedia.org] - Signalling System #7 is a set of protocols defined by ITU-T, specifically in the Q.7* set of documents, used to set up telephone calls. (from Wikipedia).
Himalay / NonStop [pcmag.com] - The NonStop servers, which sell for an average of more than $1 million a piece, are highly valued for their ability to handle thousands of simultaneous transactions and their capability to continue operating even if hit with multiple hardware failures. The robust computing systems are particularly favored by financial institutions and are used to run 15 of the world's largest stock exchanges as well as automated teller machine networks for some of the nation's largest banks. (from PCMag, 2002)
Parent is a very informative post - I didn't know about this other side of HP/Compaq!
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Informative)
One thing that I remember doing for one my customers is shipping a part on a hired helecopter because it was the fastest way to get me the part and the customer was on a "DEC Protect/Recover All" contract, which mean NOTHING was too much trouble.
Those were the days.
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a UNIX admin, and right now, I'm playing Sun and HP-UX. We've got the Alpha/VMS "Platinum" support model right now on HP-UX, and I have to tell you, it couldn't be better. That "NOTHING is too much trouble" thing is still true. You have to be a Big Fish, and you have to pay for it, but I'm still getting that "Whatever we can do to help means literally WHATEVER" support.
Fantastic stuff; I'm happy to see that HP's willing to adopt that support model (at least for us, anyway) on the Superdome/HPUX side. I'm sure it's causing some infighting between ingrained HPers and DECies, but as the customer, that's not my concern.
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:2)
this was not long after I was in new york with some friends, and a guy asked for some spare change to help with his helicopter repair.
i think there's a connection.
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:2)
If OpenVMS is so profitable, why is DEC no longer among us? and Compaq? and why is it being phased out?
Don't get me wrong, I know it has been profitable for a logn time, I am just seriously doubting that it still is.
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:2)
Why this industry keeps discarding good technologies and adopting crappy ones I'll never know. I mean is advertising really that effective on management?
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:2)
But 33mhz PCI buses on your high-end SF25k servers? Give me a break!
From the systems handbook,
"Up to 72 hot-swappable PCI+ I/O slots: 54 slots are 66 MHz; 18 slots are 33MHz"
Think about it - do you really need 66Mhz for all your slots? no - not for you cluster interconnects, etc.
Alex
Re:HP's benefit ... (Score:2)
It's not on life support -- not even close. You don't port to a completely new architecture (Superdome/Integrity) for life support purposes.
As for customers -- VMS customers are *extremely* loyal.
We got a call from a major financial institution on 9/11 asking if we had any spare VAXes around. They needed to replace a few hundred(!!) VAX7000s that were lost in the Trade Center.
We had a few in our storage facility (We're on GS1280's right now... bless our developers who have m
I've seen it first hand. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I've seen it first hand. (Score:2)
Check out this book: Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 [amazon.com]
It's a comparison of the tech culture that exists in both Silicon Valley and the area surrounding Boston. HP, originally a company based upon the i
Re:I've seen it first hand. (Score:4, Informative)
To sit there and listen to the propaganda campaigns at work.... we're focused on innovation... we have the brightest people.... blah blah blah. Then, to see the innovative, bright, industrious people Carly was praising escorted out of the building because someone else could do it in India for 1/10 the cost.......
It still infuriates me. I have no words.
Most expensive liquid on the planet? (Score:3, Funny)
what a troll (Score:3, Funny)
The printer joke regarding HP got old when Dell was young.
So I just ask, what's changed? (Score:5, Insightful)
SOMEbody's bitter! (Score:5, Funny)
Executranslator output:
"HP had a great printer business, and especially when we saw Queen Fiorina doing the merger dance, we thought, 'Hey. We're Dell, we rule, dude! We can make printers, kill cHomPaq's profit center, and then TAKE OVER THE WORLD!' But even after their sucky merger, they still make awesome printers, everyone still buys 'em, and we can't sell our printers. I hate her. Damn you, Carly! Oh, and our pothead spokesteen who got arrested for dealing pot, I hate him too."
It's even more fun if you picture him half-drunk at a bar, 10 o'clock shadow, disheveled suit- telling all this to another drunk guy at the bar.
Re:SOMEbody's bitter! (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't want to comptete. We want to take the market and the profit margins.
Enter the ship a printer with a PC program. We also include a ship us your old printer free box and pre paid UPS.
The idea is to get you to send them your old printer before you find out the new printer has postage stamp size cartridges for the same price + S&H as the old printer. Visit their website. THERE IS NO DATA ON CARTRIDGE VOLUME OR PAGE YEILD. They provide no way to figure cost of operation. They don't want you to know.
