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It hardly matters who's legally right and who's wrong here. The fact is, HP was once a class act. I wish I could find the writeup about the early HP35 calcula

It hardly matters who's legally right and who's wrong here. The fact is, HP was once a class act. I wish I could find the writeup about the early HP35 calculator bug, where it was suggested that they just sweep it under the rug, and either Hewlett or Packard himself said no, we're going to do the right thing and fix every calculator we've shipped, period. That same boss would have said, it was our mistake, so we're going to honour the offer. A few hundred thousand bucks down the drain, but stellar reputation maintained. It takes a long time, and makes a lot of profit, to run such a reputable brand into the ground. By the look of it, the process is nearly complete.

phendrenad2 3y ago
In those days HP was selling specialized equipment to a small market of specialists, and brand reputation was key. If HP were only selling to the HN crowd, they'd have been out of business years ago. But now they're in the consumer staple industry. A new crop of highschool and college students are minted every year, and the negative signal simply will not reach them. They will see the ads for HP and see it as just another of several interchangeable brands (like automobiles or Android phones).
- glaucon 3y ago
  >But now they're in the consumer staple industry. I don't think it's quite that simple, like almost all large manufacturers HP have different tiers of quality/prices to address different markets. Just as you say they have price sensitive models but they also have "price is not the main thing" models. That's not to say that any of HP's laptops are a good buy in the first place but it true for every manufacturer that there are a range of qualities and prices. The exception to this is Apple because they have distinctive approach to marketing which, in the laptop field, is unique (or if it's not unique I can't think of any other 'single tier' manufacturers).

phendrenad2 3y ago

In those days HP was selling specialized equipment to a small market of specialists, and brand reputation was key. If HP were only selling to the HN crowd, they'd have been out of business years ago. But now they're in the consumer staple industry. A new crop of highschool and college students are minted every year, and the negative signal simply will not reach them. They will see the ads for HP and see it as just another of several interchangeable brands (like automobiles or Android phones).

glaucon 3y ago
>But now they're in the consumer staple industry. I don't think it's quite that simple, like almost all large manufacturers HP have different tiers of quality/prices to address different markets. Just as you say they have price sensitive models but they also have "price is not the main thing" models. That's not to say that any of HP's laptops are a good buy in the first place but it true for every manufacturer that there are a range of qualities and prices. The exception to this is Apple because they have distinctive approach to marketing which, in the laptop field, is unique (or if it's not unique I can't think of any other 'single tier' manufacturers).