5 ms·

This is also a testament to the old HP. Around the time this logic analyser was built I used a fair amount of HP kit - oscilloscopes, EPROM programming kit, the

This is also a testament to the old HP. Around the time this logic analyser was built I used a fair amount of HP kit - oscilloscopes, EPROM programming kit, the plotter printer where you could have multiple ink colours and the original Deskjet printer. All of it was fantastic stuff and very expensive - we joked that 'HP' was an acronym for 'Highly Priced'! What do I mean by fantastic stuff? Specialist items such as this logic analyser were built to an exceptionally high standard. To all intents and purposes HP equipment back then was bullet-proof. It cost a lot but it was an investment rather than an expense. The documentation was also superb. You felt quite privileged to use it. Moving on to the products HP make now, I have a few of their laptops and a printer. The laptops are collecting dust and the printer does not have any ink in it. I have no intention of ever buying any of their kit ever again. It is all consumer stuff that does a lot compared to what was possible in 1992 but none of it has 'wow' factor. I cannot think of anything they make nowadays that is sophisticated in a 'rocket science' kind of way. Sure I might not be exposed to their finer and more sophisticated products, but I should be through marketing, reading 'tech' news websites and so on. 'HP' really should have kept onto the pioneering/cutting-edge-technology image and made their PC's the kit of choice for anyone that does difficult maths, scientific stuff, interfacing or UNIX.

mturmon 13y ago
"You felt quite privileged to use it." And using that high-quality stuff could give some semblance of order and comfort while debugging tough hardware problems. ("At least I know the problem is not with the 'scope.") I used to use HP oscilloscopes and logic analyzers from that era, and I still have and use a DMM and a couple of calculators.
AceJohnny2 13y ago
Companies change focus but hang on to their brands for consumer recognition, despite radically different strategies. The "HP" of back then is the "Agilent" of today. Similarly, yesterday's "Motorola" is today's "Freescale".
- rbanffy 13y ago
  Agilent could build Unix workstations ;-) ...
  - gnu8 13y ago
    I would buy one of those instantly, regardless of what weird ass CPU architecture or interpretation of Unix was involved.
    - SimHacker 13y ago
      Even H-POX??!
      - rbanffy 13y ago
        Did your spelling corrector just mutilate HP-UX? BTW, as long as it can run X, compile Python from source and run Emacs, I'm perfectly fine.
        SimHacker 13y ago
        More like HP mutilated Unix. ;)
- Theodores 13y ago
  ...and sometimes they do something completely different. One company that changed focus and held onto their brand name is the UK's Whitbread. They had a virtual monopoly on beer and public houses in southern England up until some time in the 1980's, then, for no obvious reason, they sold all of the brewing interests, bought a coffee chain, a few hotels and some gyms. They kept onto the Whitbread name which was once synonymous with beer even though they moved so far away from the stuff that they most definitely were not the same company. There is no 'consumer recognition' as they trade on the High Street with different names - 'Costa Coffee' etc. - but they do trade on the stock market as Whitbread. Back to the point in hand, Apple have somehow managed to make themselves de-facto for musicians, video editors and people that draw pretty pictures in Photoshop. These are the 'halo' users and mere mortals that think of themselves as possibly being creative one day buy Apple in part because that is what the creative professionals use. The fact they get no further than 'Crazy Birds' on their iPad Air is neither here or there. HP should have worked on a similar strategy but in the 'technicial/scientific' sphere rather than the 'creative' sphere. They should have listened to and looked after the customer base they had built up from selling things like 'scopes so that the de-facto kit to buy for anyone doing anything vaguely technical was HP. This too could have had a halo effect, so anyone studying something like engineering would instinctively want to buy HP rather than some other cheap Chinese junk.
minikites 13y ago
I'm a fan of the HP Microserver for home use, it's pretty neat, but certainly not as high end as the examples you mentioned.
lelandbatey 13y ago
Ah yes, the inevitable fall away from the power users towards the oh-so profitable average-consumer market. It's a sad(ish) story that's seen in too many companies. Something I've noticed a bit of though is that this "shift" is generally only a perceived shift - it's usually not the case that the high-end is abandoned entirely, usually it's just an expansion to include crappy, cheap, consumer stuff. Take for example Dell; Dell has one foot in the horrible world of consumer computers, with loads of crap. However, they still produce the totally excellent (at least last time I used them) Optiplex line of workstations for businesses. Those things are nicely laid out internally, with good support and pretty solid reliability. Dell also produces some of the nicest monitors you can buy; I've lusted after one of those beautiful 30-inch 2560x1600 monitors for pretty much my entire life. I don't have much experience with HP, but I've owned their inkjet printers, and they're total garbage. However, I also know that their larger business-oriented printers are durable workhorses that plenty of people will swear by. So, yeah, often we think the companies we know and love go to crap, but in reality it's just us not spending the money on a worthwhile product (from them or any other company).