My wife bought a new DEL PC and got the companion all in one printer. I was skeptical with the recycle your old printer program. I checked into the prices and sources of ink for the new printer. The lack of information was apalling. When installing the cartridges, I was astounded the big all in one printer/fax/copier used such tiny cartridges. I was even more upset by the price for replacements.
My other printers are networked and work with my other PC's. The Dell printer has drivers for Win 2K and Win XP only. As such, none of my other PC's can use it, even if it were networked. Needless to say, we'll probably "recycle" the new printer when it runs out of ink instead of sending a good printer.
The printers on my LAN are a HP Laserjet III (cheap operation) HP 720c (cheap web page color printing) and a HP 950 (nice photo prints, but expensive color cartridges) The black cartridges are easly refillable as well as the Laser. The Dell will be replaced with a flatbed scanner when it runs out of ink. There is no info on refilling it. The ink is from Dell only with shipping and handeling costs. Yuck.
I love the Hawking print servers. They support both Windows and Linux.
Re:SOMEbody's bitter! (Score:3, Informative)
only one choice...
Canon.
my most recent canon is the photo R300. seperate ink-wells that are $9.00 each prints as good as all the others and prints directly onto CD's which kicks the arse out of everything that DELL might sell.
if you must have an inkjet, get a canon. cheapest ink cartridges out there.
And yes, other than the CD print operation, it works in linux.
Re:SOMEbody's bitter! (Score:3, Informative)
only one choice...
Canon.
To be honest, I've been looking at the Cannon i850. I just can't buy another inkjet while the HP's are working so well and use the same easily refilled black cartridge.
Due to the cost of the color cartridges for the HP950c, it hasn't been plugged in for 6 months. I get my photo printing done at Costco instead. 8X10's on real film print is $2. Results look like 35mm prints, not glossy inkj
What's changed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyhow, HP used to be an engineer's company-- a geek's company. Didn't the Woz [woz.org] used to work there? And he was a geek's geek. Even as recently as my high school education (I'm 25), HP was a touchstone of geek culture.
And now that it's merged with Comcrap, its devolution into yet another mindless "cheap plastic crap computers" business has been completed.
There seem to be only two companies nowadays with solid geek-friendly engineering-- Apple (excepting many of their first-generation products) and IBM (think: ThinkPads... solid engineering and a simple, robust design virtually unchanged in 10 years). HP is now just Compaq wearing a tie. DEC is long gone ("Compaq Tru64 Unix", anyone?), swallowed by the Compaq beast. SGI is going out with a whimper instead of a bang. Sun sold their soul to Redmond and is now producing x86 [sun.com] and x86-64 hardware that are Windows-certified [theregister.co.uk].
And, as usual... no one gives a damn. We're all too damned addicted to ShinyPlasticCrap(TM) to care about the lack of sound engineering.
As far as I'm concerned, Carly Fiorina's head should be on a stake somewhere, the damned sellout. She robbed us all of a good, solid, geeky company in favour of more anticompetitive, mindless, corporate, plastic crap.
Re:What's changed.... (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as home printers and inkjets, yea you gotta sell shit to compete in that market because all your competitors are doing it. Ink jet printers are a rip off. Simple solution is to avoid them.
Just bring home a 600dpi or 1200dpi (RET) HP from eBay or the local thrift store, it will last another 30 years or so. If the fuser blows up, they are like $20 for a replacement. Same with the pick up rollers.
You can get a good deal, with one of the huge mailbox sorters. Every member of the family gets their own output tray!
Re:What's changed.... (Score:2)
The crappy PSC 1200 I have here (printer/copier) was like 60 euro.. I also spent 45 euro on a refill kit, and after a year I did manage to use up my original cartridges and approx 2/5 of the refills (2 out of 5 refills)
Ah, how many pages did I get out of the initial cartridges and the 2 refills? Around 1200.
So... if it woul
Re:What's changed.... (Score:3, Informative)
Agilent is a spin off of HP (from 1999) that basically took everything but HP's computer/printer business.
Agilent today does what HP did in the 70's, such as test and measurement equipment, semiconductors, life science equipment, etc. Sadly, this is minus the calculator division, HP kept (then killed) that. Most cell phones today use parts made by Agilent.
One important piece is the R&D labs division
Re:What's changed.... (Score:2)
I may not have to give up knowing RPN and get a TI when my precious dies a long time from now.
