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 compan

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).