I suspect you're a bit younger than the people who remember HP's greatness, especially their scientific instruments and engineering tools. They also used to be

I suspect you're a bit younger than the people who remember HP's greatness, especially their scientific instruments and engineering tools. They also used to be good at making big iron servers (I'm thinking pre HP-UX). Also, one of the companies HP devoured was Digital, who ruled the world with their VAX systems. The hardware giants used to be the likes of IBM, Sun, Digital, HP, Data General, Wang, Honeywell, and a few others I'm forgetting. The only ones left now are IBM (a services company) and HP (a commodity consumer hardware company). I'm not counting Sun because I expect the Oracle deal to go through.