Re:What's changed.... (Score:2)
the sort of person who lives and dies with their HP calculator is the sort of person who uses their PC for spreadsheets, their calculator for the quick and minor calculations, and a hard core analysis package for the really serious work.
I own two HP c
So does ... (Score:2)
HPaq DL380 G3 > Dell.
To the OpenVMS fan - you guys sure are a die hard bunch! As a member of the hobbyist program from Montagar, I gotta say VMS is a odd cookie. Friends and myself have been playing with it as time permits on an older alphaserver 2100RM hooked to a Portmaster for remote serial access. Steep learning curve for us Unix p
Dell = old HP? (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot of that existed in the "old HP" (except the excellent marketing!), and seems to have gone from HP over the past several years. It's remarkable how short a time it took for HP to transition into the company it is today. HP's status as a leading engineering company seems to have all but disappeared now.
Many years ago, I went to HP as I thought it was the best training ground on offer; these days, I'd probably go to Dell for the same thing.
HP and Compaq - my take (Score:5, Interesting)
1. One less commodity x86 company to deal with on the Wintel side.
2. Acquisition of DEC, aka Compaq Alpha, and Tandem, aka NonStop. Instant credibility and long term customer base in the high-end transactional space. For non-enterprise Slashdotters, Tandems are almost as prevalent as MVS (mainframes) in the financial services sector.
3. iPaq and hand held technologies. HP's offerings weren't so hot until they got Compaq's mindshare.
Ironically, HP is massacring it own customer base in the HP-UX space. The Itanium relationship has been a disaster. "Hey, port to Itanium as its our long term unix strategy. Well, yes the processors underperform...and yes, no ISVs have ported over. And, well, no, we'll keep supporting HP-UX as long as its possible.." Of course, HP-UX customers are questioning the future of PA-RISC now in light of Itanium. So basically what's happened is no one is picking up Itanium nor PA-RISC at this point, and the PA-RISC space is slowly declining as people move to the P-Series (IBM) or Sun or linux clusters. Look at the latest sales and install base charts. I figure PA-RISC jumped the shark about 3-4 quarters ago, and its descent is accelerating month-by-month. (Mostly at the expense of IBM P-Series it seems)
I find it amazing that HP can make money some days...
Re:HP and Compaq - my take (Score:5, Funny)
They sell lemonade [hp.com] on the side.
Funny he should ask (Score:5, Insightful)
Dell CEO: So what? Did customers benefit? Did employees benefit? Did shareholders benefit?
Funny he should ask that question of HP/Compaq. I could ask the same question of him and Dell's activities over the last two years. Quality has plunged across the line. The Inspiron series is now a joke. I've yet to meet a single customer of those laptops who did not have a problem within the first year (failed hard drive, fried motherboard, you name it). Outsourcing of support has made it impossible to get problems resolved in an efficient/competent manner. Who's benefitting? Not the customers, not the employees, and if they keep this up, people will stop buying Dells and the shareholders don't benefit either.
Obsolescence and just wearing out. You have to upgrade your PCs. You have to do that at some point in time because they just fall apart. They don't last forever.
Glad that he's so honest. Sorry, the ThinkPads I own do NOT just "wear out" within a year -- six years now and my ThinkPad still works great. I wish I can just shake all the companies that are buying Dells and tell them to wake up. This is a company that is deliberately building crappy products that fall apart in six months because their business model is to automatically "wear out" their machines so you can buy again. God, Dell makes my blood boil.
Yeah. They're selling very well. Absolutely. Because you all want them.
Please don't use "you all" as if you really are born around here. You are no more entitled to say this than Kerry's wife is entitled to say she's an "African American."
(Chief information officers) were holding some of these things with duct tape because they have been around for so long.
No. It's because you built them so poorly. Again, my company's Compaqs and IBMs are NOT wearing out. Only Dells. Guess who we are NOT buying from again?
o, I can't comment on that. But I can tell you, categorically, we're not going to buy Sun. There's just no strategic reason to be doing that.
Thank God. I never want Dell anywhere near a company with some real integrity and solid products.
Re:Funny he should ask (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. They're selling very well. Absolutely. Because you all want them.
---
Please don't use "you all" as if you really are born around here.
What? I don't know what nationality you are, or where you mean by "around here". I can see an American perhaps taking credit for "y'all" (although personally I consider it an embarassment). But "you all" is just two arbitrary English words next to each other in a sentence. How can anyone claim it? Is it no longer allowed to say "Wow, you all came to my birthday party! Thanks!"
I'm Canadian, and while we are proud of our "Eh?" we don't claim exclusive rights to it.