mturmon 13y ago

"You felt quite privileged to use it." And using that high-quality stuff could give some semblance of order and comfort while debugging tough hardware problems. ("At least I know the problem is not with the 'scope.") I used to use HP oscilloscopes and logic analyzers from that era, and I still have and use a DMM and a couple of calculators.

AceJohnny2 13y ago

Companies change focus but hang on to their brands for consumer recognition, despite radically different strategies. The "HP" of back then is the "Agilent" of today. Similarly, yesterday's "Motorola" is today's "Freescale".

rbanffy 13y ago
Agilent could build Unix workstations ;-) ...
- gnu8 13y ago
  I would buy one of those instantly, regardless of what weird ass CPU architecture or interpretation of Unix was involved.
  - SimHacker 13y ago
    Even H-POX??!
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      Did your spelling corrector just mutilate HP-UX? BTW, as long as it can run X, compile Python from source and run Emacs, I'm perfectly fine.
      - SimHacker 13y ago
        More like HP mutilated Unix. ;)
Theodores 13y ago
...and sometimes they do something completely different. One company that changed focus and held onto their brand name is the UK's Whitbread. They had a virtual monopoly on beer and public houses in southern England up until some time in the 1980's, then, for no obvious reason, they sold all of the brewing interests, bought a coffee chain, a few hotels and some gyms. They kept onto the Whitbread name which was once synonymous with beer even though they moved so far away from the stuff that they most definitely were not the same company. There is no 'consumer recognition' as they trade on the High Street with different names - 'Costa Coffee' etc. - but they do trade on the stock market as Whitbread. Back to the point in hand, Apple have somehow managed to make themselves de-facto for musicians, video editors and people that draw pretty pictures in Photoshop. These are the 'halo' users and mere mortals that think of themselves as possibly being creative one day buy Apple in part because that is what the creative professionals use. The fact they get no further than 'Crazy Birds' on their iPad Air is neither here or there. HP should have worked on a similar strategy but in the 'technicial/scientific' sphere rather than the 'creative' sphere. They should have listened to and looked after the customer base they had built up from selling things like 'scopes so that the de-facto kit to buy for anyone doing anything vaguely technical was HP. This too could have had a halo effect, so anyone studying something like engineering would instinctively want to buy HP rather than some other cheap Chinese junk.

minikites 13y ago

I'm a fan of the HP Microserver for home use, it's pretty neat, but certainly not as high end as the examples you mentioned.

lelandbatey 13y ago

Ah yes, the inevitable fall away from the power users towards the oh-so profitable average-consumer market. It's a sad(ish) story that's seen in too many companies. Something I've noticed a bit of though is that this "shift" is generally only a perceived shift - it's usually not the case that the high-end is abandoned entirely, usually it's just an expansion to include crappy, cheap, consumer stuff. Take for example Dell; Dell has one foot in the horrible world of consumer computers, with loads of crap. However, they still produce the totally excellent (at least last time I used them) Optiplex line of workstations for businesses. Those things are nicely laid out internally, with good support and pretty solid reliability. Dell also produces some of the nicest monitors you can buy; I've lusted after one of those beautiful 30-inch 2560x1600 monitors for pretty much my entire life. I don't have much experience with HP, but I've owned their inkjet printers, and they're total garbage. However, I also know that their larger business-oriented printers are durable workhorses that plenty of people will swear by. So, yeah, often we think the companies we know and love go to crap, but in reality it's just us not spending the money on a worthwhile product (from them or any other company).