Re:Funny he should ask (Score:2)
Memo to Dell CEOs: Mind YOUR business! (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess they just feel a little short in the pants because all Dell does is repackage other people's technology and slap a logo and a low price sticker on it. When everyone else is doing the innovating for you and all you do is shave your prices to run your competitors out of business, the business pretty much runs itself. That must leave a lot of free time to criticize other companies.
The question I'd like to see these fucks answer in an interview is, "Using only your fingers, can you tell us how many people have traded in an iPod for one of your shitty Digital Jukeboxes?"
Re:Memo to Dell CEOs: Mind YOUR business! (Score:3, Insightful)
What is wrong with the DJ? Sure, trading in a working iPod that costs twice as much doesn't make sense. But how is this a knock on the DJ? I'm very happy with mine. Yes, it is a little bigger than the iPod, but I can live with that at almost half the price (DJ 20GB was recently on sale for $
Tell Dell seems interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
When I think "HP" the first thing that comes to mind is "Printers". When I think "HP PCs" the first thing that comes to mind is "junk". Now when I think of dell I think of a reputable company, I think of laptops, desktops, servers, handhelds, printers. I think of solid machines that work very well, last a long time, and are a plesure to work ok (I love the screwless entry and layout of the Deminsion Desktops). My great experience with dell desktops and servers makes dell a good choice for a pocket pc or printer in my view.
My company primaraly buys dell. We have a Dell NT4 server thats been in the company for 7 years now and its still ticking. Its not as easy to get inside of as the desktop workstations but I've actually never had to open it up to replace anything. We had a different CEO a few years ago that was a Gateway fanboy. A couple of gateway laptops were ordered but have since broken down. The feeling around the office when it comes to hardware is, "just go to dell". I know it seems like the "nobody ever got fired for buying microsoft" thing but the bad experiences with gateway and the solid ones with dell have really impacted our thinking when it comes to hardware
I thought the "Tell Dell" part of the interview was especially interesting. Twice a year dell gives the employees a way to speak their mind about their boss and it directly effects their bonus, and this goes all the way to the top. I think that is a wonderful way to give employees a sense of belonging. It gives lets them know that they have a say in the way the company operates. The company I work for does employee performance reviews twice a year. Its like the same thing dell does but the other way around. Now considering the fact that my company is small in comparison (100-150 employees) I'm not sure something like "tell dell" would work in my company. There are tons of things I could say about how my CIO "doesnt get it" (but then again I'm thinking like an engineer not a manager), but saying them on paper and turning that in to my boss is a completely different story.
Does anyone else hear work for a company that does performance reviews, or boss reviews? I'd like to hear some testimony, and this has really intreged me so I'm wondering if something like this would work in a small company like the one I work for.
Slashdot needs spellcheck. Maybe I should get that firebird spellcheck extension
Re:Tell Dell seems interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tell Dell seems interesting (Score:2)
Oddly, having years of working with the damn things, the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "HP" is "crappy printers."
Whether its bugs in the drivers -- and I've had to code around a lot of them -- or "optimizations" like Quick Layout, or just paper trays breaking or jams, I've never had a good experience with an HP printer.
Another Skull & Bones Society? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kevin Rollins, Dell - from Brigham Young University.
Coincidence? I think not!
Now - where did I put that tinfoil hat?
The Compaq merge had nothing to do with technology (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Carly Got Paid. She wanted to make a few million and shore up her shaky position with the board. She got both wishes.
2. COMPAQ PAY CURVES
Compaq paid their people less, gave them fewer benefits, and shorter vacation. By applying Compaq Pay Curves, most of the people at HP suddenly found themselves at the top of their pay curve. They won't get a raise for decades. On top of that, if you were getting 5 weeks vacation because you had slaved for HP for 15 years, you now only get 4, thanks to the adoption ofthe Compaq HR regs. There was a whole raft of HR changes in HP that saved the company hundreds of millions of dollars on an ongoing basis. So not only did it chop X jillion bucks off their expenses this year, they wouldn't see it coming back the next.
Those left stateside who are not in management and not outsourced, are doing the work of three or four people.
This is NOT a sustainable situation and it is going to come crashing down in fairly short order.
Carly's HP is a disaster. She led Lucent gliding into a death spiral, and she's going to sink HP. And weep all the way to the bank. Plutocratic leeches like her must be stopped.
RS
He appears to be lying. (Score:5, Interesting)
That is a LIE.
ROUND ROCK, Texas (AP) - Computer maker Dell Inc. has more workers overseas than it does in the United States, reversing the makeup of its work force of just a year ago. Round Rock-based Dell said it was allocating resources where growth has been fastest, including China and Japan.
"We have great opportunities outside the U.S., and as such we have built our employee base in areas that best reflect our strong growth areas," Dell spokesman Bob Kaufman said Tuesday. "Our jobs have grown all over the world, including here in the U.S."
Dell had 46,000 employees as of Jan. 30. About 22,200 of those, or 48.3 percent, were in the United States, while 23,800 people, or 51.7 percent, worked in other countries, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
A year ago, 54.2 percent of Dell's workers were in the United States, according to company filings. Dell's work force grew 17.6 percent during 2003.
Dell said overseas job growth in the past year ran the gamut, from sales and manufacturing to call center support.
Last year, Dell stopped routing corporate customers to a technical support call center in Bangalore, India after a flood of complaints. Tech support for Optiplex desktop and Latitude notebook computers are being handled from call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee instead.
Shares of Dell were down 23 cents to $35.56 in afternoon trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
FROM: Associated Press ^ | Apr 13, 2004
Re:He appears to be lying. (Score:5, Funny)
The way to solve the cartridge problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
All the non-HP companies have to do is to actually create a standard for the printing cartridges. A standard which allows backward compatibility. One which gets used by everyone (though HP will no doubt balk at first).
All of a sudden, the cost on cartridges drops significantly. And people will be more inclined to buy printers which adhere to the standard.
I can think of no better way to hit HP at its weakest spot; and provide a lot of value to customers too. HP had better hope that its competitors don't try to pull this off. But being at the mercy of your competition is usually not spmething which is desireable.
Dell These Days = Sucks (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dell These Days = Sucks (Score:5, Informative)
If you are able to repair the system yourself, you can always just ask for the parts. Dell will be happy to not have to pay the on-site tech and will just send you the parts. Also, if you have a portable system you can get a return to depot warranty, but honestly, if you view having a technician come out to your house the next business day and repairing your computer to be an inconvenience, then is there any pleasing you?
Oh...they can also come out after 4 or even 5 o'clock well after High School lets out. And if the problem happened in the first 21 days, you could just demand a replacement computer.
The repair techs used by Dell are contracted pretty much from the companies that everyone elses uses also. Banctec, Qualxserv, Unisys...there are others. Those companies do a thriving business because companies like IBM, Dell, HP/Compaq, Sony and the like contract them. And again, if you think you can handle the repair yourself, Dell will just send you the parts. Of course, if you break the computer while trying to repair you, then you are liable for paying to repair what you damaged, but that's just fair.
Also, if you are a larger company you can have someone certified for Premier Access, then you can just order your own parts, do your own repairs and you aren't liable for breaking a computer while trying to repair it...unless it was intentional.
Honestly...get your facts straight. I wouldn't even normally have bothered to respond, but since someone mod'd you up to Informative...*shrugs*
What has changed? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is probably a redundant reply but it can't be stressed enough. What changed is the death of one of the better CUP architectures. The death of the Alpha is one of those great mistakes in the history of computers.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
The Compaq IJ600 is a rebranded Lexmark. It was a model sold prior to the acquisition of Compaq by HP.
Dell's current printers are rebranded Lexmarks. Lexmark inkjet printers are, and have always been, terrible. However, their Optra series laser printers are considerably better.
HP has always manufactured their own printers. With a few exceptions (the Laserjet 5L, for instance, with a vertical paper
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Except for the ones Canon manufactured and HP assembled, rebranded, and sold.
why branding is taking off (Score:2)
Re:Company's brand way too strong (Score:4, Interesting)
PC components are generally cheap enough that you can get away, to a certain degree, with buying crap. Laptops, due to their integrated nature, the extra abuse they take, and the difficulty of obtaining and installing replacement parts are not so forgiving.
You should be spending well over a grand for any sort of decent machine that's new. You probably shouldn't be buying a Dell (of course I know people who swear by them), but don't buy some generic piece of crap either.
Re:Company's brand way too strong (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a bit of a difference between 1.8 Ghz Celeron notebooks and 1.8 Ghz Pentium M processors.
Dell doesn't offer a 1.8 Ghz laptop with a Celeron processor. What you were looking at is this:
Dell [dell.com]
Go look on Pricewatch:
1.8 Ghz Celeron Notebooks starting at $800.
1.8 Ghz Pentium M Notebooks starting at $1700.
Where are my mod points when I'm forced to defend a company I don't particularly care for against trolls...?
Ibanez